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The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry
In a time when our relationship to the natural world is ruled by the violence and greed of unbridled consumerism, Wendell Berry speaks out in these prescient essays, drawn from his 50-year campaign on behalf of American lands and communities
"Mr. Berry's sentences and stories deliver a great payload of edifying entertainment, which I hungrily consume, but it is the bass note of morality thumping through his musical phrases that guides me with the most constant of hands upon my plow." —Nick Offerman, New York Times bestselling author of Paddle Your Own Canoe
"Read [Berry] with pencil in hand, make notes and hope that somehow our country and the world will soon come to see the truth that is told here." —The New York Times
"He is unlike anybody else writing today…" —Andrew Marr, New Statesman
"The rarest (and highest) of literary classes consist of that small group of authors who are absolutely inimitable… One of the half-dozen living American authors who belongs in this class is Wendell Berry." —Los Angeles Times
Wendell Berry began his life in post-war America as the old times and the last of the old-time people were dying out, and continues to this day in the old ways: a team of work horses and a pencil are his preferred working tools. The writings gathered in The World-Ending Fire are the unique product of a life spent farming the fields of rural Kentucky with mules and horses, and of the rich, intimate knowledge of the land cultivated by this work. These are essays written in defiance of the false call to progress and in defense of local landscapes, essays that celebrate our cultural heritage, our history, and our home.
With grace and conviction, he shows that we simply cannot afford to succumb to the mass-produced madness that drives our global economy—the natural world will not survive it.
Yet he also shares with us a vision of consolation and of hope. We may be locked in an uneven struggle, but we can and must begin to treat our land, our neighbors, and ourselves with respect and care. As Berry urges, we must abandon arrogance and stand in awe.
"Mr. Berry's sentences and stories deliver a great payload of edifying entertainment, which I hungrily consume, but it is the bass note of morality thumping through his musical phrases that guides me with the most constant of hands upon my plow." —Nick Offerman, New York Times bestselling author of Paddle Your Own Canoe
"Read [Berry] with pencil in hand, make notes and hope that somehow our country and the world will soon come to see the truth that is told here." —The New York Times
"He is unlike anybody else writing today…" —Andrew Marr, New Statesman
"The rarest (and highest) of literary classes consist of that small group of authors who are absolutely inimitable… One of the half-dozen living American authors who belongs in this class is Wendell Berry." —Los Angeles Times
Wendell Berry began his life in post-war America as the old times and the last of the old-time people were dying out, and continues to this day in the old ways: a team of work horses and a pencil are his preferred working tools. The writings gathered in The World-Ending Fire are the unique product of a life spent farming the fields of rural Kentucky with mules and horses, and of the rich, intimate knowledge of the land cultivated by this work. These are essays written in defiance of the false call to progress and in defense of local landscapes, essays that celebrate our cultural heritage, our history, and our home.
With grace and conviction, he shows that we simply cannot afford to succumb to the mass-produced madness that drives our global economy—the natural world will not survive it.
Yet he also shares with us a vision of consolation and of hope. We may be locked in an uneven struggle, but we can and must begin to treat our land, our neighbors, and ourselves with respect and care. As Berry urges, we must abandon arrogance and stand in awe.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2017
About the author
Wendell Berry
302 books3,735 followersWendell 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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Displaying 1 - 30 of 152 reviews
January 4, 2022
Audiobook-sync-with-ebook
Audio- 16 hours and 30 minutes
Narrated by Nick Offerman
With over 80 Wendell Berry books to choose from— (poetry, fiction, non-fiction, essays)….
I picked “The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry”…essays…(my first Berry book)…..
as a way to gain more understanding about Wendell Berry himself….
and engage my thoughts with the serious concerns of our environmental current issues.
Having read Jane Goodall’s book last year—
“The Book of Hope” ….(passionately loved it), —
in my mind, I thought this book might be a compatible bookend. It was!
Both writers are 87 years old.
Both writers are concerned with the importance of community, and with lessons we can learn from the natural world.
Wendell’s formula for a good life and a good community is pleasingly unoriginal
Slow down, pay attention, do good work, love your neighbors, love your place, stay in your place, settle for less.
Enjoy it more.
Farmer, poet, writer, philosopher …
This book is PACKED FILLED ….educational - intimate - thought- provoking — and engagingly brilliant.
Voices like Wendell Berry are desperately needed!!!
Recommended to all those who value breathing fresh air, drinking clean water, eating local wholesome-soil-rich delicious foods, respect for local farm work, agriculture, enjoy a few laughs, ‘think & pause’ solutions—-and enjoy true-life-nature stories.
Wendell calls himself a relic….yet their is nothing ‘relic’ about the environmental crisis we find ourselves in today.
Great Book….
Great returns for money spent on it.
Audio- 16 hours and 30 minutes
Narrated by Nick Offerman
With over 80 Wendell Berry books to choose from— (poetry, fiction, non-fiction, essays)….
I picked “The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry”…essays…(my first Berry book)…..
as a way to gain more understanding about Wendell Berry himself….
and engage my thoughts with the serious concerns of our environmental current issues.
Having read Jane Goodall’s book last year—
“The Book of Hope” ….(passionately loved it), —
in my mind, I thought this book might be a compatible bookend. It was!
Both writers are 87 years old.
Both writers are concerned with the importance of community, and with lessons we can learn from the natural world.
Wendell’s formula for a good life and a good community is pleasingly unoriginal
Slow down, pay attention, do good work, love your neighbors, love your place, stay in your place, settle for less.
Enjoy it more.
Farmer, poet, writer, philosopher …
This book is PACKED FILLED ….educational - intimate - thought- provoking — and engagingly brilliant.
Voices like Wendell Berry are desperately needed!!!
Recommended to all those who value breathing fresh air, drinking clean water, eating local wholesome-soil-rich delicious foods, respect for local farm work, agriculture, enjoy a few laughs, ‘think & pause’ solutions—-and enjoy true-life-nature stories.
Wendell calls himself a relic….yet their is nothing ‘relic’ about the environmental crisis we find ourselves in today.
Great Book….
Great returns for money spent on it.
March 14, 2019
It has taken me nearly a year to finish this book, and not because it is hard to get through: Berry actually has a very accessible writing style. No, it has taken me a while because his essays are so full of new (to me) ideas and unusual perspectives that I had to leave some time in between essays to let each of his messages sink in.
Berry is a poet, retired college professor, essayist, and environmentalist. On top of that, he is also a farmer. I knew him mainly as a poet, knew nothing about his farmer life, and was not particularly interested in it, either. Yet, the title of this essay collection drew my attention, and leafing through it I was struck by his eloquent, careful, almost mindful way of talking about the environment. I purchased the book on the spot.
Every since then, I have been reading the essays collected in this volume off and on. At the heart of all of them is a central message: we need to move away from large-scale, industrial living, and learn to live with the land again. That may sound old-fashioned, but Berry shows it is not only possible, but outright necessary. As he says himself (and I'm paraphrasing): how can we hope to do well "in the future" if we do badly in the present? (253).
His essays range from literal calls to action, to meditations on nature and farming, and short essays that read more like opinion pieces. I wasn't crazy about the literal calls to action (such as "The Way of Ignorance"), because I found them too "on the nose." They were at odds with the other pieces, in which he waxes philosophical and meditative without growing too abstract. These, I really loved, and luckily, they formed the bulk of the essays in this volume.
I didn't necessarily agree with everything Berry said. Sometimes, he seemed a bit too self-righteous for my tastes (see: "Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer") or downright old-fashioned (see: "Feminism, the Body, and the Machine"). Nonetheless, he writes in such a thoughtful way that even in those moments I felt myself staying open to his point of view, and hearing what he had to say. And in precisely those moments, he seemed to show me something that contradicts most of the things I believe in and stand for, and that I could actually get behind if I followed his train of thought. For example, in the previously mentioned "Feminism, the Body, and the Machine," he argues that industrialization has robbed many people, and especially women, of meaningful work.
Does that make you bristle? I know, I felt the same way.
But then he starts explaining what he means, and says the following (among other things):
"And what are we to say of the diversely skilled country housewife who now bores the same six holes day after day on an assembly line? What higher form of womanhood or humanity is she evolving toward?" (249)
That really made me think. And while I still believe there is such a thing as meaningful work (in fact, I think Berry doesn't dispute that either), I also accept his suggestion that the "country housewife" he speaks of might do very valuable work at home as well, and that this is not pointless. I appreciate those insights, gleaned precisely in the moments I got most annoyed.
Most of the time, though, I was already on the same page, and Berry didn't have to convince me. One of the first essays in the book, on living with the land, really getting to know the soil and the vegetation and farming with the seasons, was beautiful and sensible. I also really enjoyed his emphasis on the value of imagination, religion, and the arts, especially writing. He builds connections between these aspects of life and caring for the land that make sense, but that I hadn't necessarily considered. His essay "Two Minds" is probably the most perfect example of that, and one of my favorites in this collection. Like I said earlier - he is eloquent yet accessible.
My absolute favorite from this book, however, is the essay "Quantity versus Form." It is a short essay, in which he (implicitly) argues that a good life, a life well-lived, is a simple life in which you are at home in your local landscape, help others, and follow your calling. It is a life in which you are in full contact with everything (things, plants, people) around you (225). It is convincing and hard-hitting, and a welcome change from the barrage of articles on productivity. As Berry shows, productivity can also mean something else. Hence - quality versus form.
All in all, this book has been the single-most important influence in pushing me to live more sustainably. I am far from where I need to be, but I am growing vegetables on the balcony, drastically reducing my use of plastic packaging materials (only using them if there is literally nothing else I can wrap stuff in), taking only reusable bags to the store, and am learning a lot more about foraging and native flora. I know, it's next to nothing, but it's a start.
Or, as Berry writes, in an essay on literacy that fits in seamlessly with his talks on the environment:
"It is impractical only by the standards of quick profit and easy power. Longer perspective will show that it alone can preserve in us the possibility of an accurate judgment of ourselves, and the possibilities of correction and renewal. Without it, we are adrift in the present, in the wreckage of yesterday, in the nightmare of tomorrow" (299).
Berry is a poet, retired college professor, essayist, and environmentalist. On top of that, he is also a farmer. I knew him mainly as a poet, knew nothing about his farmer life, and was not particularly interested in it, either. Yet, the title of this essay collection drew my attention, and leafing through it I was struck by his eloquent, careful, almost mindful way of talking about the environment. I purchased the book on the spot.
Every since then, I have been reading the essays collected in this volume off and on. At the heart of all of them is a central message: we need to move away from large-scale, industrial living, and learn to live with the land again. That may sound old-fashioned, but Berry shows it is not only possible, but outright necessary. As he says himself (and I'm paraphrasing): how can we hope to do well "in the future" if we do badly in the present? (253).
His essays range from literal calls to action, to meditations on nature and farming, and short essays that read more like opinion pieces. I wasn't crazy about the literal calls to action (such as "The Way of Ignorance"), because I found them too "on the nose." They were at odds with the other pieces, in which he waxes philosophical and meditative without growing too abstract. These, I really loved, and luckily, they formed the bulk of the essays in this volume.
I didn't necessarily agree with everything Berry said. Sometimes, he seemed a bit too self-righteous for my tastes (see: "Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer") or downright old-fashioned (see: "Feminism, the Body, and the Machine"). Nonetheless, he writes in such a thoughtful way that even in those moments I felt myself staying open to his point of view, and hearing what he had to say. And in precisely those moments, he seemed to show me something that contradicts most of the things I believe in and stand for, and that I could actually get behind if I followed his train of thought. For example, in the previously mentioned "Feminism, the Body, and the Machine," he argues that industrialization has robbed many people, and especially women, of meaningful work.
Does that make you bristle? I know, I felt the same way.
But then he starts explaining what he means, and says the following (among other things):
"And what are we to say of the diversely skilled country housewife who now bores the same six holes day after day on an assembly line? What higher form of womanhood or humanity is she evolving toward?" (249)
That really made me think. And while I still believe there is such a thing as meaningful work (in fact, I think Berry doesn't dispute that either), I also accept his suggestion that the "country housewife" he speaks of might do very valuable work at home as well, and that this is not pointless. I appreciate those insights, gleaned precisely in the moments I got most annoyed.
Most of the time, though, I was already on the same page, and Berry didn't have to convince me. One of the first essays in the book, on living with the land, really getting to know the soil and the vegetation and farming with the seasons, was beautiful and sensible. I also really enjoyed his emphasis on the value of imagination, religion, and the arts, especially writing. He builds connections between these aspects of life and caring for the land that make sense, but that I hadn't necessarily considered. His essay "Two Minds" is probably the most perfect example of that, and one of my favorites in this collection. Like I said earlier - he is eloquent yet accessible.
My absolute favorite from this book, however, is the essay "Quantity versus Form." It is a short essay, in which he (implicitly) argues that a good life, a life well-lived, is a simple life in which you are at home in your local landscape, help others, and follow your calling. It is a life in which you are in full contact with everything (things, plants, people) around you (225). It is convincing and hard-hitting, and a welcome change from the barrage of articles on productivity. As Berry shows, productivity can also mean something else. Hence - quality versus form.
All in all, this book has been the single-most important influence in pushing me to live more sustainably. I am far from where I need to be, but I am growing vegetables on the balcony, drastically reducing my use of plastic packaging materials (only using them if there is literally nothing else I can wrap stuff in), taking only reusable bags to the store, and am learning a lot more about foraging and native flora. I know, it's next to nothing, but it's a start.
Or, as Berry writes, in an essay on literacy that fits in seamlessly with his talks on the environment:
"It is impractical only by the standards of quick profit and easy power. Longer perspective will show that it alone can preserve in us the possibility of an accurate judgment of ourselves, and the possibilities of correction and renewal. Without it, we are adrift in the present, in the wreckage of yesterday, in the nightmare of tomorrow" (299).
February 10, 2020
This was a tough one for me. I don't want to be overly critical or harsh but two aspects of reading Wendell Berry's works came to me: he is too conservative for my taste and many of his arguments have giant holes that a beginning philosophy student could manage easily. And what sucks about that, is I generally agree with what he has to say about the environment, American capitalism, the importance of conservation, and living a slower lifestyle. But his constant drubbing of "scientists" and "academia" and the "government" is a tired, old argument made by folksy individuals who are unable to see or appreciate the nuances in life. To be honest, I couldn't finish a few of the articles as it just came off as a rural vs. the world (us vs. them) mentality, which drives me nuts. He even admits that he doesn't have the solutions. Yikes! Anybody can complain my friend, it's been all the rage since we evolved into Sapiens.
I did enjoy his writing style for most of the articles. I especially liked his take on the agrarian lifestyle and his life growing up in Kentucky. Although I have not read his fiction works, I bet they are pretty good if they include the rural life in them. His anti-industrialist/anti-American capitalism stances are astute. He realizes it's just another form of colonialism and that it is completely illogical to think a system that depends on infinite growth can survive in a world with finite resources. In essence, we are killing ourselves with the very thing we are told will save us.
Unfortunately, Berry falls short on numerous topics, discussions, and arguments. His religious attitude takes the top spot for me. Any argument using God falls flat and is meaningless. He gives perfunctory acknowledgement that all this land was taken from indigenous peoples and then inserts God. That, my friend, is what colonialists did. He refuses to put blame on the rural people themselves. Who voted for the politicians that think everything is about money and competition and told you to get big or get out? Who keeps voting for those same politicians to this day!? Come on man. He thinks people should be smarter but thinks the education system is terrible. He wants people to slow down and live a more agrarian lifestyle, but it would be impossible to have 350 million people doing that and still lead the world. He derides science way too much for somebody who needs to use it for his lifestyle. I could go on.
In the end, I think Wendell Berry is just another confused human being living in the strangest of times and is having a hard time coming to terms with it and expressing himself clearly. I don't fault him too much. After all, we are just human beings trying to do our best in the circumstances given to us. And as those circumstances continue to get worse with time, it will be interesting to see how people like Wendell Berry react.
I did enjoy his writing style for most of the articles. I especially liked his take on the agrarian lifestyle and his life growing up in Kentucky. Although I have not read his fiction works, I bet they are pretty good if they include the rural life in them. His anti-industrialist/anti-American capitalism stances are astute. He realizes it's just another form of colonialism and that it is completely illogical to think a system that depends on infinite growth can survive in a world with finite resources. In essence, we are killing ourselves with the very thing we are told will save us.
Unfortunately, Berry falls short on numerous topics, discussions, and arguments. His religious attitude takes the top spot for me. Any argument using God falls flat and is meaningless. He gives perfunctory acknowledgement that all this land was taken from indigenous peoples and then inserts God. That, my friend, is what colonialists did. He refuses to put blame on the rural people themselves. Who voted for the politicians that think everything is about money and competition and told you to get big or get out? Who keeps voting for those same politicians to this day!? Come on man. He thinks people should be smarter but thinks the education system is terrible. He wants people to slow down and live a more agrarian lifestyle, but it would be impossible to have 350 million people doing that and still lead the world. He derides science way too much for somebody who needs to use it for his lifestyle. I could go on.
In the end, I think Wendell Berry is just another confused human being living in the strangest of times and is having a hard time coming to terms with it and expressing himself clearly. I don't fault him too much. After all, we are just human beings trying to do our best in the circumstances given to us. And as those circumstances continue to get worse with time, it will be interesting to see how people like Wendell Berry react.
March 24, 2017
'The World-Ending Fire' by Wendell Berry (selected and introduced by Paul Kingsnorth)
3.5 stars/ 7 out of 10
I have read some previous articles by Wendell Berry, and also have come across several references to him, so I was interested in reading this book.
There are more than thirty articles in 'The World-Ending Fire', written by Berry over a period of more than five decades. In my opinion this is more of a book to dip into, than to read from cover to cover. The articles are a mixed bunch, the majority of them linking to Berry, and to his life in Kentucky as a farmer, a writer, and a thinker.
The most interesting article for me was 'Writer and Region', especially the section about Huckleberry Finn. Several of the other articles were also very interesting eg 'Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer', where I also enjoyed reading the responses to the points that Berry had made in this article.
Kingsnorth writes in the introduction about Berry's 'questing thoughtfulness'. I think this phrase is a good summing-up of both the man himself, and the approach articulated in the articles in this volume.
Thank you to Penguin Books (UK) and to NetGalley for an ARC.
November 1, 2021
“Every man is followed by a shadow which is his death – dark, featureless, and mute. And for every man there is a place where his shadow is clarified and is made his reflection, where his face is mirrored in the ground. He sees his source and his destiny, and they are acceptable to him. He becomes a follower of what pursued him. What hounded his track becomes his companion.”
–from the essay A Native Hill (1968)
–from the essay A Native Hill (1968)
August 6, 2018
So happy to have read these essays from a fellow nature and farm loving Luddite. A bit ponderous in parts but so worth it. Wendell Berry is my new hero.
July 19, 2022
I knew when I first picked up this book that there was only a 5% chance that I would rate it anything other than 5 stars. That being said Wendell Berry’s essays are amazing, if you haven’t read any yet I highly recommend you do as soon as possible.
December 28, 2020
Perhaps Wendell Berry should be required reading at the cusp between two years, that period when we are reflecting on the course of our lives, deciding how the next year may be better. That pause is much needed this year. Berry suggests that we, "Slow down. Pay attention. Do good work. Love your neighbours. Love your place. Stay in your place. Settle for less, enjoy it more" (Paul Kingsworth, p. x). That's not a bad creed to live by.
Berry's goal is larger that this. He does not just ask us to slow down but to live so there is an Earth for our children and grandchildren. Rather than asking, "Is it fast? Is it powerful? Is it a labor saver? How many workers will it replace?" he suggests we should ask, "Can we (and our children) afford it? Is it fitting to our real needs? Is it becoming to us? Is it unhealthy or ugly?" (p. 169). It is for questions like these – as well as his answers – that we should read Berry.
I am a tree hugger, so Berry's questions and answers are compelling – even though I fall far short of the life that Berry imagines for me. I am writing this review using a computer to post on the Internet, having read his essays on my Kindle. He, however, observes: "How could I write conscientiously against the rape of nature if I were, in the act of writing, implicated in the rape [by using a computer]? (p. 234). Berry asks us to think about how we want to live and what sort of world we plan on leaving our children.
That one Holstein cow should produce 50,000 pounds of milk in a year may appear to be marvelous – a miracle of modern science. But what if her productivity is dependent upon the consumption of a huge amount of grain (about a bushel a day), and therefore upon the availability of cheap petroleum? What if she is too valuable (and too delicate) to be allowed outdoors in the rain? What if the proliferation of her kind will again drastically reduce the number of dairy farms and farmers? Or, to use a more obvious example, can we afford a bushel of grain at a cost of five to twenty bushels of topsoil lost to erosion? (p. 171)
Berry does not hold us blameless. We are the problem and can be the solution, as he notes in this quotation from Confucius:
The men of old wanting to clarify and diffuse throughout the empire that light which comes from looking straight into the heart and then acting, first set up good government in their own states; wanting good government in their states, they first established order in their own families; wanting order in the home, they first disciplined themselves; desiring self-discipline, they rectified their own hearts; and wanting to rectify their hearts, they sought precise verbal definitions of their inarticulate thoughts [the tones given off by the heart]; wishing to attain precise verbal definitions, they set to extend their knowledge to the utmost. (p. 329).
We should think broadly about the impact of our behaviors, but start small. We don't need to change the world, but in accepting responsibility for changing our corner of it, we begin to make a difference.
Berry's goal is larger that this. He does not just ask us to slow down but to live so there is an Earth for our children and grandchildren. Rather than asking, "Is it fast? Is it powerful? Is it a labor saver? How many workers will it replace?" he suggests we should ask, "Can we (and our children) afford it? Is it fitting to our real needs? Is it becoming to us? Is it unhealthy or ugly?" (p. 169). It is for questions like these – as well as his answers – that we should read Berry.
I am a tree hugger, so Berry's questions and answers are compelling – even though I fall far short of the life that Berry imagines for me. I am writing this review using a computer to post on the Internet, having read his essays on my Kindle. He, however, observes: "How could I write conscientiously against the rape of nature if I were, in the act of writing, implicated in the rape [by using a computer]? (p. 234). Berry asks us to think about how we want to live and what sort of world we plan on leaving our children.
That one Holstein cow should produce 50,000 pounds of milk in a year may appear to be marvelous – a miracle of modern science. But what if her productivity is dependent upon the consumption of a huge amount of grain (about a bushel a day), and therefore upon the availability of cheap petroleum? What if she is too valuable (and too delicate) to be allowed outdoors in the rain? What if the proliferation of her kind will again drastically reduce the number of dairy farms and farmers? Or, to use a more obvious example, can we afford a bushel of grain at a cost of five to twenty bushels of topsoil lost to erosion? (p. 171)
Berry does not hold us blameless. We are the problem and can be the solution, as he notes in this quotation from Confucius:
The men of old wanting to clarify and diffuse throughout the empire that light which comes from looking straight into the heart and then acting, first set up good government in their own states; wanting good government in their states, they first established order in their own families; wanting order in the home, they first disciplined themselves; desiring self-discipline, they rectified their own hearts; and wanting to rectify their hearts, they sought precise verbal definitions of their inarticulate thoughts [the tones given off by the heart]; wishing to attain precise verbal definitions, they set to extend their knowledge to the utmost. (p. 329).
We should think broadly about the impact of our behaviors, but start small. We don't need to change the world, but in accepting responsibility for changing our corner of it, we begin to make a difference.
Read
June 30, 2019Can you agree with someone and still think they're being a cranky bastard? Berry's stated aim "is to imagine and live out a decent and preserving relationship with the earth," and I can think of no higher goal, but I wish these essays had built on one another instead of trying to convince me of the same basic precepts from beginning to end. Yes, industrial capitalism sucks ass! But in at least some of the essays I wish he'd get out of the abstract and (literally) into the weeds: I wanted to see the joy he gets from farming, hear about the planting and the calving, the hope and the mystery of it. Perhaps I'm not the right audience for his work, because I already agree with him on the same thesis he's had from the 1960s-2010s: that nothing flourishes unless the land does, and that corporatism and unchecked growth can never lead to a whole and sustainable world.
I do love how Berry articulates the absurdity of limitless capitalism by natural standards: there's a moment in "Faustian Economics" that resonated with me, where he says that the industrial obsession with "limitlessness" has obscured our ability to see resources as "inexhaustible." A forest, for example, or a small farm, may not be able to produce an unlimited amount of timber or food at any one time, but when kept in good health it can keep on producing its finite amount forever. The world was able to nourish and sustain humans for millennia, and now, because of how we've exploited it, we calculate our remaining time in decades, maybe centuries. Was it worth it, to trade in forever for all these metric tons of oil and plastic?
Ultimately I appreciate that reading Berry adds to and strengthens this anti-industrialist vocabulary of mine. He makes a great case for why modern corporate power is analogous to colonialist power. I love his attention to the local, the small, the particular. There's a feeling of agency to it—you, the individual, can help make a change.
I do love how Berry articulates the absurdity of limitless capitalism by natural standards: there's a moment in "Faustian Economics" that resonated with me, where he says that the industrial obsession with "limitlessness" has obscured our ability to see resources as "inexhaustible." A forest, for example, or a small farm, may not be able to produce an unlimited amount of timber or food at any one time, but when kept in good health it can keep on producing its finite amount forever. The world was able to nourish and sustain humans for millennia, and now, because of how we've exploited it, we calculate our remaining time in decades, maybe centuries. Was it worth it, to trade in forever for all these metric tons of oil and plastic?
Ultimately I appreciate that reading Berry adds to and strengthens this anti-industrialist vocabulary of mine. He makes a great case for why modern corporate power is analogous to colonialist power. I love his attention to the local, the small, the particular. There's a feeling of agency to it—you, the individual, can help make a change.
February 14, 2021
There's a lot to admire about Wendell Berry. I would have no idea how to be a subsistence farmer. But I hope to take from his example the importance of living the values you teach and doing what you can to make your corner better, no matter how small. God sees all.
September 15, 2022
Summary: A collection of the essays, mostly focused on local culture, the care of places, and the hubris of technological solutions.
The works of Wendell Berry span the gamut from poetry to novels and short stories to essays, in addition to many articles contributed to various magazines and journals. I have a number of volumes just with his essays. This recently published work draws from them, and I think, does capture the “essential” Wendell Berry as an essayist.
The collection opens with “A Native Hill” and “The Making of a Marginal Farm.” They capture one essential of Wendell Berry–the loving knowledge of and care for a place, as Berry tramps the ground once farmed by his family, and describes his own farm, its features and how it must be cared for to continue to be useful beyond his life. He describes the slow work of rebuilding topsoil, describing a bucket which has collected leaves, twigs, feathers, droppings, and other degree, which have slowly decayed over decades into a few inches of soil. He comes back again and again to the idea that we should give up looking for big solutions, or solutions for someone else to implement. The question is what does our place require to preserve its soil, its life, and thus to sustain us? What must we do to protect the air, the water, the soil, and feed ourselves.
He decries the global food economy in “The Total Economy” in which production and consumption are separated, where farm work becomes servitude done by unseen workers rather than the hard but noble work of feeding both oneself and others through the care for plants and animals living on the soil. He reminds us in “The Pleasures of Eating” of both the joy and act of self-defense of growing, preparing, and being mindful of the sources of our food.
He writes of his own choices to use simpler but sufficient technologies: a good team of horses and various plows, mowers, and other attachments. He gives his reasons for not buying a computer. Hand-written text, edited and typed up by his wife to be sent to his publisher is enough, and he questions how a computer can make it better. He offers standards for technological innovation that should give pause, including that it should be cheaper, as small in scale, do better work, use less energy, and be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence with the requisite tools.
The essay following “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer” addresses the firestorm that resulted when people found out about the work his wife did for him and made all kinds of invidious assumptions. He uses it as an occasion, one of several, to talk about domestic economies–of the home being the center of work for husband, wife, and children. In “Economy and Pleasure” he talks about how we have separated our work and our pleasure, recounting the storytelling among a crew during tobacco harvest time, or time with a grand-daughter, who drove a team for the first time, hauling a load of dirt to spread on a barn floor, and her response at the end, “Wendell, isn’t it fun?”
One of his repeated themes is that big tech and big government are not going to solve the problems they’ve created, because all of our challenges reduce to local challenges–this stream, this strip mine, this local community, this school system. He not only advocates for local culture but names the prejudice against country people and questions, what is the best way to farm in all of earth’s “fragile localities”
His penultimate essay, “The Future of Agriculture,” is the most recent in the collection, and in a pithy way sums up his essay-writing career. He offers seven things we must do that are straightforward common sense and concludes:
“This is a agenda that may be undertaken by ordinary citizens at any time, on their own initiative. In fact, it describes an effort already undertaken all over the world by many people. It defines also the expectation that citizens who by their gifts are exceptional will not shirk the most humble services” (p.333).
Berry’s words seem prophetic to me. The disruptions of the pandemic to global supply chains has awakened us to things like computer chip shortages. But a recent problem with infant formula brought to our attention how fraught is our system of producing and transporting food essentials. Climate-change induced droughts in food-producing areas as far flung as California and southern France and Spain should be alarm bells. A threatened rail strike as I write could be catastrophic.
So where do I begin? Perhaps it is to look at converting some of the lawn I mow to gardens. I recall a 15 by 15 garden at our former home and how much food we got out of it, how good it was, and how much fun we had ordering seeds and starting plants under lights. How did I get away from that? We’re coming up on the time to replace a roof as well as some electrical upgrades. Perhaps it is time for solar. Not sure it will pay back in our lives or change things in a big way. But that’s Mr. Berry’s point. It’s the small, local acts of care that extend even beyond our lives that are our “humble service.” Now, if only I can get off this computer…
The works of Wendell Berry span the gamut from poetry to novels and short stories to essays, in addition to many articles contributed to various magazines and journals. I have a number of volumes just with his essays. This recently published work draws from them, and I think, does capture the “essential” Wendell Berry as an essayist.
The collection opens with “A Native Hill” and “The Making of a Marginal Farm.” They capture one essential of Wendell Berry–the loving knowledge of and care for a place, as Berry tramps the ground once farmed by his family, and describes his own farm, its features and how it must be cared for to continue to be useful beyond his life. He describes the slow work of rebuilding topsoil, describing a bucket which has collected leaves, twigs, feathers, droppings, and other degree, which have slowly decayed over decades into a few inches of soil. He comes back again and again to the idea that we should give up looking for big solutions, or solutions for someone else to implement. The question is what does our place require to preserve its soil, its life, and thus to sustain us? What must we do to protect the air, the water, the soil, and feed ourselves.
He decries the global food economy in “The Total Economy” in which production and consumption are separated, where farm work becomes servitude done by unseen workers rather than the hard but noble work of feeding both oneself and others through the care for plants and animals living on the soil. He reminds us in “The Pleasures of Eating” of both the joy and act of self-defense of growing, preparing, and being mindful of the sources of our food.
He writes of his own choices to use simpler but sufficient technologies: a good team of horses and various plows, mowers, and other attachments. He gives his reasons for not buying a computer. Hand-written text, edited and typed up by his wife to be sent to his publisher is enough, and he questions how a computer can make it better. He offers standards for technological innovation that should give pause, including that it should be cheaper, as small in scale, do better work, use less energy, and be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence with the requisite tools.
The essay following “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer” addresses the firestorm that resulted when people found out about the work his wife did for him and made all kinds of invidious assumptions. He uses it as an occasion, one of several, to talk about domestic economies–of the home being the center of work for husband, wife, and children. In “Economy and Pleasure” he talks about how we have separated our work and our pleasure, recounting the storytelling among a crew during tobacco harvest time, or time with a grand-daughter, who drove a team for the first time, hauling a load of dirt to spread on a barn floor, and her response at the end, “Wendell, isn’t it fun?”
One of his repeated themes is that big tech and big government are not going to solve the problems they’ve created, because all of our challenges reduce to local challenges–this stream, this strip mine, this local community, this school system. He not only advocates for local culture but names the prejudice against country people and questions, what is the best way to farm in all of earth’s “fragile localities”
His penultimate essay, “The Future of Agriculture,” is the most recent in the collection, and in a pithy way sums up his essay-writing career. He offers seven things we must do that are straightforward common sense and concludes:
“This is a agenda that may be undertaken by ordinary citizens at any time, on their own initiative. In fact, it describes an effort already undertaken all over the world by many people. It defines also the expectation that citizens who by their gifts are exceptional will not shirk the most humble services” (p.333).
Berry’s words seem prophetic to me. The disruptions of the pandemic to global supply chains has awakened us to things like computer chip shortages. But a recent problem with infant formula brought to our attention how fraught is our system of producing and transporting food essentials. Climate-change induced droughts in food-producing areas as far flung as California and southern France and Spain should be alarm bells. A threatened rail strike as I write could be catastrophic.
So where do I begin? Perhaps it is to look at converting some of the lawn I mow to gardens. I recall a 15 by 15 garden at our former home and how much food we got out of it, how good it was, and how much fun we had ordering seeds and starting plants under lights. How did I get away from that? We’re coming up on the time to replace a roof as well as some electrical upgrades. Perhaps it is time for solar. Not sure it will pay back in our lives or change things in a big way. But that’s Mr. Berry’s point. It’s the small, local acts of care that extend even beyond our lives that are our “humble service.” Now, if only I can get off this computer…
June 13, 2022
It’s a slightly foreboding task. To do some sort of justice to another work of Wendell Berry. The man seems to slow us down, enlarge our world by moving closer to the smallness of our lives. For a book so loaded with the gravity and tragedy of our collective destruction of the world, it’s quite remarkable that Berry leaves me not depressed, but eager to inhabit my place, my life, my family, my community as a deliberately generous, growing, kinder, thriftier presence.
I realised as I completed this book that Berry has chosen to communicate primarily through compact forms - poetry, his Port William meta-short story collection and essays. He’s scattered nuggets of gold, yet there is an overarching sense of “Berry-ness” in my (albeit limited) experience of his work.
In this work, he gets to articulate rather than illustrate his ethos. It is that sense of a life lived locally, of all of us realising our survival involves a connection to the land, whether we live rurally or in a city, whether we think ourselves wholistic or wantonly consume. To live is to need the land. If we outsource that relationship to corporations we must live with the consequences of the corporate mindset, which is the industrialisation of farming, mining and logging for the maximisation of profit. Local knowledge, generational stewardship is the hallmark of the agrarian life and our economy has effectively exterminated rural communities in the pursuit of unsustainable profit.
All that may sound very propositional and alarmist. But Berry’s gift is his measured, humble tone of quiet wisdom that isn’t about winning arguments. He wants to win a future for the land, for family, tradition, a culture handed down, not concocted for fast profit. He’s poetic and tender. He writes of big things in beautiful ways and gently seems to land us back at home, ready to love and serve and work and think and grow where we are.
This series of essays may not be best read, as I did, in a single chunk. It is, after all, a collection of self-contained works. Berry may serve you better over a longer period, perhaps reading an essay or two a week and letting them brew.
But his sweeping treatment of education, agriculture, literature, corporatisation, industrialisation, locality and family have left me full of admiration for the mind and the penmanship of the man. He sees triumph in quietness, in handwriting, in a window sill herb garden, in noticing the rise of the river and the turning of the wheels of life. I’d expect, like me, you could well feel uniquely fuller, refreshed, challenged and inspired by spending time in the presence of Wendell Berry.
And I love that Berry’s Christian faith is an ingrained, uncontrived presence in his work. He never requires the compliance of his reader, is never glib, is honest and real and clear about his Christian convictions but doesn’t let them intrude into the flow of his thoughts without unapologetically explaining their relevance.
I defy you to finish these essays and not notice the birds singing the day home or the way the grass glows in the low sun. I want to listen well and talk less and lean into the moment in front of me in a way that may leave something good behind to be used, cared for, enjoyed and passed on by the next traveller to pass this way.
I realised as I completed this book that Berry has chosen to communicate primarily through compact forms - poetry, his Port William meta-short story collection and essays. He’s scattered nuggets of gold, yet there is an overarching sense of “Berry-ness” in my (albeit limited) experience of his work.
In this work, he gets to articulate rather than illustrate his ethos. It is that sense of a life lived locally, of all of us realising our survival involves a connection to the land, whether we live rurally or in a city, whether we think ourselves wholistic or wantonly consume. To live is to need the land. If we outsource that relationship to corporations we must live with the consequences of the corporate mindset, which is the industrialisation of farming, mining and logging for the maximisation of profit. Local knowledge, generational stewardship is the hallmark of the agrarian life and our economy has effectively exterminated rural communities in the pursuit of unsustainable profit.
All that may sound very propositional and alarmist. But Berry’s gift is his measured, humble tone of quiet wisdom that isn’t about winning arguments. He wants to win a future for the land, for family, tradition, a culture handed down, not concocted for fast profit. He’s poetic and tender. He writes of big things in beautiful ways and gently seems to land us back at home, ready to love and serve and work and think and grow where we are.
This series of essays may not be best read, as I did, in a single chunk. It is, after all, a collection of self-contained works. Berry may serve you better over a longer period, perhaps reading an essay or two a week and letting them brew.
But his sweeping treatment of education, agriculture, literature, corporatisation, industrialisation, locality and family have left me full of admiration for the mind and the penmanship of the man. He sees triumph in quietness, in handwriting, in a window sill herb garden, in noticing the rise of the river and the turning of the wheels of life. I’d expect, like me, you could well feel uniquely fuller, refreshed, challenged and inspired by spending time in the presence of Wendell Berry.
And I love that Berry’s Christian faith is an ingrained, uncontrived presence in his work. He never requires the compliance of his reader, is never glib, is honest and real and clear about his Christian convictions but doesn’t let them intrude into the flow of his thoughts without unapologetically explaining their relevance.
I defy you to finish these essays and not notice the birds singing the day home or the way the grass glows in the low sun. I want to listen well and talk less and lean into the moment in front of me in a way that may leave something good behind to be used, cared for, enjoyed and passed on by the next traveller to pass this way.
January 27, 2022
Not that anyone needs me to confirm this, but the wendell hype is real. my word.
September 25, 2021
Not so very long ago I purchased the Library of America’s two-volume What I Stand On, the collected essays of Wendell Berry.
It was a huge mistake. Wendell Berry is really something—should be required reading, in my view—but by god the collected essays is just too much Wendell Berry.
By contrast, this carefully-curated collection is exactly the right amount. It’s inarguable that Berry is a bit of a cantankerous old fellow (I’ve heard his viewpoints described as “man shouts at clouds”, a position which is paradoxically both hilariously accurate and distressingly wrong), but with the right context and frame of mind on the part of the reader his cantankerising is convincing, moving, humanising—nothing less than transcendental.
Berry states that his aim is to “imagine and live out a decent and preserving relationship with the earth”. He doesn’t need to note (it’s clear to anyone with a few lights on who’s read more than a page of two of this book) that anyone for whom that is not the highest aim is...
...I’m not sure Goodreads’ policy on rude words.
At any rate, The World-Ending Fire is a gospel for anyone seeking to follow the path Berry has blazed. The range of subjects which receive his excoriating, astonishingly consistent judgement is enormous and instructive. A few of the essays seem to be chosen for their autobiographical value, shifting focus, but the heart of the book is Berry’s decades-long campaign to understand and express the doing of his aim.
Across the best essays in the latter two-thirds of The World-Ending Fire Berry articulates an alternative vision of how to exist in the world, one that lives rather than merely pays lip service to that highest human goal of a “decent and preserving relationship with the earth”. Calmly, and with careful, methodical reasoning, Berry elucidates and then demolishes the perverse freedoms insisted upon by the economic-political left and right, exposes and excoriates the technocratic idiocy on which modern urban life is founded, and deconstructs the cancerous individualism that is at once so dear to industrial capitalist moneymaking and so corrosive to the world that industrial capitalism aims to grind into money.
What remains is a sketch—half hope, half memory—of a slow, hale way of living, a complex of responsibilities and affections, actions and consequences, that earns and guarantees its freedoms by enacting them. Berry observes that rights and freedoms are made, not given; that for all our civilisational obsession with rights and freedoms, in reality, we barely have the language to conceive of being free.
Some critics have latched onto Berry’s occasional invocation of God as “holes” in his thinking, an attack which demonstrates their intellectual impoverishment rather than a flaw in Berry’s arguments. Berry’s god—as it appears in his writing, I can’t comment on his personal theology—is closer akin to the rational logos of the ancient stoics rather than the Deus of traditional religiosity.
The greatest challenge in reading Berry is simply the time in which we now read him. As we gallop toward climactic tipping points and ecological collapses, spurred on by the brainlessness, myopia and self-satisfaction he warns us again, it’s difficult to call Berry’s insights timely; they were timely twenty years ago. Now they’re just topical. As inequality increases and The Economy penetrates ever further into lives and communities even the hope of a “decent and preserving life” heaves further out of reach. In 2021 The World-Ending Fire reads ever less like a challenge and a guidebook; ever more like an elegy.
It was a huge mistake. Wendell Berry is really something—should be required reading, in my view—but by god the collected essays is just too much Wendell Berry.
By contrast, this carefully-curated collection is exactly the right amount. It’s inarguable that Berry is a bit of a cantankerous old fellow (I’ve heard his viewpoints described as “man shouts at clouds”, a position which is paradoxically both hilariously accurate and distressingly wrong), but with the right context and frame of mind on the part of the reader his cantankerising is convincing, moving, humanising—nothing less than transcendental.
Berry states that his aim is to “imagine and live out a decent and preserving relationship with the earth”. He doesn’t need to note (it’s clear to anyone with a few lights on who’s read more than a page of two of this book) that anyone for whom that is not the highest aim is...
...I’m not sure Goodreads’ policy on rude words.
At any rate, The World-Ending Fire is a gospel for anyone seeking to follow the path Berry has blazed. The range of subjects which receive his excoriating, astonishingly consistent judgement is enormous and instructive. A few of the essays seem to be chosen for their autobiographical value, shifting focus, but the heart of the book is Berry’s decades-long campaign to understand and express the doing of his aim.
Across the best essays in the latter two-thirds of The World-Ending Fire Berry articulates an alternative vision of how to exist in the world, one that lives rather than merely pays lip service to that highest human goal of a “decent and preserving relationship with the earth”. Calmly, and with careful, methodical reasoning, Berry elucidates and then demolishes the perverse freedoms insisted upon by the economic-political left and right, exposes and excoriates the technocratic idiocy on which modern urban life is founded, and deconstructs the cancerous individualism that is at once so dear to industrial capitalist moneymaking and so corrosive to the world that industrial capitalism aims to grind into money.
What remains is a sketch—half hope, half memory—of a slow, hale way of living, a complex of responsibilities and affections, actions and consequences, that earns and guarantees its freedoms by enacting them. Berry observes that rights and freedoms are made, not given; that for all our civilisational obsession with rights and freedoms, in reality, we barely have the language to conceive of being free.
Some critics have latched onto Berry’s occasional invocation of God as “holes” in his thinking, an attack which demonstrates their intellectual impoverishment rather than a flaw in Berry’s arguments. Berry’s god—as it appears in his writing, I can’t comment on his personal theology—is closer akin to the rational logos of the ancient stoics rather than the Deus of traditional religiosity.
The greatest challenge in reading Berry is simply the time in which we now read him. As we gallop toward climactic tipping points and ecological collapses, spurred on by the brainlessness, myopia and self-satisfaction he warns us again, it’s difficult to call Berry’s insights timely; they were timely twenty years ago. Now they’re just topical. As inequality increases and The Economy penetrates ever further into lives and communities even the hope of a “decent and preserving life” heaves further out of reach. In 2021 The World-Ending Fire reads ever less like a challenge and a guidebook; ever more like an elegy.
October 17, 2018
If you’re willing to admit that the domain of the intellect is a world you’re willing to live in from time to time, then you’re waiting to discover the prose of Wendell Berry.
“No expert knows everything about every place, not even everything about any place.” (p. 98)
Berry is a novelist, a farmer, and a poet. He cares deeply about preserving our natural environment. He has been described as “a cultural critic.” He quietly conjures the world-ending fire.
You may say “Anybody can be a cultural critic, and everybody is a cultural critic.” Perhaps. Berry is several cuts above your typical wannabe cultural critic. He has insight, he is committed to intensely defending all the stuff that qualifies as “the right thing,” and he makes reading the King’s English a great joy (perhaps not less because he writes with a pen and a paper tablet, disdaining the computer).
The World-Ending Fire is full of literate ruminations on such topics as “Horse-Drawn Tools and the Doctrine of Labor Saving,” “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer,” “Nature as Measure,” and “Feminism, the Body, and the Machine.”
Wendell Berry says: “…but a man with a machine and inadequate culture…is a pestilence. He shakes more than he can hold.” (p. 101)
Wendell Berry encourages us to be shakers and holders.
p.s. I’ll mention that the verities and the points of view that Berry has reduced to writing remind me of the scribbling of H. L. Mencken. Berry does not have Mencken’s savage wit, and Mencken probably never had to wipe cow manure off his boots. However, these men encourage their readers to think hard about stuff that matters.
Read more of my book reviews and poems here:
www.richardsubber.com
“No expert knows everything about every place, not even everything about any place.” (p. 98)
Berry is a novelist, a farmer, and a poet. He cares deeply about preserving our natural environment. He has been described as “a cultural critic.” He quietly conjures the world-ending fire.
You may say “Anybody can be a cultural critic, and everybody is a cultural critic.” Perhaps. Berry is several cuts above your typical wannabe cultural critic. He has insight, he is committed to intensely defending all the stuff that qualifies as “the right thing,” and he makes reading the King’s English a great joy (perhaps not less because he writes with a pen and a paper tablet, disdaining the computer).
The World-Ending Fire is full of literate ruminations on such topics as “Horse-Drawn Tools and the Doctrine of Labor Saving,” “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer,” “Nature as Measure,” and “Feminism, the Body, and the Machine.”
Wendell Berry says: “…but a man with a machine and inadequate culture…is a pestilence. He shakes more than he can hold.” (p. 101)
Wendell Berry encourages us to be shakers and holders.
p.s. I’ll mention that the verities and the points of view that Berry has reduced to writing remind me of the scribbling of H. L. Mencken. Berry does not have Mencken’s savage wit, and Mencken probably never had to wipe cow manure off his boots. However, these men encourage their readers to think hard about stuff that matters.
Read more of my book reviews and poems here:
www.richardsubber.com
July 1, 2021
I am planning to read much more Wendell Berry, but it does not make me feel good about myself. I am not sure from reading this that any of us are at all good enough for this world. Or as Berry says, "We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. And this has been based on the even flimsier assumption that we could know with any certainty what was good even for us."
I am loving this, but it is a lot to absorb all at once--it's like poetry in the level of thought that goes into each line. Everything here (so far) is deeply nutritious food for thought and a clear, steady warning about waste of all kinds. Brilliant essay: "A Native Hill."
I am loving this, but it is a lot to absorb all at once--it's like poetry in the level of thought that goes into each line. Everything here (so far) is deeply nutritious food for thought and a clear, steady warning about waste of all kinds. Brilliant essay: "A Native Hill."
October 19, 2020
SHEESH. If you want someone who humbly approaches the effect that modernity and forward progress has on us as a people, I implore you to read Wendell.
Agricultural by practice, philosopher of life ethic in mindset, each essay is riddled with an environmentalism that would provoke most people to look and see the goodness nature has to offer. While those themes are found throughout, Berry takes liberty to move through politics, joy, divine proclamations, and what it is like to be ignorant or intelligent.
The essays are introduced and concluded with a more artistic narrative that provides a framework for the man behind the essays criticizing our culture. Awesome read.
Agricultural by practice, philosopher of life ethic in mindset, each essay is riddled with an environmentalism that would provoke most people to look and see the goodness nature has to offer. While those themes are found throughout, Berry takes liberty to move through politics, joy, divine proclamations, and what it is like to be ignorant or intelligent.
The essays are introduced and concluded with a more artistic narrative that provides a framework for the man behind the essays criticizing our culture. Awesome read.
January 4, 2022
I really appreciated most of this. The essays on home agriculture, canoeing, Mark Twain, and more all touched me deeply. Quantity vs. Form, a piece about quality of life at the end of a human lifetime, doesn’t leave me easily either. I would say to skip the essay on computers, though.
December 6, 2019
Didn’t realize how frustratingly conservative Berry could be at times, but there are moments to be gleaned from here
May 20, 2020
The theme of localized farming and care for nature can wear on the reader (there is a great deal of redundancy in this collection), but no one can deny the beauty of Berry's prose.
June 9, 2020
On so many pages it is like hearing the spirits and thoughts of my grandfathers, both nature lovers.
July 9, 2022
I've been a Nick Offerman fan since first seeing Parks & Recreation (which I admittedly was slow to pick up on). A number of years back, I read his book, Paddle Your Own Canoe, which I greatly enjoyed. In recounting his life and formative experiences, one consistent theme was his love for the writings of Wendall Barry. At the time, I made a mental note to eventually get around to reading some of his writing, but it took years before the opportunity presented itself. Fairly recently, Audible recommended this collection of Barry's essays, edited/curated by Paul Kingsnorth. And even better, read by the some source of my original interest: Mr. Nick Offerman.
I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience of reading/listening to these essays. I know Barry is perhaps most well known as a writer of fiction, but for me, this was a near perfect introduction. I felt as though I got to understand who this man is and what makes him tick. Overall, much of what he had to say resonated with me. Not that I have any serious interest in taking up farming or much of the agrarian lifestyle he long ago chose as his path. But his general attitude towards life, the pursuit of a satisfying occupation, and his deeply held and well argued thoughts on what constitutes right from wrong, all struck a deep chord with me.
Having said all that, there were parts of this that, while well written and clearly coming from a considered and purposeful position, somehow felt off or perhaps even wrong - as much as one can even take an objective position on these matters. But I am not currently feeling the inclination to labor at picking these apart. I'm not even sure I could reasonably do so if I had the gumption to try. So I'll leave that alone for now. Particularly given how much I truly loved this collection as a whole.
I'll wrap up with one final thought. There are parts of Barry's writing where he expresses an appreciation for the scientific world, but questions the frequently seen outcomes from the pursuit of this particular field of study. As I was considering this point of view, a persistent idea kept putting itself front and center in my mind: if only Barry and Carl Sagon, another writer and thinker whose work I love and who seemed to have a very similar knack for so clearly and articulately expressing ideas that left me with a feeling of some kind of fundamental truth... well, if only these two could have sat down, perhaps on the porch of Barry's farmhouse, and dig into their respective philosophical ramblings with each other. Were such a thing to have occurred and get recorded in some form, I expect it would have been an incredible treasure of immeasurable value.
I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience of reading/listening to these essays. I know Barry is perhaps most well known as a writer of fiction, but for me, this was a near perfect introduction. I felt as though I got to understand who this man is and what makes him tick. Overall, much of what he had to say resonated with me. Not that I have any serious interest in taking up farming or much of the agrarian lifestyle he long ago chose as his path. But his general attitude towards life, the pursuit of a satisfying occupation, and his deeply held and well argued thoughts on what constitutes right from wrong, all struck a deep chord with me.
Having said all that, there were parts of this that, while well written and clearly coming from a considered and purposeful position, somehow felt off or perhaps even wrong - as much as one can even take an objective position on these matters. But I am not currently feeling the inclination to labor at picking these apart. I'm not even sure I could reasonably do so if I had the gumption to try. So I'll leave that alone for now. Particularly given how much I truly loved this collection as a whole.
I'll wrap up with one final thought. There are parts of Barry's writing where he expresses an appreciation for the scientific world, but questions the frequently seen outcomes from the pursuit of this particular field of study. As I was considering this point of view, a persistent idea kept putting itself front and center in my mind: if only Barry and Carl Sagon, another writer and thinker whose work I love and who seemed to have a very similar knack for so clearly and articulately expressing ideas that left me with a feeling of some kind of fundamental truth... well, if only these two could have sat down, perhaps on the porch of Barry's farmhouse, and dig into their respective philosophical ramblings with each other. Were such a thing to have occurred and get recorded in some form, I expect it would have been an incredible treasure of immeasurable value.
January 3, 2022
I don't generally read essays for entertainment. But after this introduction to the essays of Wendell Berry, I may change my habits. I'm a fan.
I had heard of Berry for years, but this anthology of his work was an excellent introduction. Berry is disturbed and angry about the effects our wasteful, self-centered society has on the planet. He began his call for change in the 1960s while writing about his one-family farm in Kentucky.
After reading his book, I am regretful of my personal choices but hopeful that it's not too late to come to peace with my life. He's helped me see the world in a completely new way, and I am excited to raise a small garden and be more appreciative of what I have.
I had heard of Berry for years, but this anthology of his work was an excellent introduction. Berry is disturbed and angry about the effects our wasteful, self-centered society has on the planet. He began his call for change in the 1960s while writing about his one-family farm in Kentucky.
After reading his book, I am regretful of my personal choices but hopeful that it's not too late to come to peace with my life. He's helped me see the world in a completely new way, and I am excited to raise a small garden and be more appreciative of what I have.
March 3, 2022
I wasn’t even through two essays before I knew I had to buy it.
It’s a great selection of essays that address the world and our relationship to it.
It’s a great selection of essays that address the world and our relationship to it.
December 3, 2022
Life-changing.
February 14, 2023
I devoured these essays, that should have rightfully been savored, gluttonously. On another controversial and confessional note, my local bookstore didn’t have it and I couldn’t wait so I purchased this book from Amazon. So many vices.
If I read these essays any faster I’d be at complete risk of going OTF and buying a farm. While reading this over the past month — I pontificated to many about perhaps buying a farm. A coworker scoffed at this plan in disdain and tried to educate me, “You’d be subsistence farming!”
Exactly! That would be perfect.
The world will run out — a conspiratorial idea that isn’t a conspiracy. I can’t walk around this city without thinking no one in this urban grind is aware of such a world ending fire and their contribution to it.
“…the modern educated mind reveals itself also to be as superstitious a mind as ever has existed in the world. What could be more superstitious than the idea that money brings forth food?”
My copy is filled with tabbed off passages that I found myself reading aloud to anyone who would listen.
It’s harder to do no harm than it is to do a small good…
Wendell’s thoughts on sustainable living, family life, and good work resonate with something deeply human in me and I am challenged.
If I read these essays any faster I’d be at complete risk of going OTF and buying a farm. While reading this over the past month — I pontificated to many about perhaps buying a farm. A coworker scoffed at this plan in disdain and tried to educate me, “You’d be subsistence farming!”
Exactly! That would be perfect.
The world will run out — a conspiratorial idea that isn’t a conspiracy. I can’t walk around this city without thinking no one in this urban grind is aware of such a world ending fire and their contribution to it.
“…the modern educated mind reveals itself also to be as superstitious a mind as ever has existed in the world. What could be more superstitious than the idea that money brings forth food?”
My copy is filled with tabbed off passages that I found myself reading aloud to anyone who would listen.
It’s harder to do no harm than it is to do a small good…
Wendell’s thoughts on sustainable living, family life, and good work resonate with something deeply human in me and I am challenged.
February 4, 2023
A great read it’s really incredible that the stories in this book span 40 years. And in 40 years his beliefs and message don’t falter. You’d think he sat down and wrote it all at once.
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December 28, 2022Wish we lived in a world where everyone read Wendell Berry. His essays are powerful and grounding.
October 17, 2021
Over the years I've often come across Berry's quotes in other books I've read, but I've never read any of his essays. I thought they might be old fashioned and/or redundant... after all, he's been writing for half a century! Surely other authors must have pushed his ideas deeper and broader in the meantime.
I couldn't have been more wrong. Wendell Berry's insights from 1969 are as accurate today as they ever were and as thorough as any modern writer's. It took me a while to read the book since I had to put it down often to write down his quotes, ponder his wording and ideas before I continue reading.
Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book:
I couldn't have been more wrong. Wendell Berry's insights from 1969 are as accurate today as they ever were and as thorough as any modern writer's. It took me a while to read the book since I had to put it down often to write down his quotes, ponder his wording and ideas before I continue reading.
Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book:
We haven’t accepted – we can’t really believe – that the most characteristic product of our age of scientific miracles is junk, but that is so.
Were the catastrophes of Love Canal, Bhopal, Chernobyl, and the Exxon Valdez episodes of war or of peace? They were, in fact, peacetime acts of aggression, intentional to the extent that the risks were known and ignored.
We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. And this has been based on the even flimsier assumption that we could know with any certainty what was good even for us.
The time is past when it was enough merely to elect our officials. We will have to elect them and then go and watch them and keep our hands on them, the way the coal companies do.
I know that ‘technological progress’ can be defended, but I observe that the defenses are invariably quantitative – catalogs of statistics on the ownership of automobiles and television sets, for example, or on the increase of life expectancy – and I see that these statistics are always kept carefully apart from the related statistics of soil loss, pollution, social disintegration, and so forth. That is to say, there is never an effort to determine the net result of this progress. The voice of its defenders is not that of the responsible bookkeeper, but that of the propagandist or salesman.
My impression is that the great causes of peace and brotherhood are being served these days with increasing fanaticism, obsessiveness, self-righteousness, and anger. As if the aim is to turn the world into a sort of Protestant heaven, from which all nonmembers have been eliminated, and in which the principal satisfaction is to go around looking holy.
our destructiveness has not been, and it is not, inevitable. People who use that excuse are morally incompetent, they are cowardly, and they are lazy. Humans don’t have to live by destroying the sources of their life. People can change; they can learn to do better.
January 5, 2019
Disappointing. Over the years I’ve heard or read the praises of Wendell Berry, so I was looking forward to finally reading some of his work. This book is a collection of essays ranging from 1968 to 2006, presented in no particular order that I could discern. He was a writer and a farmer; he called himself an agrarian. I suppose he was also a bit of an activist. He wanted to save the Earth - or rather, he wanted to see the Earth saved (other than a lot of words, I’m not sure what action he took). In the 60’s and 70’s, maybe even the 80’s, some of his proposals might have seemed a bit radical - get closer to the land, grow your own food, eat local, get to know the people who raise the meat and vegetables that you eat. Common ideas today. I do agree with his ideas - to an extent. I’m not sure it’s feasible for everyone to give up their desk or factory jobs, buy a few acres and a team or work horses, and successfully grow everything they eat. Who would provide the electricity that he still uses, or build the cars that he admits he can’t get by without? Even he admits that he couldn’t have gotten by without the income from his writing. Is every parent really equipped to home school their children? But in essay after essay, he goes on and on and on about how everyone needs to stop what they’re doing and live their lives the way he does. His tone isn’t that of a dialogue, it’s a diatribe. He just made me angrier and angrier. I’m done with Wendell Berry.
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