I Review A Wendell Berry Interview

#241: Among The Top Ten Influencers In My Life
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The New Yorker's Amanda Petrusich interviewed Wendell Berry recently, and caused me to remember reading Berry's non-fiction in high school, plus his poetry and "The Unsettling of America" in college.  I will quote from the article, then comment (in green):

"My daddy said to me, about five years after I married Tanya, “Well, you’ve got a good girl.” And I said, proudly, “I know it,” and he said, “Well, you don’t deserve a damn bit of credit for it.” And he was right. ... Somehow, you just get led to where you’re supposed to be, if you’re willing to submit."

Sounds familiar.

"“I had a wonderful life and I had nothing to do with it”—well, now I can say that, too."

One imagines alternative lives for oneself.  Berry seems to be saying that those different lives can't happen if one follows true happiness.

"If we should decide to replace the chemicals and some of the [big farm] machinery with humans, as for health or survival we need to do, that would be very difficult and it would take a long time ... (b)ecause there is no farmer pool from which farmers can be recruited ready-made."

Yes, but if change is to come, it will certainly be voluntary, and probably gradual.  First, limit the damage--from soil loss, for example.  Then encourage best practices and smaller / more numerous farms.

"A well-made sentence, I think, is a thing of beauty. But then, a well-farmed farm also can feed a need for beauty."

A tempting critique of Berry's philosophy is that knowing what is true happiness can only be possible when we're free of preconceived notions of where happiness is found.  Exposure to alternative paths--urban life--is what expands choice to the point where true happiness is always included in the mix of choices.  Otherwise, the blinders of 'prescribed' happiness--especially when income is depressed--means that 'beauty' is found in superficial, disappointing 'appearance', like applied make-up, orderliness, following the leader, etc.  Berry mentions the Amish.  Here is a pictorial essay.  Have these people found 'true happiness'?  On the other hand, of course, if rural incomes soar and modern technology brings cosmopolitan culture into one's home, no matter where one lives, and farms are more intimately sized.., maybe Berry's right.

"You must either decide [marriage] is worth working at, or just leave it undone. [It] is not perfect agreement. But you’ve accepted this other person into your mind. I work alone, but always with her presence in my mind. And she is somebody I want to impress. I’m going to write this with the hope that it’ll help her to love me. I feel the stakes are pretty high. I’m in a conversation with her that hasn’t ended yet."

Now that's telling it.