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What Are People For?

4.26 of 5 stars 4.26 · rating details · 839 ratings · 92 reviews

In the twenty-two essays collected here, Wendell Berry, whom "The Christian Science Monitor "called ""the "prophetic American voice of our day," conveys a deep concern for the American economic system and the gluttonous American consumer. Berry talks to the reader as one would talk to a next-door neighbor: never preachy, he comes across as someone offering sound advice. He...more

Paperback, 224 pages

Published April 1st 1990 by North Point Press

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Nov 23, 2012 Nathan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: life-as-it-was-meant-to-be, local-community, human-dignity-and-purpose, education, against-enlightenment-modernism

Although I don’t always agree with Wendell Berry, his essays are written with such grace that they are a pleasure to read no matter what his opinions are. Berry sees his writing as a craft, a calling, and it is obvious that he writes with great care.

This craftsmanship is shown in Berry’s writing process. Berry writes out his essays by hand, then reads them aloud so that he can experience them with the ear, not just the mind. As he goes through this process, he keeps revising and rewriting. The r...more

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Jan 31, 2008 Libby rated it 4 of 5 stars

gotta love this farmer-philosopher.

“When despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be -- I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought or grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the...more

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Aug 17, 2012 Josh Meares rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a good book. It represents a view that is unfamiliar to most people, especially people that grew up in the city or the suburbs. I cannot say that I think that it is all truth, but I think it touches on truth occasionally. Whatever he writes about, he writes beautifully and powerfully. I believe that all men and women should think about the issues raised in this book: issues of meaning, beauty, waste, competition and our economic principles. This book is not a finely nuanced discussion. I...more

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Sep 01, 2012 Jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: from-the-library, the-garden, wishlist, art-coach, essays

Though I technically haven't finished this, it's already among my favorite books. I read the first two essays almost every morning on the bus to work and get something else out of them each time. Wendell Berry says all the things I need to hear about how we should be on the planet, and what we need to connect to our place, the planet, and especially each other.

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Jan 15, 2009 Scott rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009

Wendell Berry is my new hero. Most people don't know who this guy is, so I tell them he is like the wise old man of the mountain or something. He writes about rural life, agriculture and culture, but from a farm in Kentucky where he has spent most of his life. He is detached enough to be able to speak prophetically back into culture. And by that I mean he can speak some truth and perspective into our blind areas.

This book is a mix of some really great essays and some others that aren't so releva...more

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Dec 28, 2010 Dale rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read this book after hearing a radio program in which one of the guests said "Wendell Berry is one of the most influential living American writers"--and I'd never heard of him.

This collection of essays and reflections cement the careful observations and musings of a man who loves nature and farming, a man who is a friend of the Earth and who enjoys the kinship of those who labor in agriculture or fight to protect the land. Whether describing how soil is formed in an old bucket, analyzing poetr...more

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Aug 13, 2012 Kerri rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Anyone who daydreams about starting their own cul-de-sac-opia.

Recommended to Kerri by: Matt

Shelves: true-stories

Where has Berry been all my life? I suppose the answer to that question can be as simply stated as the bulk of Berry's interesting and impassioned essays: on his farm in rural Kentucky.

What are people for, then? They're for thoughtful discourse, intelligent exposition, ecological stewardship, sleeping under the stars, responsible eating, true-pleasure-seeking, words penned after long traipses underneath tall trees.

[Four stars for a(lliteration, and) consistent community-centric collection, and...more

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May 11, 2010 Joseph rated it 4 of 5 stars

What can I say - classic Wendell Berry. This collection of essays deals as much with personal relationships as it does with agriculture, making it an excellent little toilet reader for the Wendell Berry fan. Here, his essays are sharply critical of the American economy and the way we treat each other and creation. As always, Berry presents himself as one who can't be reduced and pigeonholed into any label other than his own.

Incidentally, this also includes his infamous essay on why he won't buy...more

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Jun 10, 2010 Erica rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: agriculture, environmental

In the first half, we have the farmer of letters as literary critic, celebrating the values of honesty and community found in famous and not-so-famous works of literature. In the second, Berry throws it down in a scathing look at industrial society, especially its effects on rural communities. Don't pass him off as a curmudgeon though. Why, even MIT inventors are now praising the superior virtues of simple technologies produced before the industrial revolution came around:
http://www.newyorker.co ...more

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Jun 21, 2012 Bob rated it 5 of 5 stars

I can't get enough Wendell Berry essays. This is a great collection that shows a slightly different side of Berry in the first half (literary criticism) and what I think of as "Classic Berry" in the second half (essays on farming, food, culture, economy, and God). Note that many of the essays in part 3 are the same as you'll find in "The Unsettling of America" but, honestly, they're so good that I didn't mind reading them a second time.

The back of the book says that Berry is THE American prophet...more

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Jun 09, 2012 John rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Wendell Berry has a perspective, and it contrasts with much of what passes today as common sense or regular living. Berry, a farmer, novelist, and poet, cares deeply for the land. He holds a long view, not looking to increase the land's productivity for short-term gain, but to care for it in a proper fashion, one borne out of generations of experience, leaving both land and the creatures that live upon it healthier than they would otherwise be. Berry's concern for the environment (from Kentucky,...more

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Jan 04, 2013 CJ rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: simplicity

This was another of the books my husband got for me from the library for Christmas. I put it on my list about a year ago when I was reading back through the materials from Northwest Earth Institute's Voluntary Simplicity discussion course, which my husband and I took more than a decade ago. Two of Wendell Berry's essays were reprinted in those materials, one---"The Pleasures of Eating" from What Are People For?---made such an impression on me, I decided to pick up the book. And am I glad I did.

B...more This was another of the books my husband got for me from the library for Christmas. I put it on my list about a year ago when I was reading back through the materials from Northwest Earth Institute's Voluntary Simplicity discussion course, which my husband and I took more than a decade ago. Two of Wendell Berry's essays were reprinted in those materials, one---"The Pleasures of Eating" from What Are People For?---made such an impression on me, I decided to pick up the book. And am I glad I did.

Berry's essays include book reviews, poetry commentary, and personal essays of the kind that, in 20 years' time, would appear on blogs in much simpler form and cut down to <800 words, most likely. Their tone is conversational and their insights simple and relatable. In fact, I was impressed by the sense of conversation that pervades the pieces. Writing for print media at a time when internet was in its infancy, Berry communicates with his readers and other authors, both contemporaries and those throughout history, in a way similar to that to which I strive in my blogging. Like a good conversation, the essays meander through literary and historical citations, personal anecdotes, and assertions of strong personal opinions; I found it a pleasure to follow the trails he blazed.

The topics of the essays vary, but certain themes come up again and again. One theme is working in harmony with nature. Berry offers examples from his own experiences as a farmer, those of farmers he's known and those of the wider community of farmers throughout history, like Nate Shaw, the subject of "A Remarkable Man," as well as biblical support for the practice of moving with the rhythms of nature rather than trying to subdue it. This theme also shows up in his suggestion that we become knowledgable about and active in the process by which food travels to our plates, which includes eating locally, an idea that I find surprising from essays written in the late 1980's. This idea of local eating comes up in "The Pleasure of Eating," and is one of the rare instances when Berry actually offers possible solutions; mostly he just asks really good questions.

The theme of local action is another that runs through his essays. Berry supports local eating, yes, but he also posits the idea that family farms are failing in our country because our society devalues the work that is done in the places where we live. He writes about the disconnection many of us have with our communities and even our families, a phenomenon he attributes to the fact that we are so dependent on careers that we feel we must be willing to relocate far from our home communities, breaking ties with family and friends each time we do (this one hit home for me). "Living is a communal act," he writes, "whether or not its communality is acknowledged." The entire culture, Berry suggests, is oriented towards centralization, pulling us away from the connections we build with those near us in favor of more diluted connections with those over a broad geography. And this was well before Facebook.

Berry does a little of the nostalgic "back in my day" musing, but it's not gratuitous or overbearing. He points out that in the time of family farms (actually before his day), people would visit with each other in the evening after supper. They'd just drop by and talk or play music or tell stories in the time-honored tradition of building community memory through storytelling. They would create their own entertainment while today people expect their entertainment to be delivered to them through the television or the internet. Instead of connecting in person with those near us, we hole up in our homes and connect with those geographically distant from us (or with those who are fictional), and we're losing not only that connection to local community, but also the stories and memory that make up a community.

Berry worries that we have adopted a societal idea of progress that is ultimately destructive to our society itself. Throughout his essays, Berry seems to be wrestling with his obvious optimism that change is possible and his deep anger at how blindly we are driving society towards dissolution and self-centeredness. Our economy is based on waste, he says, an idea that others have suggested in their criticism of the way in which GDP is calculated. For example, if I stay at home with my children, do the work of keeping a home, keep a garden, and cook our meals at home, I'm considered less valuable to the economy than if I were to have a full-time career and outsource child-rearing, housekeeping, and food production and preparation. I don't hear many people touting divorce as a practice for improving the health of families and communities, but with the way GDP is calculated, our economy looks healthier if people get divorced because they're spending so much on attorneys and breaking one household into two. But this waste isn't just something dictated from on high. Each of us plays a part in driving this wasteful economy. "Our waste problem," Berry asserts, "...is the fault of an economy that is wasteful from top to bottom---a symbiosis of an unlimited greed at the top and a lazy, passive, and self-indulgent consumptiveness at the bottom---and all of us are involved in it." We are each part of the problem, himself included, and we each must be ready to change as individuals in order to effect broader change. "The possibility of change," Berry writes, "depends on the existence of people who have the power to change."

Many of his essays seem to be speaking directly to me, and not just in an abstract, preaching-to-the-choir way. He writes in one essay about his experience as a Stegner Fellow at Stanford in the late 1950's. I once applied for a Stegner Fellowship. I'm a little embarrassed to admit this because at the time I didn't fully comprehend the history of the fellowship and the boatloads of Really Big Writers who've been Stegner Fellows. I just thought it was an awesome program and, even better, I could bike to it from where we were living at the time. I didn't get the fellowship, naturally, but I don't know...somehow reading Berry's essay about it helped me feel less silly for taking the chance on applying. Not because he made the fellowship sound any less awesome---quite the contrary. More I think it was just the fact that here was this writer-and-farmer from Kentucky, an unassuming fellow and a working man, someone with values similar to mine who's writing about subjects with which I'm grappling in my own life; if he was a Stegner Fellow, then it's not so crazy that I could have been, too, had I been able to convey that I was committed to improving my skill as a writer and that I would be a valuable addition to that year's fellowship class, which I wasn't able to do because I wasn't either of those things at the time, something I've realized over the years.

The essay entitled "Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer" and its follow-up essay, "Feminism, the Body, and the Machine," spoke to me as well. I have a computer, but I am staunchly opposed to owning a smart phone for many of the reasons Berry lists, not the least of which is this: "I should ask, in the first place, whether or not I wish to purchase a solution to a problem that I do not have." Berry notes the unintended consequences of the rapid and widespread adoption of the automobile, and he just advises caution before blindly adopting any new technology. I am very much in favor of caution.

So, I love these essays because they're satisfyingly complex, they express strong opinions in a respectful way, they echo many of the things I say to myself (and other people within earshot), and they are written in a style which I long to emulate, but I also love them because Berry's style is friendly and, at times, surprisingly funny. He wrote "Feminism, the Body, and the Machine" in response to some very heated reader replies to his "Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer." He is tallying his supporters and detractors from among the responses and comes to one that would fall into the latter category. He quotes the letter and then remarks, "I like this retort so well that I am tempted to count it a favorable response, raising the total to four." I laughed out loud at that. But then, I like public radio a lot, too.

I could keep writing and writing (and writing) about this book, but I'll stop myself here with a quote from "Healing," one of the poem-like essays from Part I of the book, which speaks to what I hope to experience each time I return from seeking solitude:

True solitude is found in the wild places, where one is without human obligation.

One's inner voices become audible. One feels the attraction of one's most intimate sources.

In consequence, one responds more clearly to other lives. The more coherent one becomes within oneself as a creature, the more fully one enters into the communion of all creatures.

One returns from solitude laden with the gifts of circumstance.

(less)

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Aug 09, 2011 Martin Box rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is my second time through this one more or less. The man preaches quite a beautiful gospel about his attempt to relocalize himself and live what good old Thoreau would call the simple life. Both "In Defense of Edward Abbey" and "Why I am not going to buy a computer" stood out to me. The former lays down Mr. Berry's thoughts on the enigma, Edward Abbey. The man reflects Berry's own desire to create the independent individual which seems to be gradually disappearing in this country. Abbey ref...more

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Oct 24, 2010 Longfellow rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: five-stars

This is the first and only book of Berry essays I have read from beginning to end. Still, without hesitation I announce this is the one book of Berry essays any Berry student MUST read. Go ahead. Ask me a question on any topic and I think I have a chance of giving a Berry-like answer. Here's why: What Are People For? ranges from poetry to literary criticism to essays on agriculture, economics, and technology, and yet the beauty of it is that each topic is informed by the same core values; I feel...more

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Oct 29, 2008 Andrew rated it 4 of 5 stars

What's not to love about Wendell? The man can write an essay. These topics may not be for everyone, and certainly Berry is writing from a place that no doubt seems alien to most postmodern people (i.e., agrarian, traditional, Luddite), but it is precisely because of that that he is so interesting and important. In an essay such as "Feminism, the Body, and the Machine" he quite simply hacks up our bourgeois sensibilities and outlines an even more radical alignment of our relationships between the...more

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Jun 01, 2011 Steve rated it 5 of 5 stars

Several great essays here. Style and Grace, Writer and Region, The Responsibility of the Poet, What are People for?, Economy and Pleasure, The Pleasures of Eating, Word and Flesh, and Nature as Measure all stood out for me. It is tough for me to write a lot on each, but corporately this being the first book of his essays that I worked through, it was seminal in my grasping his view coming over from all of his fiction which I had read prior to reading this (which included almost all of his fictio...more

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Apr 07, 2012 Catherine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, gender, sustainability, food

A wonderful, somewhat eclectic sampling of some of Wendell Berry's essays, unified by a focus on community, pleasure, and opposition to enormous, profit-driven businesses. I particularly loved reading Berry's essay on why he will never buy a computer, the letters he received in response, and his rebuttal. A wonderful essay that asks us to reconsider what we really need to function - and function well - in life.

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Aug 04, 2011 Xiaomin Zu rated it 4 of 5 stars

I love part III of this book. Although most of the essays were written 20 years ago, the ideas there are very postmodern. He points out a way out of our modern self-destructive way of living. I could not appreciate most of his essays in part I & II. They are too heave and too religious for a non-Christian.

I am deeply shocked by his words that we are all part of the problem by being a consumer. and .

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Mar 27, 2010 Brent rated it 3 of 5 stars

Is our modern lifestyle sustainable or are we coming up due for some kind of societal breakdown in which technological civilization reverts to a more natural state? I don't know the answer to that question, but it is an important question to at least be aware of as opposed to going through life thinking that things will stay the way they are and just keep getting better. I don't think Wendell Berry is a prophet, but I also don't think he's a grumpy crumudgeon luddite. A lot of people will probab...more

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Jun 26, 2008 jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars

wb knows.

it took me a while to get into this collection. the first few essays were about people he admired. they were good but i was not enthralled...that happened a little bit later. i realize now that he was using these people as examples to build up to what i would consider the meat of the essays.

berry speaks of community, family and home/place. he writes about cultivating oneself vs. getting educated so you can move far away as fast as possible and contribute to the consumer rat race. he wri...more

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Jun 16, 2011 Dej rated it 5 of 5 stars

this is a phenomenal collection of well written commentary, beautiful poetry, protest, action, art, and knowledge of his place...."protest that endures, I think, is moved by a Hope far more modest than that of public success:namely the Hope of preserving qualities in one's own heart &spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence." reads excellently alongside mlk speeches.

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Jul 23, 2009 Lauren rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is the first book of Berry's that I have read. The essays are OK, but I don't think this is probably a good introduction to Berry. Most of the essays are book reviews or discussing other people - I am still going to look into other of his books and hopefully find something better.

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Aug 27, 2012 Dana rated it 4 of 5 stars

If you don't want to feel guilty for using your dishwasher, don't read this. If you like having the veil occasionally pulled off your sham life, then go ahead and read it. And then watch some TV to get your mind off of it.

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Oct 20, 2011 Andrew Boyle rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: essays, environment, culture

My first excursion with Wendell Berry. A truly exceptional collection of essays, Berry is challenging and incredibly insightful into the ways we as human beings relate to food, land, community, place, and culture.

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Sep 04, 2011 Joseph rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: political-science

Reminded me a bit of Paul Harvey. I was going with Three Stars until I his bit on the environment and the way "we" live-- our treatment of animals, trash, factory farming, and the destructiveness of our type of capitalism.

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Jul 25, 2009 Josh Barkey rated it 5 of 5 stars

A collection of essays. A series of meditations. An alternate path. I LOVE this guy, even as I resent him for revealing to me my complicity in this deranged culture, and the necessity in my life for real, deep change.

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May 09, 2009 Preston Vanderslice is currently reading it

A book of essays that's never too far from my reach. Some of my favorites so far are 'A Remarkable Man,' 'Feminism, The Body, and The Machine,' and 'Word and Flesh.'

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Apr 29, 2009 Alisa rated it 4 of 5 stars

The book has a mix of fascinating/convicting essays, and some obscure/forgettable ones. But overall very worth reading and picking through. As an urbanite interested in learning to live more simply, sustainably, and locally, I found this book helpful. He provides motivating answers to the the "why bother?" question for that kind of lifestyle.

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Feb 11, 2009 John rated it 4 of 5 stars

This essay compilation provides a great introduction to Wendell Berry's social criticism. My favorite selections include the review of "All God's Dangers" and the title essay.

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Jan 27, 2009 Joel rated it 5 of 5 stars

The essay "Healing" towards the beginning of this collection of essays is worth a stack of books. Read it.

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About Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry is a conservationist, farmer, essayist, novelist, professor of English and poet. He was born August 5, 1934 in Henry County, Kentucky where he now lives on a farm. The New York Times has called Berry the "prophet of rural America."

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The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture

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“I dislike the thought that some animal has been made miserable to feed me. If I am going to eat meat, I want it to be from an animal that has lived a pleasant, uncrowded life outdoors, on bountiful pasture, with good water nearby and trees for shade.” — 62 people liked it

“Eating is an agricultural act.” — 54 people liked it

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