Imagination in Place

Imagination in Place, by Wendell Berry, Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2010.

This is a coherent collection of essays, mostly of literary criticism (and, because of the author's person, also of cultural criticism). Those who have read my previous reviews of collected works, especially those that are collections of previously published essays, will know that this is high praise indeed. The coherency apparent in this book is not one of shared subject matter (the subjects covered are quite diverse, from the Civil War to Fundamentalism to Shakespeare, to name but a few); and it is not an artificially imposed coherency papered over the surface of what is (if truth be known) actually disparate material. Rather, the coherency arises subtly but unmistakeably from the durable passions and consistent attentions of the author, passions and attentions that have been sustained over a lifetime of work and throughout a variety of relationships--personal, literary and agricultural. Moreover, you are not likely to have encountered many of these essays before--however devoted you are to reading Berry--unless you are a subscriber to The Sewanee Review or are a "professional" literature teacher, because of the places where the essays previously appeared (e.g., multi-author works, literary journals like American Poet, or news outlets like The San Jose Mercury News).

Let us start with a definition of "Imagination in Place" (title essay, 2004). According to Berry, imagination is the attempt to make whole what is experienced in part. "[W]orks of imagination come of an impulse to transcend the limits of experience or provable knowledge in order to make a thing that is whole." "Imagination 'completes the picture' by transcending the actual memories and provable facts" (pp. 3-4). Imagination is a gift, a transcendent gift. Berry says "[m]y experience with imagination has taught me to believe in inspiration, about which I think nobody can speak with much authority" (p. 6). This last statement is humbling for a preacher. According to Berry, it should be humbling not just for the preacher, but also for the atheist, scientist, engineer, economist and businessman, and the politician ("God, Science, and Imagination"). In his reprise of the litany of 20th century destruction in which everyone alive now participates, Berry convicts us first and foremost of a lack of imagination:

• "not one person now living in the United States who, by a strict accounting, could be said to be living an exemplary moral life"
  
• "implicated, by direct participation and by proxies given suppliers"
  
• loss of half our topsoil and most of our forest and prairies
  
• loss of mineral wealth and underground water
  
• pollution of surface water and air
  
• destruction of rural cultures
  
• extinction of plants and animals
  
• wastelands
  
• landfills
  
• industrial dumps
  
• the turning of chemicals of warfare onto the soil in pursuit of efficient production

Berry's constant point seems to be that a moral imagination--one that works against the widespread destruction of our times--is an imagination grounded. The place from which imagination sees that which no eye can see is "irreducible" (p. 12) For Berry this place is the farm; that is where he exercises his imagination. The farm is the "irreducible" mundane or temporal just as God is the "irreducible" eternal (p. 183). Humans share with one another and with their place the same sort of relationship they share with their God. Neither the farm nor God can be simplified and thoroughly comprehended by human effort and human mind without remainder. The moral imagination is therefore an imagination vested in a particular place. But moral imagination requires of human vision not only realism (and its standard, "how things really are"), but also "how things will be, how you want things to be, how things ought to be." Moral imagination tries to envision the world "whole," a whole that is both temporal and eternal--to see how things really are and how they really should be. Imagine!

In "American Imagination and the Civil War" (2007) Berry suggests that ultimate cause of the Civil War (the reason it was not averted) was a failure of moral imagination, specifically a failure of "the prevailing virtue and efficacious operation of lenity" (quoting Burke about that other civil war, the American Revolution). With imagination--with "lenience or gentleness or mercy"--other possibilities than war, possibilities like "reconciliation on terms of justice or amicable separation" could have been opened up (p. 23). Berry says that we should consider not just North and South as parties to that war, but a "third side," that of the dead. Walt Whitman's imagination, as he comes at dawn upon three soldiers lying dead near a hospital tent, allows (requires?) him to see in the face of the third soldier "the face of the Christ himself, Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again he lies" (p. 25). Berry says that our current civil war (that on agriculture, rural communities, and the land itself) is also a failure of imagination: "I have been describing an enormous failure, and to me this appears to be a failure of imagination." We are, Berry says, destroying our country because of our failure to imagine it. (p. 30; "it" being the destruction of our country. We seem to be blind to it.) It is here that Berry provides a working definition of that imagination of which he speaks: "I do not mean the ability to make things up or to make a realistic copy. I mean the ability to make real to oneself the life of one's place or the life of one's enemy" (p. 30). Generalization, like war, is destructive of particular people and local places, but a poet's or novelist's imagination tethered loyally to a particular place and to particular persons can speak also for me and my place (pp. 33, 37). And, exercised well, it may lead to love of neighbor and prayers for enemies.

What follows these two programmatic essays is a series of portraits of authorial imagination. There is no heavy hand here, but everywhere Berry searches the lives and works of writers--contemporary and hoary--for hints, clues, and traces of imagination and inspiration as he has defined it. He seeks in these authors an imagination grounded in place. The good news for us and for him is that it is everywhere in evidence here among these authors who have been most influential for Berry and, where we are conscious of it, also for us.

• Wallace Stegner ("The Momentum of Clarity" and "In Memoriam")
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• John Haines ("Speech after Long Silence")
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Hayden Carruth ("My Friend Hayden"). I could not help but chuckle at Berry's comment about North Winter that "[i]t told me, at a time when I greatly needed to hear it, that one writer may do life-sustaining work in a place that, to others, would be 'nowhere'" (p. 58). Writing from Indianapolis--long known as "Indiana-no-place" that comes as a relief.
  
• James Still ("In Memory" and "A Master Language")
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Gurney Norman ("My Conversation with Gurney Norman")
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Jane Kenyon ("Sweetness Preserved"). Here Berry gives expression to what I have often wondered about the folks who would have us consider literature apart from the historical setting and biography of the author, "[h]ow then are we to help knowing what we know?" (p. 88) Here too he gives considerable attention to the notion of exile and place. Given the importance of exile both to biblical and literary themes, this essay in particular is worth some additional attention.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Gary Snyder ("Some Interim Thoughts about Gary Snyder's Mountains and Rivers without End")
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• James Baker Hall ("In Memory")
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Kathleen Raine ("Against the Nihil of the Age") Berry rings the changes on this "poet of the Imagination"--both her own poetry and her interaction with the likes of Blake, Yeats, et al. This is an essay to which I shall return many times, Lord willing.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• William Shakespeare ("The Uses of Adversity") comparison of "As You Like It" and "King Lear" with an eye toward their moral imagination, especially as it pertains to the "uses" of adversity.

I will treasure and return to this collection for what it reveals about Berry as much as its revelations about the authors whom he selects for review. It is a window into Berry's own spirit, into his inspiration, or at least into his imagination.

Leavings: Poems

Wendell Berry, Leavings: Poems, Counterpoint, Berkeley, CA, 2010. (132 pp.)

I have been living for the past few weeks with Wendell Berry's latest anthology of poems in my backpack and have decided it is time to share a few thoughts about it. The book is in two parts: the first part is a potpourri, an all-too-short assortment of letter poems, occasional pieces, and brief reflections (the 20 titled poems in the collection are here); the second part is entitled "Sabbaths 2005-2008" and carries the tag line, "How may a human being come to rest?" (54 numbered poems make up this section.)

The title Leavings is not the title of any of the poems, but seems to sum up the book, as if Berry were deliberately taking leave of his readers. "It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old." (2007.VI) "In time a man disappears..." (2007.VII) "I know I am getting old and I say so,..." (2005.VII) There are other leavings here too, other than the merely personal, predominantly that of the descending water that flows out from a lowly stream named Camp Branch. Falling tones, falling leaves (literally), falling steps, falling stones, falling snow and falling rain transport the reader to the Kentucky countryside where we see the place that has meant and still means the world to Mr. Berry. This small collection takes the reader on a painful but beautiful journey, a shared pilgrimage down familiar paths measured in ever slower and more halting steps, made all the more valuable for the fact that the reader is not required to leave his native place to join Mr. Berry except in imagination. "So many times I've gone away from here, where I'd rather be than any place I know.... It is death." (2008.X)

One of my favorite poems in this collection, one I know I'll return to many times, occurs early in Part I and is entitled simply "An Embarrassment." The severe economy of language--3 or 4 word lines mostly, mostly 1 or 2 syllable words--conveys the embarrassment of friends who regularly offer thanks for a meal when they eat alone but who are now trying to decide whether to do so when they are together. One of them, having decided to make a go of the prayer, leaves (!) them both embarrassed as the prayer falls awfully flat. I'll not ruin the ending for you, but it is a Berry-esque show stopper. For someone who makes his living as a pastor, that one poem was worth the price of admission. But there are many others from this book that will now join my ever growing list of Berry favorites: e.g., "A Speech to the Garden Club of America," which admonishes us to go "back to school, this time in gardens." Or "While Attending the Annual Convocation of Cause Theorists and Bigbangists at the Local Provincial Research University, the Mad Farmer Intercedes from the Back Row." (If you've read The Mad Farmer Poems, you'll appreciate the appropriateness of this addition to the corpus.

I have been reading (and re-reading) Wendell Berry's work for quite a while now. That means I've heard many of the words and seen many of the ideas before. But these poems are new, encountered for the first time like today's bracing walk in a familiar woods I've visited many times. In that sense they are very gratefully received; it is, after all, November and there are too few such walks left to me ...and to you.

It wouldn't be right to end the review without a full list of Wendell Berry's poetic works. Check your shelves! If you do not have all of these, you'll want them on a shelf close by when the winter winds begin to blow the snow around.

The Broken Ground: Poems

Clearing









Farming: A Hand Book







Openings: Poems (Harvest/Hbj Book)

A Part (Part Paper)

Sabbaths


Sayings and Doings





The Wheel

Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food

Berry, Wendell. Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food. Counterpoint: Berkeley, CA, 2009. With an introduction by Michael Pollan.

It is hard for me to admit, ever, to being disappointed by Wendell Berry. And even now it isn't so much Berry, whom I do not know personally (I've only ever heard him speak once live), but the latest book to come out under his name that is the source of my disappointment. And it isn't what is in the book that disappoints me. The problem is that I have already read most of the content before in other books by Berry that I already own. This book should have come with a large warning on the ad page (I pre-ordered from Amazon, based on the advance copy description) that this book is 99% recycled material, pre-composted, repackaged fertilizer if you will. So, after rushing into the house to open the package when it arrived, I had that all-too-familiar sinking feeling as I flipped through the pages of my "new" book by Berry. Other than the introduction by Pollan, I've seen it all before. In fact, I now own multiple copies of most of these chapters in the form of other collections of Berry essays.

Even more annoying to me is the fact that the chapters come marked only with the date of previous publication. (Except for the fiction excerpts, which are marked by the title of the novel in question, but not with the date of publication.) Nowhere does there seem to be a note citing the locus of that previous publication. I cannot even confirm easily my suspicion that I already own (versus having merely already read) the non-fiction essay in question. And as you might expect, I do not object so much to reading something twice (if I cannot remember that I have read it already, that is my problem) as I object to purchasing it twice. As someone who is interested in the context within which ideas arise and the history of their publication and dissemination, I like to know how to track the paths of words and ideas in the world, especially those that have occurred elsewhere in a prior conversation. Here the essays seem to be lifted out of their primary location and recombined in such a way as to erase all sense of place. (I would say time and place, except that the year is duly noted at the top of each chapter.) That is something I think Berry would (or should) object mightily to, given that he is so keen to preserve local adaptation and local landscapes. If we cannot preserve the local nature of our thoughts and ideas from such globalized generalization, how will we ever preserve real farms, farmers, and food?

I will not do what should have been the author's, editor's, and publisher's work for them by tracking down and publishing the location of the previous publication of these essays, but I will do you the favor of listing the title and date of publication here so that you can check your shelves before you order:

Part I: Farming

Nature as Measure, 1989

Stupidity in Concentration, 2002 (which includes Berry's definition of "sustainable agriculture")

Agricultural Solutions for Agricultural Problems, 1978

A Defense of the Family Farm, 1986

Let the Farm Judge, 1997

Energy in Agriculture, 1979

Conservationist and Agrarian, 2002

Sanitation and the Small Farm, 1971

Renewing Husbandry, 2004

Part II: Farmers

Seven Amish Farms, 1981

A Good Farmer of the Old School, 1985

Charlie Fisher, 1996

A Talent for Necessity, 1980

Elmer Lapp's Place, 1979

on The Soil and Health, 2006

Agriculture from the Roots Up, 2004

Part III: Food

mostly drawn from Berry's fiction writing

from That Distant Land

from Hannah Coulter

from Andy Catlett

from "Misery"

from The Memory of Old Jack

from Jayber Crow

from Hannah Coulter (again)

The Pleasures of Eating, 1989

So, would I recommend the book, and if so, to whom? Clearly I wouldn't recommend the book to anyone who is well familiar with Berry's work and who owns a considerable library of Berry's fiction and non-fiction. I would recommend it to anyone who hasn't read Berry, who knows him only by reputation, and who wants a quick introduction to his thoughts about sustainable agriculture and local food. For example, I could imagine the book as assigned reading in a college course on contemporary issues, especially environmental issues. But the reader should understand that tracking down the original source of some of the essays may be difficult should he or she become "hooked" like so many of us are, including evidently Michael Pollan, on Wendell Berry's prose and poetry. (Which brings up another interesting oversight; why wasn't some of Berry's poetry included?)

The Soil and Health

Sir Albert Howard, The Soil and Health: A Study of Organic Agriculture (Culture of the Land), with a new introduction by Wendell Berry, The University Press of Kentucky, 2006.

This book is one of A Series in the New Agrarianism by UPK, edited by Norman Wirzba, that bears the title Culture of the Land. The book was originally published in 1947. It followed the publication and good reception of An Agricultural Testament in 1940. (One may hope that An Agricultural Testament will also be added to this series or reprinted by some other publisher soon.) This book is one of a set of classic texts, along with F. C. King's Farmers of Forty Centuries,
Lady Eve Balfour's The Living Soil (Soil Association Organic Classics), and the like, that have occasionally been reprinted and should remain always available in print. One suspects that they will be widely accessible again as soon as they enter the public domain. In the meantime, short run or print on demand--or re-sale by abebooks.com and the like--must suffice to keep a new generation of readers informed.

This book certainly deserves the reputation it has received as a "classic." Sir Albert Howard is plain spoken and easy for any agricultural practitioner--including this one--to understand. Though it is somewhat getting the cart before the horse to say so, Howard truly exemplifies the purpose of the series, demonstrating a profound appreciation for the "intimate and practical connections which exist between humans and the earth." Perhaps that is because Howard was, as is often stated, a pioneer and founding source for the New Agrarianism and the organic movement. Nowhere have I seen the connection between humans and the earth more profoundly and clearly stated than in the progression of Howard's outline for Part II of the book, "Disease in Present-Day Farming and Gardening." Howard moves with deliberation from diseases of the soil, through diseases of crops, to disease and health in livestock, and ultimately to a brief and convincing statement of the relationship between soil fertility and human health.

I was bemused to discover again the depth of my ignorance. I am a product of U.S. public schools--primary, secondary, and college all in the great agriculturally dependent state of Tennessee--from 1972 to 1984. I took "biology" as a school course (not counting the units of biology in early science classes) twice, once in High School and once again in college, but never do I recall hearing of the "Mycorrhizal Association" or the "web-like mycelial strands" that surround and invade some plant roots. As recently as 2007 I took the Master Gardener course from the Purdue Extension service, and again do not recall having heard anything about the mycorrhizal association in some roots. Certainly there was an emphasis on keeping organic matter high in our gardens and an emphasis on care in working the garden not to destroy the soil structure (not to work too often, or when the soil is too wet or too dry), but nothing was said about the importance of the symbiotic relationship with some microbes for the growth of some plants. It is clear that the association is understood as scientific fact and that its importance for plant growth is also understood, though the remedies (adding more synthetic phosphorous to what Howard would have called the "artificial manure" mix) are not necessarily ones embraced by organic agriculture. (e.g., Purdue note regarding the effect of flooding on helpful fungi.)

The fact that the mycorrhizal association is recognized and still studied today as an aspect of forestry and natural resource management suggests that Howard's drawing of connections between the forest (Howard recommends "afforestation," including forests in the long-term agricultural rotation) and a sustainable agriculture and human health is true, even if viewed by today's agro-science technicians as impractical. The book, 300 pages of small type, is too extensive to do it justice with a single review. Perhaps the best recommendation for the book is its constant citation by others more qualified than I to speak about organic agriculture. I think it is for good reason that Howard and his "Wheel of Life" (with its imperative to return everything to the soil whence it came) has formed a constant touchstone for authors like Wendell Berry (e.g., "The Use of Energy" in The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry). Perhaps the best and most important thing to take from a first (hopefully not the last) reading of Howard is that "The first duty of the agriculturalist [farmer or gardener] must always be to understand that he [or she] is a part of Nature and cannot escape from his environment" (p. 194). This maxim leads everywhere in the book to delightful conclusions like the following: "the attempt to raise natural earth-borne crops on an exclusive diet of water and mineral dope--the so-called science of hydroponics--is science gone mad; it is an absurdity which has nothing in common with the ancient art of cultivation" (ibid.)

To which this reviewer can only add "amen!"

You Can Farm, Part I

You Can Farm: the entrepreneur's guide to start and succeed in a farm enterprise, 1998, Polyface, Inc., Swoope, Virginia.

I couldn't wait another week, by which time I will have devoured the book despite an altogether frenetic schedule, to begin writing the review. I am convinced that Joel Salatin will be my new favorite author, close on the heels of Wendell Berry and Gene Logsdon. Part I of the review will cover chapters 1-19 (pp. 1-207 of 453).

The book reminds me a lot of Harvey W. Wiley's The Lure of the Land: Farming after Fifty, but almost a full century later! But the same sense of sanity and full awareness of the difficulties, and possibilities, of starting in farming are in evidence in both. The great thing about Salatin, of course, is that you do not have worry that the differences are too great between the previous century and this one or that changes have mitigated the usefulness of the advice. The book is full of inspiration and hope...and, have I said it enough? Realism!

Having just read Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose, I was pleased to see a "practical farmer" recognize and prioritize the Vision! You've got to be able to see it and dream it to realize it. Chapter One leads with this theme, followed by the importance of Story (chapter 2) and the Right Philosophy (chapter 3). In business parlance (even the not-for-profit sort that I'm associated with), this is all about Mission and Vision work. Salatin is right to emphasize it, prioritize it, and return to it as a theme throughout the book.

Chapter 4, "Do It Now," has to be my favorite (so far)! The point is not to wait for the perfect opportunity to start farming, because the perfect opportunity never comes. There are corollaries, of course, one of which doesn't show up until Chapter 13 (watch out for the irony), "Acquiring Land." The point of Chapter 13 (and some of Chapter 14) is not to wait until you can acquire land to begin farming. Land acquisition comes after success, as a result of success, not before. As Salatin says (p. 158), "Acquiring wealth...is an offensive posture and is generally best done by renting." Land investments are made by the wealthy in order to preserve wealth, which is a defensive posture. Man does that ever make sense, especially in today's mortgage mess. Much of what Salatin recommends would have been a powerful antidote to the excesses of the past few years and would have saved anyone who followed it from the sorts of financial ruin we are seeing now. At any rate, do not wait until you can purchase the picture perfect farm to begin farming...or you'll never begin. ...and above all, do not mortgage yourself deeply to buy the farm or you'll be back in your (other) day job sooner than you think.

Round these out with chapters on Surveying Your Situation (Chapter 5, something like a SWOT list emerges), along with lists of the worst (Chapter 9) and best (Chapter 10) "centerpiece" agricultural/farming opportunities, and additional advice (Top 10 lists of all sorts), makes the first half of this book indispensable to anyone wanting to farm on any scale.

One of the most sobering aspects, for me, was the straight talk about age and farming (also a big aspect of Wiley's book, as the subtitle suggests). I'm not getting any younger. One thing Salatin is surely saying is that I'll need to find a young partner if I ever entertain the notion of quitting my day job to go into farming full time.

So, why not START NOW! No need to wait another year to begin where I am with what I have. ...but I'll at least wait until I've read the second half of the book! Why not check out your own copy and see if you can beat me to the end?

Seeking Awareness in American Nature Writing

I was originally attracted to Seeking Awareness In American Nature Writing by the list of names on the cover: Henry Thoreau, Annie Dillard, Edward Abbey, Wendell Berry, Barry Lopez. What's not to like, right?! Wrong. This book is about the psychology of nature writing, about the psychology of the various authors previously listed. Don't waste your time on this academic reflection on the words of great writers. Go read the great writers. Has it been a while since you read Thoreau? Berry? (Not Barry.) Then ad fontes. It is too early still to do a whole lot in the garden, so you have some reading time left, but too little time to spend it here. That's my two cents. You may have a different opinion.

The Gift of Good Land

Wendell Berry's The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural is the 1981 publication (North Point Press, San Francisco) of a collection of essays hailing mostly from the 1970s, the environmental crises of which are a prelude to the same and similar questions now--and crises that have mostly only been exacerbated, not improved, by the passage of time.

It goes almost without saying that Wendell Berry's reputation as a thinker and writer was made by such essays and that the essays are well worth the reading, even now, for their obvious attention to the craft of writing. It is enjoyable, not just informative, to read Berry. This collection in particular was a followup to Berry's critically acclaimed The Unsettling of America, which is indeed where readers should start, if they haven't already, in reading Berry's work.

About the Essays:

"An Agricultural Journey in Peru" is a travel essay in the spirit of F.H. King's Farmers of Forty Centuries: Or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan. Instead of eastern traditional modes of farming, Berry focuses on what can be learned from traditional Peruvian potato farmers, especially what can be learned of preserving soil using terraces for hillside farming. The contrast between the traditional modes of preserving the soil and the methods promulgated by the "International Hill Land Symposium" (the subject of chapter 4) is obvious to Berry, and therefore also to the reader. Throw in such classics as "Horse-Drawn Tools and the Doctrine of Labor Saving" (Berry thinks labor saving leads to poor employment, as in a dearth of good work to do well.) or "Agricultural Solutions for Agricultural Problems" (i.e., industrial solutions to agricultural problems are no solutions at all) or "The Reactor and the Garden" (no, nuclear energy is no safer a bet now than it was when Berry first wrote the essay) or "A Good Scythe" (for anyone whose ears hurt after using a gas powered 'weed eater') and you've more than recovered the cost of the book.

Better yet, save some trees and check it out from your local library. I just returned it to ours for safe keeping. (I'm running out of shelf space.)

The book does include Berry's usual paeans to the Amish way of living. These are available elsewhere in many of Berry's non-fictional books. From Berry's own Foreword, the most compelling reason to read the book is for its presentation of many "exemplary practices" in farming and living. That's surely reason enough!

The Unforeseen Wilderness: Kentucky's Red River Gorge

The Unforeseen Wilderness: Kentucky's Red River Gorge, by Wendell Berry with photos by Ralph Eugene Meatyard. Shoemaker & Hoard, 1991.



I read this book back in April while on Spring Break with the family at Clifty Falls State Park (YouTube video of Clifty Falls) just west of Madison, Indiana. The book was a good and constant companion to the rocky cliffs, steep climbs, winding trails and waterfalls of the springtime park. The natural beauty accompanied by the words of Wendell Berry was a much needed respite. The book has the high quality writing that I've come to expect of Wendell Berry, not his best work by far, but appropriate to the physical setting and as always provocative in the best sort of way. The book was written to "save Kentucky's Red River Gorge from destruction"--i.e., to prevent the damming of the river and the drowning of the gorge--and that utilitarian motive (having been written for a useful purpose) casts a shadow and adds an artifice to the literary work that is rarely seen in Berry's poetry and fiction. That and the distance the book travels from Berry's usual topic--good land poorly farmed--makes for some dis-ease, at least for this reader.

Despite the minor criticism (that the book, though well suited to what it is, isn't what I had hoped or even as good as the greatest of Berry's works), the book offers descriptions and photos of the Red River Gorge that show it at its best (though I have never seen it). I imagine from Meatyard's photos and Berry's prose that it is the same sort of place that Clifty Falls once was, before Clifty Falls became overrun by the tourism (I was one of the tourists) that comes with the development of a place for "recreation," the establishment of a lodge and "easy trails" and paved roads along the gorge. Clifty Falls also suffers from having a coal fired power plant at its entrance, the stacks of which obscure the view and the smoke from which is enough to make even a healthy lung wheeze. (See the next post for the view from a cell phone camera.)

It is when the beautiful simplicity of the prose matches the austerity of what is described, the frugality of the words matching the extravagance of the "trout lilies, rue anemones, trailing arbutus" that Berry is at his finest. Those--and the places where he skewers the tourist-eye-view, regrets both the organizations that oppose and defend the dam, and that would destroy and preserve the gorge, and does battle with the likes of the mindset of the Army Corps of Engineers--are that places where the Wendell Berry we appreciate most comes into view.

Not the best book in the Berry bibliography. If you've never read Berry, don't start with this book. But if you are taking a tourist trip to see a "natural wonder" some day soon, pack this little reminder of sanity along. Oh the difference he'll make in the way you view the rocks and trees!

Human Limits and Unlimited Hubris

Wendell Berry. The Way of Ignorance: And Other Essays, Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005. (contributions by Daniel Kemmis and Courtney White)




Collections of essays are never as tightly constructed or coherent as a reader might wish, but this is one of those rare cases--and rare authors--for which one can truly say it does not matter. The subject of human limits--and our need to recognize and honor those limits--is of such importance and so permeates every essay in the book that the reader forgives what disjunctions do occur between individual essays. There is not a linear progression from beginning to end, but in the end who cares. The subject has been addressed thoughtfully from many directions.

Part I is the least satisfying section of the book. It is also the most political (in the stupid sense of that word), but short enough to be tolerable. Berry has written more and better about "Contempt for Small Places" and "Rugged Individualism." Tumbledown was gratified to see Berry endorse the growth of farmers markets, community supported agriculture (CSAs), sustainable agriculture, Slow Food (using all of the "movement" monikers) and the like as an alternative to "competing on the global market" and as an indicator that indeed "We Have Begun." The pace picks up toward the end of this section with one good (Compromise, Hell!) and one better ("Charlie Fisher") essay. The latter, the story of a man logging and using horses to do it, is vintage Berry.

Part II is the reason to buy the book, 98 work-horse pages in 8 little essays. The first, "Imagination in Place," tells us that Berry is a farmer-writer and a writer-farmer, and that both vocations are shaped by (and shape) the land on which he lives. A wondrously brief bibliography (library) illustrates the shape of Berry's "philosophy" of farming:

F. H. King, Farmers of Forty Centuries: Organic Farming in China, Korea, and Japan

Sir Albert Howard, An Agricultural Testament (Special Rodale Press Edition)

Sir Albert Howard, The Soil And Health: A Study of Organic Agriculture (Culture of the Land: A Series in the New Agrarianism)

J. Russel Smith, Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture (Conservation Classics)

Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

If these have influenced Berry's thoughts, you can bet they'll be on Tumbledown's shelf and on his nightstand soon. How better to understand Berry's influence on my own thoughts than to read his sources (in the sense of wells and springs) independently.

The title essay, "The Way of Ignorance," first written as a conference paper for the Land Institute, Marfield Green, Kansas, is about "our old friend hubris, ungodly ignorance disguised as godly arrogance. Ignorance plus arrogance plus greed sponsors 'better living with chemistry,' and produces the ozone hole and the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico." The thesis is that there is a congenital human ignorance and a a willful ignorance of our own ignorance (theologians would speak of original sin) that makes one shudder at the thought that our response to global warming and exhaustion of fossil fuels will be to build many, many more nuclear reactors. Having seen what gets "skipped" or "done poorly" at too many construction sites, Tumbledown has to agree that nuclear physics "'applied' by ignorant arrogance resembles much too closely an automobile being driven by a six-year-old boy or a loaded pistol in the hands of a monkey." All of that is on the first page of this dynamite essay that rings the changes on what we don't (and can't) know and why we should respect our limits. "The Purpose of a Coherent Community" is mostly a lament that we no longer have one. "Quantity vs. Form" is another demonstration that we transgress our limits at our peril--at the peril of appropriate human scale and a propriety of technological application. Medicine should be practiced by human standards (not by the standards of what machines can do). The same goes for agriculture. Limitless production is not a good thing. Limits provide the "formal completeness, grace, and beauty" of a part related to the whole. "Renewing Husbandry" is again a caution against boasting of "technological feats that will 'feed the world.'" Husbandry, according to Berry is the more comprehensive term; science the narrower, more specialized term. (Husbandry includes science.) Yet more is claimed for the much narrower science than the more comprehensive husbandry would ever dare claim. "The Burden of the Gospels" was of special interest to Tumbledown (a professional interest). It is heartening to see such straightforward readings of Scripture--especially the rejection of interpretations that come "perilously close to 'He didn't really mean it'" (Luke 14:26).

Part III consists of a letter by Berry to Daniel Kemmis (former Minority Leader and Speaker of the House in Montana, and mayor of Missoula), a reply from Kemmis to Berry. Both essays are worth reading if readers already care about the Democratic Party. If not, don't bother. The best essay of this final section is Courtney White's "The Working Wilderness: A Call for a Land Health Movement." Courtney is not predictably on any side except the side that offends both ranchers and environmentalists (and therefore probably best protects the land).

All in all, an awesome read. A book to read a second time (or at least major sections of it). A book to provoke thought. (And shouldn't every book be that?)