Recollected Essays 1965 1980

Rating:
Summary: Mixed Berry sampler.
Review: "I am afoot in the woods," Wendell Berry writes in one of the eleven essays included in this 1981 collection. "I am alive in the world, this moment, without the help or the interference of any machine" (p. 247). Berry is a novelist, poet, essayist, and Kentucky farmer. This 340-page book contains essays first published between 1965 and 1980 in books that have since gone out of print. Considering that Edward Abbey once called Berry "the best essayist now working in America," it is unfortunate that any of his writing has fallen out of print. Our world is poorer as a result.

With the eyes of a poet philosopher, Berry finds lessons everywhere within the world (p. 247), whether in the "illuminating and suitably humbling" powers (p. 15) and "moods" (p. 225) of a river ("The Rise," "A Country of Edges"), or in his sweet, solitary walks in the woods ("An Entrance to the Woods," "The Unforeseen Wilderness," "The Journey's End"). When a man goes into the woods on foot, Berry tells us, the wilderness receives him as a student. "And what it begins to teach him is how to live beyond his expectations; if he returns often and stays long perhaps it will teach him to live without expectations" (p. 247). Observing, too, that with the rise of industry, and the disintegration of marriage and community, our spirits have become separated from the world ("The Body and the Earth"), Berry encourages us to care for each other, and care for the earth (p. 304). Written in the tradition of Thoreau, Stegner, and Dillard, these essays offer a good introduction to Wendell Berry's early writings, and you should get your hands on a copy of RECOLLECTED ESSAYS before it becomes impossible to find.

G. Merritt

Rating:
Summary: Mixed Berry sampler.
Review: "I am afoot in the woods," Wendell Berry writes in one of the eleven essays included in this 1981 collection. "I am alive in the world, this moment, without the help or the interference of any machine" (p. 247). Berry is a novelist, poet, essayist, and Kentucky farmer. This 340-page book contains essays first published between 1965 and 1980 in books that have since gone out of print. Considering that Edward Abbey once called Berry "the best essayist now working in America," it is unfortunate that any of his writing has fallen out of print. Our world is poorer as a result.

With the eyes of a poet philosopher, Berry finds lessons everywhere within the world (p. 247), whether in the "illuminating and suitably humbling" powers (p. 15) and "moods" (p. 225) of a river ("The Rise," "A Country of Edges"), or in his sweet, solitary walks in the woods ("An Entrance to the Woods," "The Unforeseen Wilderness," "The Journey's End"). When a man goes into the woods on foot, Berry tells us, the wilderness receives him as a student. "And what it begins to teach him is how to live beyond his expectations; if he returns often and stays long perhaps it will teach him to live without expectations" (p. 247). Observing, too, that with the rise of industry, and the disintegration of marriage and community, our spirits have become separated from the world ("The Body and the Earth"), Berry encourages us to care for each other, and care for the earth (p. 304). Written in the tradition of Thoreau, Stegner, and Dillard, these essays offer a good introduction to Wendell Berry's early writings, and you should get your hands on a copy of RECOLLECTED ESSAYS before it becomes impossible to find.

G. Merritt