Remembering Wendell Berry

 

A New Harvest, with Wendell Berry, Henry County, KY 2011
photo by Guy Mendes, via Wikimedia Commons

There's sure a lot of dyin' going on these days: Good people who lead meaningful lives amid the chaos, clamor, and confusion of this mad, mad, mad, mad world. 

Just a few days ago it was Dolly Parton, for whom, it seems, an entire world has wept. She was a good woman who did good deeds, and made lots of people happy, using her fame and fortune to better the lives of people everywhere. 

Yesterday, it was Wendell Berry, whose life, prose, poetry, and philosophy have inspired me for the better part of my adult life, and whose work informed my academic pursuit of the philosophy of technology more than any other writer except William Morris. In fact, it was in a course called "Poet Economists, Poet Ecologists" at UTD that I first considered the two together, and outlined a plan of study that compared their mutual views on technology and political economy. The seeds of More News From Nowhere were sown here, and have been evolving ever since. 

The opening photo was taken when Berry, who famously refused to buy a computer and eschewed most modern complex technology, had solar panels installed on his farm. The major source of electricity in Kentucky has been coal--the reliance on which which Berry protested tirelessly. Like so many of us who dwell problematically within the contradictions of progress, Berry argued for the careful assessment of new technologies before their adoption. Solar generation of electricity, even though problematic, is far preferable to strip mining and other consequences of coal production, and so Berry switched to the newer tech in order to procure a cleaner source for his modest electrical needs.

Judging by the elegaic outpouring of praise for Berry's life and work I've come across today, it would be decidedly difficult for me to even begin to do him justice in my usual mode, where I note significant works and comment on their personal import. I had already planned to include an essay on Morris and Berry with the supplementary materials for More News From Nowhere, so I wouldn't know where to stop for this short post.

But Wendell Berry must have been fun to write about, judging from some of the older articles I've come across in my files. So here are a few items I've revisited today, on my way to coming to terms with losing one of the best models of a human being I've ever encountered. And since he was a poet, essayist, philosopher, novelist, historian, teacher, and academic, as well as farmer, his readers are legion.

Wendell Berry's Advice for a Cataclysmic Age: Sixty years after renouncing modernity, the writer is still contemplating a better way forward, by Dorothy Wickenden. The New Yorker, February 21, 2022.

A Shared Place, Wendell Berry's Lifelong Dissent, by Jedediah Britton Purdy. The Nation. September 9, 2022 (September 23 in the print issue). 

Going Home With Wendell Berry: The writer and farmer on local knowledge, embracing limits, and the eploitation of rural America, by Amanda Petrusich. The New Yorker. July14, 2019. 

A documentary worth watching: Look & See: Wendell Berry's Kentucky, directed by Laura Dunn. PBS: Independent Lens. April 23, 2018. [I would be very surprised if this doesn't get featured on PBS in the coming days, but you might be able to stream it from their archives now.]

For a biography with an extensive bibliography of Berry's works and critical commentary, see the Wikipedia article.

Wendell Berry died at home, in Kentucky, at age 92. It was still far too early.