Since Wendell Berry's death last week, fans and followers have shared their appreciation for who he was and what he achieved. And that's reflected by a recent spike in demand for his writing. There were waiting lists for 30 of the Berry titles the Louisville Free Public Library maintains as of Thursday, according to a staff member.
For admirers, it's a time to recount his work's challenge, delight and inspiration. But for those who are unfamiliar with the breadth of Berry's catalogue, it may feel difficult to find a way in.
LPM News spoke with writers about why they love his work and where to start if you're new to the Wendell Berry library.
Berry gave Kentucky writers permission and inspiration
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Barbara Kingsolver recounts Berry's writing as a tool of her own literary liberation. Kingsolver, another Kentuckian, said in a recent interview with WEKU that Berry's work gave her permission to embrace her small-town upbringing. She recalled, specifically, "The Long-Legged House."
"It was an exploration of that idea that if we try to leave behind the people and place who made us, we're losing ourselves," Kingsolver said. "We're betraying ourselves."
In her eyes, Berry's strongest legacy lives in his essays. The form gave him freedom to speak plainly to an audience in a world with a shrinking attention span and a society focused on self-made heroes.
"Nobody is self-made, and that mythology is so destructive in so many ways to our psyches," Kingsolver said. "Because you know, part of that myth is if I can't make it on my own, somehow I'm a failure. I haven't worked hard enough, or I haven't, or I'm not smart enough, or something."
Berry recognized, celebrated and connected the interdependence of each individual in a community, she said. It's present in everything he wrote — poetry and prose. His writing and activism also received its fair share of criticism over the decades.
Spalding University professor and Kentucky Poet Laureate Kathleen Driskell said she finds Berry's essays full of complex ideas to be inviting.
"They don't put you off, or at least they don't put me off when I'm entering into them," Driskell said. "They say wonderful things. It was his essays first that made me really — and probably most Kentucky writers will say this — that made me really proud to be a Kentucky writer."
As a poet, essayist and chair of Spalding's creative writing department, Driskell has traveled a lot. But Berry's writing and pathos, she said, invited her to be inspired by the concept of home.
"He gave me permission to really go deep instead of far, far, far afield," Driskell said. "To really honor the place where we live and to look at it very carefully, I find that I can write about anything in the world just by connecting it to something that's happening around my community here."
Berry finds acclaim in popular culture
A Kentuckian caused actor, writer and craftsman Nick Offerman to first engage with Berry's writing. Offerman said he started with two books of essays given to him by actor Leo Burmester, and recognized something familiar.
"I suddenly realized he was writing about my mom and dad and their incredible values, and the reverence with which he paid the part of us that pays fidelity to a home place or to a community or a household just struck me like no other writer ever has," he said.
Offerman said as he read more, he became more entranced by Berry's writing, and his commitment to respect of the land, family and community that sustains a person. Offerman has Berry's poetry printed and hung in his woodshop.
"There's a simplicity to it, there's always an idea that I can really chew on, often with a great deal of romance and/or humor," he said.
Offerman recorded audio versions of some of Berry's books and created a podcast with WNYC Studios reading his poetry and reflecting on it. He recommends "Watch With Me" and "Fidelity" for Berry newcomers. Berry's numerous titles evolve from the same elements, Offerman said, that make his fictional world of Port William universal.
"It's a great sort of grab bag," Offerman said. "It's a flight of stories, as it were. In pub talk, you've got a stout and a lager, and that is a sort of bite-sized version to get you hooked on the fellowship of Port William."
The continuity that survives in Berry's words
Maurice Manning, professor of English and writer in residence at Transylvania University, had Berry as a professor at the University of Kentucky. Berry taught a course on pastoral poetry, and would often give students dense reading assignments, prompting them to respond to them in a single sentence. Manning said it was one of the most difficult classes he ever took.
"He wanted us to admire the qualities of good writing, you know, skilled, artful writing," he said. "But I think he also wanted us to see that good writing indicates the character of the writer's imagination, and that's something that I didn't get at first in the class, but I have tried to get it since."
Manning had personal connections with Berry as well. His father grew up on a small farm, but after World War II, his life was uprooted from his rural home. Manning said his decision to connect deeply with Kentucky and move in a direction counter to the dominant, fast-paced culture with increasing emphasis on a life lived on the internet was inspired by Berry. For Manning, the idea of continuity is the foundational gift Berry gave — through his writing, living and activism — that does not end with his death.
"That, I think, is the key concept in all of his work," Manning said. "If you look at nature carefully, not as simply the backdrop for whatever you're doing, but if you look into nature, you see that its whole purpose is continuity. Yes, that includes death, but the ultimate purpose of nature is its own self-preservation, its own ongoing renewal of life."
A recommended reading list from these writers:
Essays
- What Are People For?
- Home Economics
- The Gift of Good Land
- Sex, Economy, Freedom, & Community
- The Unsettling of America
- The Long-Legged House
Poetry
Novels
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