The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry

by Wendell Berry, Norman Wirzba (Editor)

"Here is a human being speaking with calm and sanity out of the wilderness. We would do well to hear him."
—The Washington Post Book World

The Art of the Commonplace gathers twenty essays by Wendell Berry that offer an agrarian alternative to our dominant urban culture. Grouped around five themes—an agrarian critique of culture, agrarian fundamentals, agrarian economics, agrarian religion, and geobiography—these essays promote a clearly defined and compelling vision important to all people dissatisfied with the stress, anxiety, disease, and destructiveness of contemporary American culture.

Why is agriculture becoming culturally irrelevant, and at what cost? What are the forces of social disintegration and how might they be reversed? How might men and women live together in ways that benefit both? And, how does the corporate takeover of social institutions and economic practices contribute to the destruction of human and natural environments?

Through his staunch support of local economies, his defense of farming communities, and his call for family integrity, Berry emerges as the champion of responsibilities and priorities that serve the health, vitality and happiness of the whole community of creation.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Philosophy, Food, Nature, Environment, Agriculture

337 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

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."

Reviews

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh man, I am passionately devoted to Wendell Berry. I say too many things sarcastically, but I am dead serious. I can pinpoint the moment when I looked up and said "Oh, I am in love with this author's mind.I am becoming a fucking farmer and moving to Asheville and growing my own vegetables and reading Wendell everyday." That is what happened to me, people. He is right about everything. It sounds weird, but I am so serious. Wendell Berry is excellent and fantastic and phenomenal and makes me want to play tag in the hayfield and then pluck tomatoes from the vines and homeschool my children. Weird, but true.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's taken me a long time to read this book. I had to keep taking breaks, like grabbing a breath before diving back down into deep water to explore the bottom of the ocean. Wendell Berry writes beautiful, lyrical prose. He is insightful, troubling, wise, and--I use this word deliberately--holy. Mr. Berry's work as a poet informs his nonfiction; he carefully choses his words, and writes with both clarity and artistry. The Art of the Commonplace is a book of essays written over the past three or four decades. I did not read every essay; I could tell rather quickly which ones appealed to me and which ones didn't. Some of the more political essays--ones speaking specifically to issues at the time of their writing--were much less powerful than Berry's broad observations about the world he lives in, and how that world is reflected back to him by the world at large.

Generally speaking, Wendell Berry writes about the necessity of recognizing the connections between the land, the holistic health of the people on that land, and creation and maintenance of community. Place, for Mr. Berry, is everything. As an agrarian, he write with great passion about man's relationship to nature, and how mechanization and industrialization have fractured the bonds of people and place. I am not doing justice to the depth of Berry's observations about the failings and faults of our world today. Suffice it to say that, after reading some of his essays, I was ready to sell all my possessions, move to an isolated rural farm, homeschool my children, and walk bare-foot through the dew tipped fields for the rest of my life. He is convincing, in other words. He's telling the truth.

As I read, I kept being reminded of Bill McKibben's bookDeep Economy which also talked in great depth about what makes people happy, the need for community, and the counter-cultural reality that small and local is, in fact, better than large and national or global. The two men would find much to agree on, I suspect.

I could, literally, write two dozens quotes from this book. I will return to it, again and again, to find inspiration, insight, wisdom, and courage. Berry is remarkable. I am going to read much more of his work. This short passage will have to suffice for now:

“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. We have fulfilled the danger of this by making our personal pride and greed the standard of our behavior toward the world - to the incalculable disadvantage of the world and every living thing in it. And now, perhaps very close to too late, our great error has become clear. It is not only our own creativity - our own capacity for life - that is stifled by our arrogant assumption; the creation itself is stifled.
We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and to learn what is good for it. We must learn to cooperate in its processes, and to yield to its limits. But even more important, we must learn to acknowledge that the creation is full of mystery; we will never entirely understand it. We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe. We must recover the sense of the majesty of creation, and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For I do not doubt that it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.

(pg. 20, "A Native Hill")”

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 Art of the Commonplace is a collection of twenty-one essays written by Wendell Berry over an expanse of time. In the collection, he presents his philosophy regarding agrarian life vs. urban life, and sets a comprehensive case for why separation from the land leads the modern man into social, spiritual and economic desolation.

Within these pages, I found all those heart-warming, wholesome qualities that make Berry’s fictional books such a joy to read. The first section was a literal walk with him through his own farmland and into the woods that neighbor it, and I found that very enjoyable. His connection to the past, the present and nature herself is somehow very gratifying.

One of his greatest qualities is his ability to find the majestic in the mundane, the beauty in the everyday, the delight in the details. He is a sharp observer of life, and he knows how man ought to fit into the natural world and exactly where he has missed doing so. All the right questions are asked, and I believe we are further from the answers today than we were when this book was published. What is the cost of losing our farmland to conglomerates, allowing our families and communities to disintegrate, and leaving the bulk of our populations stranded in cities that are havens for stress and isolation?

The points being made here are both relevant and interesting, however, as I read one essay after another, I found them less captivating. Often the point was the same and expressed in much the same terms, so that it seemed repetitive and then almost evangelical. I agree with him on 95% of his points, and I knew if I had read each of these essays individually, as they were written and originally published, I would have probably enjoyed each and every one of them. It seemed to me the best way to read them was not as a collection, one after another, in too close succession, but spaced over time.

I have the utmost admiration for Wendell Berry, for who he is, how he lives, what he believes, and how he writes. There is no doubt, however, that he has my heart more soundly in hand when I am with him in Port William and the points are made subtly and soundly through the characters that I have come to love.

We would do well to listen to his voice, whether through his fiction or his non-fiction, for he is issuing a warning to us all that the life we are living is lacking something essential, something we were meant to have. The loss is ours.

[Kathryn Bashaar · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Wendell Berry, but maybe a whole book of his essays wasn't the right choice. He is very verbose, and this book got repetitive for me. Nevertheless, it was worth reading. Berry manages to be both extremely conservative and extremely radical at the same time. His cause is "agrarianism." He reminds us that we are part of an ecosystem and, as creatures who eat food, part of an agricultural system whether we know it or not. To say the least, he disapproves of our modern industrial agricultural system and is skeptical of the benefits of global trade. It is bad for our soil, air and water, bad for animals and bad for human beings. Berry advocates a return to small farms, for a couple of reasons. First, he contends that people who can't produce their own food aren't free. Second, small farmers tend to be better stewards of their land. Would standards of living fall under Berry's preferred system? Yes, definitely, and he has no problem with that. He thinks that people in developed nations radically over-consume, to the detriment of the planet and to the detriment of our own souls. We have lost sight, Berry contends, of the sources of true happiness: oneness with creation, membership in a community. Like the builders of the Tower of Babel, we have lost sight of our humanity and the limits that it imposes. Although a Christian himself who knows his Bible, Berry also takes Christianity to task for its notion of the duality of body and soul, earth and heaven, matter and spirit. He argues - and backs up his argument with quotes from the Bible - that matter and spirit are one, that the breath of God is in all things, and to desecrate Creation is to desecrate the Creator we claim to worship. Very thought-provoking.
Like my reviews? Check out my blog at http://www.kathrynbashaar.com/blog/
Author of The Saint's Mistress: http://www.synergebooks.com/ebook_sai...

[Esta Doutrich · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this slowly over most of the year. I don’t always agree with Berry, but he always leaves me with something to think about and mull over. His writing is substantive and bracing—something I crave these days. I’m glad this book was my companion this year.

[Jeff Shelnutt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm sitting here with a stack of note cards in front of me, the fruit of having read this book. It represents more notes than I typically take for one book, while simultaneously testifying to the value I placed on the insights that Berry offers on the agrarian lifestyle, local economies, the family unit, respect for the Creator demonstrated by respect for His creation, the value and dignity of work, global "harmony" destroying cultural diversity, and a sensible understanding of individual freedom being proportionally related to self-sufficiency.

I found myself continually amazed at Berry's almost prophetic insight. Most of these essays were written in the seventies, eighties and nineties, yet he saw on the distant horizon the destructive environmental and social consequences of industrialized farming and agribusiness that we are experiencing today. He was espousing "organic" foods long before it was a buzzword, and endorsing traditional homesteading methods at a time when the American farmer was increasingly being viewed as backward and behind the times. Plus Berry isn't merely an armchair agriculturist. His wisdom is borne from long years of trial and error on his own small farm (that he farms with horses).

I love this quote in particular as representative of the book's flavor: "The agrarian mind begins with the love of fields and ramifies in good farming, good cooking, good eating, and gratitude to God."

I recently reread Voltaire's Candide, and though Berry's writing doesn't necessarily remind me of Voltaire's (apart from both of them frequently espousing liberty of conscious and choice), I can't but help think of Candide's final words after a lifetime of absurd suffering: "All that is very well, but let us cultivate our garden."

So, if you're a fan of Berry's fiction or interested in agrarian issues, I highly recommend this compilation of essays.

[Sherry Elmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I highly recommend this thoughtful book of essays to fans of Wendell Berry and to everyone who is interested in ideas of community, environment, or agriculture. Read it with a pen nearby; there will be a lot you want to copy.

[Lisa Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wendell Berry just keeps me wanting more of his writing. It nourishes me like clean food and sunshine. It makes me want to lie in green pastures and place my bare feet upon the earth. It places me within God's creation.

[Simon Robs · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have loved (beginning with my reading of "The Unsettling of America" back in the early '80's) WB's ethos, his many books describing such and his unwavering comittment to cause fulfillment. You will not only be informed, beguiled and bewildered, but you might also find that workable ideal not utopian to make sense of the world dominated by technology and those who control it. These are essays as current in asking some of the right questions for our times. What is appropriate human scale!

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am currently self-exiled in the countryside, and I picked up this book thinking, who better to foster in me a love of rural life than Wendell Berry? Instead of being filled with warm fuzzy feelings for all things agricultural, however, I finished the book with an expanded sense of community, a wider understanding of internesting economies, and what it means to live with the rest of the world in mind.

I appreciated the fact that this collection provides the date of original publication for each of the essays - it's easier to forgive sexist language in the essays from the 1970s, for example, and it's all the more impressive that Berry was preaching the virtues of eating locally way back in 1989.

This is the first collection of Wendell Berry's works I've read, and I found that it provide a thorough overview of major themes that seem to re-emerge throughout his writing career. I plan to keep this book on my shelf for future perusing.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

People should read this book like they read the Bible. Not necessarily the way believers read the Bible (though it's not the worst replacement), but at least the way anyone who wants to be culturally literate reads Genesis and Exodus and Job and John and a few others to have an idea of what's going on around them. This is the compelling oppositional political and social philosophy of my generation, my peer social class at least. So often as I get to know someone I come to see that they hold this belief system as close as any religion or moral code. Often they haven't read Berry, but have picked up the values through cultural osmosis or simply by coming to their own independent conclusions. Berry is less prophet than gospel writer. His prose is simple, evocative, worthy of comparison with Emerson (his obvious precedent.) The arguments are compelling, too.

I like this particular book because it front-loads some of the best essays. It's hard not to get hooked.

[Othy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book by Wendell Berry, and a good place to start on this prolific author. The essays introduce the reader to a number of different topics in Berry's philosophy, and there is a great opening essay that introduces where Berry is coming from as a human being living in the world. Many essays were great, though they were not always focused on one idea. Also, I often felt like I wanted to urge Berry to "keep going!" or "give me an example" or "develop this, but he moves on. Perhaps he does so in his other books, and these are only little dips into his ideas.

[Donovan Richards · Rating 4 out of 5]

Urban Jungles

Living in a city, I sometimes find nature a nuisance. Snow might display beautiful characteristics as it coats a meadow, but it certainly exhibits headache-inducing qualities when it materializes during the commute. Vibrant evergreens coating a mountain convey the finest forms of art, yet no tree stands in the way of a property owner desiring a better view. Urban life is ultimately divorced from the land. A simple block-to-block walk downtown provides little to no evidence of ecology. The Art of the Commonplace decries these realities as it presents a case for an agrarian-minded society.

Berry’s collection of essays is divided into five parts: a geobiography, understanding our cultural crisis, the agrarian basis for an authentic culture, agrarian economics, and agrarian religion. In these sections, Berry makes the case for a counter-cultural understanding of society, a way of life rooted in and sustained by the land.

Critiquing the System

Central to Berry’s thesis is a scathing critique of consumerist culture and industrial business practice. Where our ancestors lived in unity with the land, we exist in tension with the land. The Art of the Commonplace contains prophetic passages where Berry takes the form of a minor prophet beating the drum of repentance in the face of giant institutions.

Along these lines, Berry writes,

“It is possible to make a little economy, such as our present one, that is so shortsighted and in which accounting is of so short a term as to give the impression that vices are necessary and practically justifiable. When we make our economy a little wheel turning in opposition to what we call ‘nature,’ then we set up competitiveness as the ruling principle in our explanation of reality and in our understanding of economy; we make of it, willy-nilly, a virtue. But competitiveness, as a ruling principle and a virtue, imposes a logic that is extremely difficult, perhaps impossible, to control. That logic explains why our cars and our clothes are shoddily made, why our ‘wastes’ are toxic, and why our ‘defensive’ weapons are suicidal; it explains why it is so difficult for us to draw a line between ‘free enterprise’ and crime. If our economic ideal is maximum profit with minimum responsibility, why should we be surprised to find our corporations so frequently in court and robbery on the increase? Why should we be surprised to find that medicine has become an exploitive industry, profitable in direct proportion to its hurry and its mechanical indifference? People who pay for shoddy products or careless services and people who are robbed outright are equally victims of theft, the only difference being that robbers outright are not guilty of fraud” (233).


In Berry’s mind, the contemporary industrial economy shoulders much of the blame regarding what is wrong with the world. Not only does capitalism create a system where efficiency requires low quality and high profits, but also it compels business leaders to act right up against the barriers of what is legal. In such instances, it is no surprise to see broken laws and broken people.

Eating Strawberries on a Cold, January Day

Moreover, the industrial economy creates a civilization incapable of sustaining itself. Berry laments,

“Most of us, for example, not only do not know how to produce the best food in the best way – we don’t know how to produce any kind in any way. Our model citizen is a sophisticate who before puberty understands how to produce a baby, but who at the age of thirty will not know how to produce a potato. And for this condition we have elaborate rationalizations, instructing us that dependence for everything on somebody else is efficient and economical and a scientific miracle. I say, instead, that it is madness, mass produced” (85).


Forget growing a potato, I could not tell you when they are in season. As a child, I vaguely remember my mother buying blueberries in mass quantities because they were in season. Today, I am a grocery store away from an infinite resource of blueberries year-round. While I have not taken a poll of my generation, it seems that most people my age are in a similar position. The seasonal connection to the land by way of fruits and vegetables has slowly gone the way of the buffalo. If I do not understand the seasons, how can I expect to establish a green thumb?

Ultimately, Berry argues that our industrialized economy has created a consequentialist culture focused on efficiency. Berry asserts,

“Logically, in plenitude some things ought to be expendable. Industrial economics has always believed this: abundance justifies waste. This is one of the dominant superstitions of American history – and of the history of colonialism everywhere. Expendability is also an assumption of the world of efficiency which is why that world deals so compulsively in percentages of efficacy and safety. But this sort of logic is absolutely alien to the world of love. To the claim that a certain drug or procedure would save 99 percent of all cancer patients of that a certain pollutant would be safe for 99 percent of a population, love, unembarrassed, would respond, ‘What about the one percent?’ There is nothing rational or perhaps even defensible about this, but it is nonetheless one of the strongest strands of our religious tradition – it is probably the most essential strand – according to which a shepherd, owning a hundred sheep and having lost one, does not say, ‘I have saved 99 percent of my sheep,’ but rather, ‘I have lost one,’ and he goes and searches for the one” (154-155).


In short, reconnecting ourselves to the land both through a local economy and an agrarian-based religion reminds us of the power of pursuing the one as opposed to neglecting it by rationalizing that the 99 are enough.

Let’s Pack Our Bags, We’re Going to Eden!

While I appreciate and typically side with the critiques posed by the Art of the Commonplace, I find the conclusions to be slightly utopian in nature. In other words, Berry’s urge to reconnect with nature seems slightly akin to arguing that humanity ought to go back to a place and time before the fall, living a reconciled life in God’s Creation.

The fall, in my estimation, significantly alters humanity’s relationship with nature. Granted, industry possesses a poor track record of domination over the natural world. Nevertheless, biblically mandated stewardship does not negate the possibility of development. As with most things, the extremes on both sides of the economic argument fall into untenable positions. Business provides valuable opportunities to assist those in need; local economies connected to nature remind humanity that it is a creature and not a creator.

Even though I do not find anything inherently evil about urban life, Berry’s writing presents a counterpoint to the dominant views. As a society, we ought to remember and enjoy the natural world and humanity’s connection to it. Berry’s economic, cultural, and religious positions found in the Art of the Commonplace are wholeheartedly worthy of study. He poetically renders his positions unashamedly; his critiques remind us that business as usual will never solve all of the world’s problems. For this reason, I recommend this book.

Originally published at http://wherepenmeetspaper.blogspot.com/

[Russ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I sometimes judge a book by the number of quotes that I write in my journal from that book. By that measure, this book rates among the best. Deeply thoughtful, somewhat prophetic, and full of wisdom, this book is worth the read.

Following are two excerpts that make me feel this way:

...it is impossible, ultimately, to preserve ourselves apart from our willingness to preserve other creatures, or to respect and care for ourselves except as we respect and care for other creatures; and, most to the point of this book, it is impossible to care for each other more or differently than we care for the earth.
This last statement becomes obvious enough when it is considered that the earth is what we all have in common, that it is what we are made of and what we live from, and that we therefore cannot damage it without damaging those with whom we share it.

Wendell Berry in The Body and the Earth


“This curious world we inhabit is more wonderful than convenient; more beautiful than it is useful; more to be admired and enjoyed than used.” Henry David Thoreau said that to his graduating class at Harvard in 1837. We may assume that to most of them it sounded odd...
But perhaps we will be encouraged to take him seriously, if we recognize that this idea is not something that Thoreau made up out of thin air. When he uttered it, he may very well have been remembering Revelation 4:11: “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.”

Wendell Berry in his essay Economy and Pleasure

[Andrea Prevatt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dear Wendell, please come to my dinner table.

Here is someone who pays attention, who wisely observes what’s at stake for our world, but also offers hopeful solutions that start with the self. These essays focus on themes of agrarian, economic, and personal issues, exploring value, integrity, and responsibility.
I am no farmer, but really love reading about agrarian economics. As part of a community and a supporter of local farms, farmers, and economies, essays like these encourage me to keep learning. When we have a more personal understanding of the land, springing from our hands-on experience with it, we see that protecting the environment and promoting sustainability are economic imperatives, not optional. Someone please read these so we can discuss.

Separate note: His section in "The Body and the Earth,” where he breaks down the bond between home-land, household, and marriage by looking at how it is exemplified in Homer’s The Odyssey, was so delightful. It was a departure from the normal flow of the other essays and brought me back to the best parts of literature classes, analyzing themes and uncovering beauty. It also got me excited for the upcoming Christopher Nolan film.

[Annie Bruza · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this alongside one his novels. I was able to see the ideals discussed in these essays acted out by the characters of his stories. I personally think "The Body and the Earth" is one of the strongest essays in the collection, although "The Unsettling of America" and "Feminism, the Body, and the Machine" are well-known for a reason. He gets a little dicey in the last section when he dons the role of theologian, but he takes the good of the conservationalists and attemps to ground it in the world as God made it- a worthy endeavor.

[AB · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of his arguments were weird and outdated, but he had a lot of interesting points that are still relevant, and in some cases even more relevant now than they were then. It can be boring to read all at once, so it’s best to read the essays individually. Berry’s viewpoint has definitely shaped mine. Thanks for recommending this, Wallis!

[Carson Harraman · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you've read a lot of Berry, you'll find a lot of re-prints here. Quite a bit of Unsettling of America here.

[Devin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like a cool drink of water after years in the scorching sun, these essays are good food for the dust + breath = soul.

A few quotes:

“We hurry through our meals to go to work and hurry through our work in order to ‘recreate’ ourselves in the evenings and on weekends and vacations. And then we hurry, with the greatest possible speed and noise and violence, through our recreation - for what?”

“To work without pleasure or affection, to make a product that is not both useful and beautiful, is to dishonor God, nature, the thing that is made, and whomever it is made for. This is blasphemy: to make shoddy work of the work of God.”

“...if we are sane, we do not dismiss or abandon our infant children or our aged parents because they are too young or too old to work. For human beings, affection is the ultimate motive, because the force that powers us, as Ruskin also said, is ‘not steam, magnetism or gravitation, but a soul.’”

“...if you are dependent on people who do not know you, who control the value of your necessities, you are not free, and you are not safe.”

“People seriously interested in health will finally have to question our society’s long standing goals of convenience and effortlessness. What is the point of ‘labor saving’ if by making work effortless we make it poor, and if by doing poor work we weaken our bodies and lose conviviality and health?”

“Any life, by working or not working, by working well or poorly, inescapably changes other lives and so changes the world.”

There’s much more depth and breadth to be found in this essential book, but I will stop there. Ultimately, Berry affirms the suspicion that we are living within and as a part of a miraculous and holy world, and that damage to any part damages the whole. He gives human life and work it’s proper, limited importance, and illuminates our sacred duty as stewards of the Creation. What is more necessary than that, when we are bombarded on all sides by people who believe this world is contemptible, our bodies burdens, and life one long pointless misery? How can we do what is right when we have no idea of what is good, and where to start?

[conor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I ADORE this book. Wendell offers a prophetic call to action that feels all too relevant today. I love the way that he sits outside of normal ideological boxes and presents a vision of the world and what we can be that is rooted in his own personal experience AND is unafraid to challenge the status quo from a variety of angles.

It's rare to find such a thoughtful writer that I think would anger and thrill both progressive and conservative folks in the US.

I long for and am wary of Wendell's call for a simpler world, stripped of some of the technology and complexity that we have added to it. I am challenged, and invigorated!, by Wendell's commitment to the communal nature of existence, that none of us are independent or autonomous, but that we all depend on others and can only choose whether that dependence is responsible or irresponsible. Loads of food for thought packed into this essay collection--best read in small doses to chew on and savor.

[Darnell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wendell Berry made his living as a writer and speaker, jobs only possible via modern technology and completely unsustainable on a larger scale. While enjoying a privileged lifestyle he dabbled in farming and fantasizing about the past.

This book's idealization of an agrarian lifestyle is an insult to the millions of human beings still struggling to survive via subsistence agriculture. Placing a farmer on a pedestal is as offensive as the stereotype of the "noble savage": it ignores historical realities to create an imitation of the past that is appealing to modern thinkers.

His ideas about simplicity and the environment are commendable, but I'm afraid his central obsession with a time that never was will always make his writing odious to me.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The moral argument points to restraint; it is a conclusion that may be in some sense tragic, but there is no escaping it. Much as we long for infinities of power and duration, we have no evidence that these lie within our reach, much less within our responsibility. It is more likely that we will have either to live within our limits, within the human definition, or not live at all. And certainly the knowledge of these limits and of how to live within them is the most comely and graceful knowledge that we have, the most healing and the most whole.”

[Ron · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of Berry's essays that are related to "farming". Several of them appear in other collections of essays. I found some of them uncomfortable to read because of what they had to say about me and my lifestyle.

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know how I didn't get bored reading this book, because so many of the essays are essentially saying the same thing. It wasn't until the very end, somewhere in the 300s and a few paragraphs deep into some Reagan-era trade agreement, that I started to skim and skip a bit. In fact, I had planned to just skip around and read only the essays that interested me based on their title, but after doing three that way, I decided I like it enough to head page to square one and give the whole thing a go.

What I really (really, really) like about Wendell Berry's philosophy is that it is not easily categorizable as either conservative or liberal. The whole of the book, and his entire oeuvre, as I understand it, is quite counter-cultural, but not all in one direction. He says things that many leftists would consider unsavory. For example (and I'm picking one that I agree with), he states that for the most part, the mainstream feminist movement adopted most of the positions and attitudes of the patriarchy, and there is nothing really liberating about playing the domination game in that way. He also professes a lot of values that would be labeled as "traditional," which a liberal would see as oppressive. But I'm sure the conservatives would love to selectively quote his beliefs about marriage and sexuality and so on. On the other hand, no self-respecting right-winger could ever get behind Berry's staunch opposition to virtually anything industrial. They would likely mock his disavowal of tractors over horses and pencils over keyboards and all the rest. This unlikely mash-up of ideas really pleases me. I find it very dynamic, whereas most intellectuals generally come of as dogmatic.

Lots of quotable passages. Lots of actionable ideas. Action over ideas. Time for me to go build the soil in my garden plot.

[Rachel Hafler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. These essays are so profound and wise and speak to the deeper questions of work and culture, economy and community. Berry is so insightful and writes beautifully about the realities of life in our current American landscape. Even though many of these essays were written 40-50 years ago, they are still illuminating today. Definitely a Wendell Berry fangirl now. I've greatly enjoyed Berry's poetry and some of his shorter essays, but this is the first longer collection that I've read.

I'm impressed by Berry's focus on local eating, sustainable agriculture, and the merits of community (before these things became trendy). Throughout these essays he emphasizes a love and respect for creation, the simple pleasures of good work, knowing a place deeply, and recognizing how your own actions affect the natural world and your neighbors. My favorite essays were "Think Little", "The Pleasures of Eating", and "The Body and the Earth".

I think these essays are best read one (or a few) at a time rather than straight through. I decided to plow through the entire book and was overwhelmed at points as Berry gets a bit verbose and repetitive and these are big ideas to reckon with. Thus... 4.5 stars rounded up. I will certainly be returning to these essays again in the future! Highly recommend.

[Annie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of really important ideas and philosophies in here. Was really dry but still an important read.

[Summer Bohannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

"No matter how much one may love the world as a whole, one can live fully in it only by living responsibly in some small part of it."

[Adam Parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book seemed to take many of the ideas I've wrestled with for about a decade now, and put them on paper much more eloquently and thoughtfully than I ever could have. I also read this book during the beginning stages of the Corona Virus pandemic, and so much of what Berry talked about directly applied to our context. It quickly entered my favorite book shelf and is one I think the world could really benefit from reading.

[Mo Gardner · Rating 2 out of 5]

another book by a crunchy white man
um this book is mostly boring. esp when talking abt economics. the points barry is able to make are limitef by the fact he never stands behind an alternative to the capitalist system.
idk a lot of his opinions abt economics and work that were more novel were undermined by seeming like they only hold up from an ablebodied perspective. on a personal level i think his critical takes on avoiding drudge work were interesting, but they wouldve been better if he explored the limits of our capacity to work, like contextual/social ones as well as our individual bodies.
barrys better writing on economics are when hes talking abt race issues. obviously his explanations of issues like racism, slavery and what he calls “nigger work” arent holistic, but theyre interesting and sometimes even good. im glad i read what he wrote on black land disposession.
overall still mid

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Summary: Twenty essays articulating an agrarian vision for society that offers health to land, food, and the wider society.

If you have followed Wendell Berry over the years, you probably have encountered most of the essays in this collection in other works. In this collection, edited by professor of theology and environmental writer, Norman Wirzba, we are given twenty essays that articulate Berry’s vision for the reform of agricultural practice and what that can mean for food, for the land, for local communities, and the health of the wider society. Wirzba’s fine introductory essay underscores key themes of Berry’s writing: that an agrarian vision focused on wholeness with the earth, each other, and God simply reflects a proper understanding of our place in the world and that is significant for all of society, both rural and urban.

The essays are grouped into five sections with a brief introduction to each. The first is “A Geobiography” and consists of a single essay, Berry’s early “A Native Hill.” and is Berry’s description of the history, topography of the upland on which his farm and community is situated. the evidence in pastures and old walls of those who farmed there before him, his many walks over it, through forests, hollows, the soil, and his own place in all of this.

Part Two, “Understanding Our Cultural Crisis” connects our cultural crisis to agricultural practices. He speaks of the harm to land when we make food a “weapon” and pursue endless growth. He challenges “Big Thinking” suggesting we need to “Think Little,” planting our own gardens, and focusing our production within our communities rather than importing energy and exporting produce and waste. He observes the seemingly intractable problem of racism, aggravated when agricultural was industrialized and the “competent poor” able to subsist on the land were forced into our cities for which they were not prepared. In “Feminism, the Body, and the Machine” he explores how separating work from the household has changed marital relationships. Where once couples worked together, indeed families, in the work of a household, what is shared now in marriage is little more than the marriage bed. In this he also defends the way he and his wife work together as she edits his handwritten work, not as an act of subordination, but shared work in the body, believing they are better without computers.

Part Three offers the positive counter to the preceding negative critique in “The Agrarian Basis for American Culture.” This begins with a long essay on “The Body and the Earth.” Berry challenges the ways we divide up the body medically and the dualism of soul and body that downplays the vital importance of our embodied, material existence. He returns to how this plays out in sexual relations, households, and our changing ideals of fidelity which includes our fidelity to the place of our shared life. These ideas recur in “Men and Women in Search of Common Ground” considering how place, shared work, and community sustained the fabric of fidelity between couples. He asks questions about our health care system including why rest, food, and ecological health are not basic to our approaches to staying healthy and to healing. He maintains that key to restoring community is restoring local community and the respect of the differences of different communities. “People, Land, and Community” uses the example (again) of the hillside farm, and how the skillful, multi-generational work of a community is required to preserve that land.

Part Four focuses on “Agrarian Economics.” He writes of the problems of relentless competition for agriculture, and the destruction of pleasure in work, leading to our vapid pleasure industries. The first essay, “Economy and Pleasure” closes with Berry spending a day doing farm chores with his grand-daughter, letting her drive the team, unloading dirt on a barn floor, at the end of which she said, “Wendell, isn’t it fun.” In “The Two Economies” he contrast our industrial economy where we create value with the Great Economy, which recognizes the inherent value in things and what is lost when they are used–soil for example. “The Idea of a Local Economy” is perhaps Berry’s clearest articulation of how the Global Economy has been destructive of the local, and how his vision of what a local economy built on neighborhood and subsistence would look like. “Solving for Pattern” includes a list of farming and land use practices that preserve farm economies..

The book closes with “Agrarian Religion,” in which Berry makes more explicit the theological convictions that undergird his agrarian vision. Interestingly, the section begins with “The Use of Energy,” citing our sewage systems and the internal combustion engine as two prime examples of wastefulness. Good energy use recycles into the environment in a cycle of production, consumption, and return. He reads Genesis 1 as “The Gift of Good Land” to be stewarded with the care with which we’d handle the sacrament, not desecrating it. He affirms that the charges by conservationist against Christianity are, by and large, warranted. He criticizes the focus on the holiness of churches but not on the holiness of all of life and the dualism that denigrates the body rather than understanding our souls as dust plus the breath of life from God. This leads us to deny the goodness of physical work and to be indifferent to the physical creation. Like the economy we are concerned with relentless growth. He also articulates the political captivity of the church that has risen to extremes in our own day. It is a trenchant critique from a churchman.

In one sense, the final essay brings together all he has been saying as he discusses “The Pleasure of Eating.” He urges urban audiences to “eat responsibly.” This simple act, followed to its logical conclusions addresses all the concerns discussed here. As we can we grow our own food, prepare our own food, learn the origins of what we buy and buy food grown as close as possible, dealing with local growers where possible. We become aware and wary of what is added to food, learn about the best farming and keep learning by observation. Eating responsibly, we become reluctant to eat food, animal or vegetable, that has been grown under poor conditions.

These essays challenge us to think of agriculture not as a reality separate from the daily existence of most of us but rather the bedrock on which that existence rests. They challenge us to see that the health of our bodies and our culture cannot be separated from our agriculture, and our highly industrialized agriculture has put the fabric of our communities and our health at risk. Berry focuses so much on local community, but I wonder if these have been so decimated that it will take several generations to restore them. I wonder if a beginning is to think about seeing states or regions become as self-sufficient as possible in agriculture, reducing long distance logistics and diversifying local production and in the process, improving land use and crop rotation. In my own part of the country, studying how the Amish do (and prosper) might be helpful. But what will ultimately drive this is the idea of eating responsibly. That will require a different agricultural economy. And if Berry is right, it will change our culture.