Chestertonian Musings: Wendell Berry and the Things That Unite Men

It may or may not be a wise idea to try to maintain a normal posting schedule in the midst of the Silmaril Awards, buuuut I'm going to try anyway. Because I never said I was always wise. (And also, I had this post written already, so why not.)

(Incidentally, today is your last day to nominate and second characters for the Silmaril Awards! If you haven't done so already, hop over here and get cracking!)

I'm going to be honest: this post is mostly an excuse to scream about Wendell Berry. BUT I did read a Chesterton essay/chapter recently that was relevant, so I'm going to bring that in, too, I promise. XD

I heard of Wendell Berry originally from reading Book Girl by Sarah Clarkson, I think. That was in 7th or 8th grade, most likely. Or maybe it was from hearing Sarah Mackenzie talk about him. Or maybe it was because he's one of my mom's friend's favorite authors. Or maybe it was because I was supposed to read Jayber Crow in 8th or 9th grade literature and skipped it. (And yet, I still graduated high school. Don't tell my mom.) Or maybe it was because Andrew Peterson talks about him briefly in Adorning the Dark. 

And yet, somehow it took me until the second semester of my freshman year of college to actually read anything by him. 

And I still don't remember exactly why I added Hannah Coulter to my reading list. It came up somehow, and I decided on a whim that I remembered hearing good things about it, and I'd read it at some point. 

Then I read it. And it was phenomenal. I read it in slow sips, then long gulps, in between classes, and while I was walking, and pretty much any time I could. I still remember finishing it on the bus and just staring out the window, trying to hold onto the hiraeth that it inspired in me. 

And I decided that I definitely needed to read Jayber Crow, and was able to pick it up while I was working at the goat farm, and consequently had several hours in the middle of the day to do (almost) nothing. I gulped it down in two days. 

From my experience so far, I think Wendell Berry is one of the best still-living authors. He certainly writes in the most classic style I think I've ever encountered. 

But it's not just that he writes in what seems like a classic style that made me love what he writes. 

I obviously have not read everything he's ever written, but the two books I've read have been part of a larger group of books about the "Port William Membership", the group of people who lived, working, and in the true sense of the word dwelt in Port William, a fictional town in Kentucky from before WWII to the early 2000s. In both books I've read, he portrays the beautiful, peaceful, functional, and humane way that people lived and ran their farms and businesses before and during the war, and how the push for farmers to "get big or get out" disrupted the community, destroyed the land, and really killed Port William as an entity.

And it's really horribly sad, because as a reader, after reading one of his books, or even when reading the first one, you know that's coming, or you have an inkling. But you hope that it won't. You hope that this little pocket of community and hard work and family and joy could just keep going and going. But no--the modern era intrudes. And not for the better. 

And yet, there's still so, so, so much beauty within the books. So much understanding of human nature (and how things are never perfect), and so much contentment with "the given life". And so much love of place, too, so much rootedness. 

Hannah Coulter is written from the point of view of an older woman recalling the story of her life. One of the things which I thought best done about it was the way that through her narrative, you could see the younger self she had been--she hadn't lost track with herself at 18, or 30, or 47, but those ages and selves were still a part of her somehow. Which is not a super great way to describe it, but I'm trying. XD It felt like sitting in a rocking chair on the porch on a the cool of a summer evening in your grandmother's arms while she tells you a story. 

But the thing that struck me most was the way that it was able to portray the beauty of marriage, of life lived in marriage and on a farm, day in and day out, despite difficulties and children moving away and the generally hard things of life, which were never sugarcoated. 

Jayber Crow was somewhat similar in terms of point of view (only, an older man), but it's a lot more about the love of place, the love of wandering, and how a relationship with God grows over time and life experience. Jayber begins his life with a lot of questions about God and religion, which God  s l o w l y  answers over the course of his life, and as he gets older, he starts to realize why he was taught the things he was taught, and how he can best love God. It was beautiful.

One thing that's consistent between them is the focus on the beauty of the small things, and the beauty and importance of one's daily life, one's daily vocation, and one's daily duties. "Small things with great love", as St. Therese would say. 

And thus, here we come to the point where I introduce le Chesterton. (Probably the incorrect article form in French, but we're going to ignore that.) 

In my recent-ish read of Heretics, one of my very favorite chapters was the one in which Chesterton addressed Kipling. Among other wonderful points, he makes the point that people who travel everyone are always 

"thinking of the things that divide men--diet, dress, decorum, rings in the nose as in Africa, or in the ears as in Europe, blue paint among the ancients, or red paint among the modern Britons."

He postulates that people who travel everyone actually living in a "smaller world". However, people who live in the same place live differently. 

"The man in the cabbage field has seen nothing at all; but he is thinking of the things that unite men--hunger and babies, and the beauty of women, and the promise or menace of the sky."

The reason, I think, that Wendell Berry's writing is so wonderful, so beautiful, and feels so classic (or classical) is that he writes about "the man in the cabbage field". For the most part, the people he writes about live in the same place, either the same town or the same house, most of their lives. That means that the things that they're concerned about and the things that concern them are the things which "unite men"--definitely hunger, babies, women, and the sky (I think all of those show up at one point or another in JC & HC), but also God, and children, and marriage, and food, and place, and growing things. It's able to be so universal, because it's so fixed in place.

I think that, perhaps, that's one of the reasons why the books feel so poignant (and made me tear up in several spots)...because the modern world is not fixed in one place. We're so often the people who move around enough to see on the "things that divide men", but deep down, we want to be the "man in the cabbage field". Wendell Berry touches a chord. And it is good.

Have you read any Wendell Berry? Do you think the Chesterton quotes are accurate? What are some of your favorite "modern classics", i.e. modern books that feel like classics?