Wendell Berry

Life and Work

Jason Peters

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN:
  9780813124421
• eBook ISBN:
  9780813137650
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies
• Index: Technology & Engineering

A portrait of an American thinker with contributions by Barbara Kingsolver, Bill McKibben, Sven Birkerts, Wes Jackson, and more: "A masterful collection." — Charlotte Observer
Essayist, social critic, poet, "mad farmer," novelist, teacher, and prophet: Wendell Berry has been called many things, but the broad sweep of his contemporary relevance and influence defies facile labels. With a unique perspective and far-reaching vision, Berry poses complex questions about humankind and our relationship to the land and offers simple but profound solutions. Berry's writings give voice to a provocative but consistent philosophy that extends far beyond its agrarian core to include elements of sociology, the natural sciences, politics, religion, philosophy, linguistics, agriculture, and other seemingly incompatible fields of study.
Wendell Berry: Life and Work examines this wise, original thinker, appraising his written work and exploring his influence as an activist and artist. Each of the contributors—including Hayden Carruth, Sven Birkerts, Barbara Kingsolver, Stanley Hauerwas, Donald Hall, Ed McClanahan, Bill McKibben, Scott Russell Sanders, Norman Wirzba, Wes Jackson, and Eric T. Freyfogle—examines an aspect of Berry's varied yet cohesive body of work. Also included are highly personal glimpses of Berry: his career, academic influence, and unconventional lifestyle.
These deft sketches show the purity of Berry's agrarian lifestyle and demonstrate that there is nothing simple about the life to which he's devoted himself. He embraces a life that sustains him not by easy purchase and haste but by physical labor and patience, not by mindless acquiescence to a centralized economy but by attention to local ways and wisdom. This book combines biographical sketches, personal accounts, literary criticism, and social commentary. The result is a rich portrait of one of America's most profound and honest thinkers.

Index

Abbey, Edward, 26, 89, 94, 215, 322

absentee economy, 307

activists, 54

Adam, 128

Adams, Helen, 195

Adams, Henry, 256, 275

Adams, Nick, 193–96, 198–99, 201–3, 205–6

Adams, Peter, 92

affection, 152

Afghanistan, 55, 106

AFL (American Federation of Labor), 184

Against the Protestant Gnostics (Philip Lee), 272

agape, 121

Agar, Herbert, 96

agrarian republic, 50

Agricultural Crisis: A Crisis of Culture, The (Myrin Institute), 88

Agricultural Testament, An (Sir Albert Howard), 90, 138

Aiken Taylor Award, 322

Albright, Madeleine, 30

“Aleph, The” (Jorge Luis Borges), 230

Algonquin Round Table, 321

Alps, 196–97

Alsace, 62–63

America First Committee, 24

American Farm Bureau Federation, 184

American Heritage Dictionary, 165

American nationalism, prevailing ideology of, 54

American Right, 214

American studies, 242

“America the Beautiful,” (Katherine Lee Bates), 113

Amish, 164

Amyx (Berry), Tanya, 12. See also Berry, Tanya

Anderson, Sherwood, 35, 194

Annals of Horticulture (Liberty Hyde Bailey), 98

Another Turn of the Crank (Wendell Berry), 324

anthropism, 76

anti-Gnosticism, 270

anti-Manichaeanism, 270–71

anti-Vietnam War coalition, 28

Apess, William, 4

Appalachian communities, 51

Appalachians, 40, 115, 248, 296

Arbeit und Hoffe, 63

Arbella, 4

Aristotle, 303–6, 310

Armies of the Night, The (Norman Mailer), 38

As You Like It (William Shakespeare), 138

Atlantis, 24...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Ain’t They the Berries!
• Wendell Berry on War and Peace; Or, Port William versus the Empire
• Words Addressed to Our Condition Exactly
• The Best Noise in the World
• Wendell Berry’s Political Vision
• How Wendell Berry Single-Handedly Preserved Three Hundred Years of Agrarian Wisdom
• Memory and Hope in the World of Port William
• Politics, Nature, and Value in Wendell Berry’s “Art of the Commonplace”
• Berry Britannica
• Wendell Berry and the Twentieth-Century Agrarian “Series”
• A Citizen of the Real World
• Sexuality and the Sacramental Imagination: It All Turns on Affection
• A Practical Education: Wendell Berry the Professor
• An Economy of Gratitude
• Letters from a Humble Radical
• Wendell Berry and the Limits of Populism
• Hemingways Nick and Wendell Berry’s Art
• At His Desk as on His Land
• Wendell Berry and the Traditionalist Critique of Meritocracy
• Looking the Technological Gift Horse in the Mouth
• Wendell Berry: Agrarian Artist
• Education, Heresy, and the “Deadly Disease of the World”
• Wendells Window and the Winds Eye
• The Art of Buying Nothing
• Fidelity
• Wendell Berry and the Alternative Tradition in American Political Thought
• A Long Shelf
• Afterword
• Chronology
• Selected Bibliography
• List of Contributors
• Index