Author WENDELL BERRY
Publisher NORTH POINT PRESS
ISBN 0-86547-330-7
This short novel is one of a series the author has written about Port William, a fictitious rural community in Kentucky. Berry himself is a native Kentuckian and returned there to farm about seventy-five acres of land after teaching in New York and California. He is regarded as one of the greatest living poets of the USA and has written many essays that deal with issues of conservation and related matters. Yes, there are sometimes quotations from the Bible, but we cannot describe Berry as Christian author writing Christian books, but there is so much to commend the sheer wisdom and common sense way in which he approaches the madness of the worship of the machine, of progress and the spirit that acquires for acquisitions sake.
People become statistics and walk in the bubble of the own self and Berry writes of these things in an engaging way that is both penetrating and uses the richest veins of the English language. There is plenty to meditate on in this short novel and in his other writings, but, as far as his novels are concerned it is wise to persevere in your reading, because it may only be in the latter half that what is really at the heart of what he is saying emerges. I think that there is much that ennobles the whole creation in what Berry writes. You get the sense that he has thought deeply about these matters, he is not a novice who is peddling a theme but a craftsman who loves his tools and that object on which he working and it shows. It would do everyone good to sit and take time with Wendell Berry and what he has given us.
