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Forty Acres and a Muse |
| Section: BOOK WORLD / REVIEWS |
| Author: Stephen Goodwin |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 1/1/1993 |
| Size: 3,170 Words, 18,435 Characters |
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FIDELITY
Wendell Berry
New York: Pantheon Books, 1992
201 pp., $20.00
In the photograph on the dust jacket of Fidelity, a collection of five stories, Wendell Berry is shown with a broad smile on his face, his arm around the shoulders of his smiling wife, Tanya. They are standing outdoors, in front of an open barn door, and they look as if they have just received wonderful news. Berry is wearing a farmer's coveralls, the kind with zipper pockets on the chest, and a billed cap sits just a bit crookedly on his head. For a man nearing sixty, he looks remarkably trim and fit, as does his wife. Their pose might be American Gothic, but the pitchfork is missing, and there is no trace of bitterness. This farmer and his wife appear to be blessedly happy, brimming over with health and contentment.
I have described this photograph at length because it differs so sharply from most pictures of American writers, and because it yields so much that is essential about Wendell Berry. If the picture weren't on a book jacket--if you came across it in a rural newspaper, where it seems to belong--you would never imagine that you were looking at a writer. That is as it should be, for Berry always has defined himself first as a farmer and family man. His first loyalties are to his native place and local community. From these commitments--from place, family, and community--his writing has flowed, and it has flowed abundantly. Berry is the author of twenty-five books of poetry, essays, and fiction. As for his open smile, Berry always has challenged the wrongheaded idea that farming is a life of drudgery, insisting--and proving by his own example--that it offers a satisfaction and fulfillment not to be found elsewhere.
This, of course, is hard for many people to believe, and Berry has earned a certain notoriety as an enem...
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... vital contact with the soil and weather on which his life depends.... His sense of man's dependence on the world will have grown precise enough to be clarifying and useful."
Clarifying and useful--these words perfectly describe the work of Wendell Berry. No American writer has taken greater pains to show that if we wish to make a better world, we must first set our own houses in order. vbcrlf
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Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
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The World & I Online is a
comprehensive academic resource that encompasses a broad range of
articles by scholars and experts in the areas of Global Studies,
Liberal Arts, Fine & Applied Arts, General Science, and Spanish.
Originally published monthly in print as The World & I, our site
includes the complete contents since 1986 and continues to publish
a new issue online each month. |
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