Telling the Stories Right: Wendell Berry’s Imagination of Port William

by Jack R. Baker (Editor), Jeffrey Bilbro (Editor)

Wendell Berry thinks of himself as a storyteller. It’s somewhat ironic then that he is better known as an essayist, a poet, and an advocate for small farmers. The essays in this collection consider the many facets of Berry’s life and work, but they focus on his efforts as a novelist and story writer. Indeed, Berry had already published three novels before his seminal work of cultural criticism, The Unsettling of America, established him as an ardent defender of local communities and sustainable agriculture. And over the past fifty years, he has published eight novels and more than forty-eight short stories set in the imagined community of Port William. His exquisite rendering of this small Kentucky town challenges us to see the beauty of our own places and communities and to tend their health, threatened though it inevitably is. The twelve contributors to this collection approach Berry’s fiction from a variety of perspectives—literary studies, journalism, theology, history, songwriting—to shed light on its remarkable ability to make a good life imaginable and compelling. The first collection devoted to Berry’s fiction, this volume insists that any consideration of Berry’s work must begin with his stories.

Table of Contents
PART 1: NARRATIVE TRADITIONS

Re-membering the Past Rightly: The Ubi Sunt Tradition in Wendell Berry’s Fiction, by Jack R. Baker
Dreaming in Port William: Foreknowledge, Consolation, and Medieval Dream Vision Literature, by Ingrid Pierce
Called to Affection: Exploring the Ecology of Christian Vocation in Port William, by Kiara Jorgenson
Between the City and the Classroom: Stanford, Stegner, and the Class of ‘58, by Doug Sikkema
PART 2: BEAUTY’S INSTRUCTIONS

Andy Catlett’s Missing Hand: Making Do as Wounded Members, by Jeffrey Bilbro
The Gift of Good Death: Revising Nathan Coulter, by Ethan Mannon
Living Faithfully in the Debt of Love in Wendell Berry’s Port William, by Fritz Oehlschlaeger
Hiding in the Hedgerows: Wendell Berry’s Treatment of Marginal Characters, by Michael R. Stevens
PART 3: RESPONDING TO THE STORIES

Kentucky River Journal, by Eric Miller
“The End of All Our Exploring”: Homecoming and Creation in Remembering, by Gracy Olmstead
“I’ve Got to Get to My People”: Returning Home with Jayber Crow, byJake Meador
On Resurrection and Other Agrarian Matters: How the Barber of Port William Changed My Life, by Andrew Peterson
Endorsements and Reviews
“The next best thing to reading Berry is to read those who write about Berry’s writing. We should be extremely grateful that we now have this collection of wise investigations of Berry’s novels and short stories. These essays do what they were meant to do which is nothing less than celebrate Berry’s fertile imagination.” Stanley Hauerwas, Professor of Divinity and Law and Duke University.

“When I encounter readers, who share Wendell Berry’s concerns but are unfamiliar with his work, I urge them to begin with his fiction. One finds there, more fully arrayed than in his essays or poetry, the web of relationships connecting persons, place, and community. The weaving of that web, on the page and in the world, is the subject of the dozen studies in this book, a worthy guide to the storytelling art of an essential author.” Scott Sanders, author of Earth Works: Selected Essays.

Genres: Essays

224 pages, Paperback

Published March 23, 2018

Reviews

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent collection of a variety of essays focused on the fiction and thought of Wendell Berry. I enjoyed every contribution, which is a something pretty unique in the world of scholarly compilations.
Broken into 3 sections ("Narrative Traditions," "Beauty's Instructions," and "Responding to the Stories"), here is a list of the essays.

Part 1
Jack Baker--Remembering the Past Rightly
Ingrid Pierce--Dreaming in Port William
Kiara Jorgenson--Called to Affection
Doug Sikkema--Between the City and the Classroom

Part 2
Jeffrey Bilbro--Andy Catlett’s Missing Hand
Ethan Mannon--The Gift of Good Death
Fritz Oehlschlaeger--Living Faithfully in the Debt of Love in Wendell Berry’s Port William
Michael R. Stevens--Hiding in the Hedgerows

Part 3
Eric Miller--Kentucky River Journal
Gracy Olmstead--“The End of All Our Exploring”
Jake Meador--I’ve Got To Get To My People
Andrew Peterson--On Resurrection and Other Agrarian Matters

With him being the person who introduced me (and many others) to Wendell Berry, it was fun to read Andrew Peterson's recount of his introduction to Berry's work and the impact it had upon him.
"Telling the Stories Right" is a significant addition to the (thankfully) growing body of scholarship on Wendell Berry's fiction. I am starting it again and may add to this review upon another read. Or I might just read the essays again...or Jayber Crow! :-D

[Gavin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite enjoyable, but putting the cart before the horse here as I have not read any of the Port William books, which now I have to do. Reading them should be an interesting exercise after getting some perspective into their characters along with Berry's life with Wallace Stegner's influence.

Plan on re-reading afterwards to see what I forgot and perhaps learned as well.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

The next best thing to new work by Wendell Berry may be new work by writers who have drunk deeply of Wendell Berry’s work. Readers of the Port William fiction will learn a lot from these twelve writers as they trace their own understandings of and connections to Berry’s tales.