Someone I revere and respect recently explained to me (paraphrased):
“No one has read those nature writers you read. They aren’t mainstream. No one knows who they are. They were published because they’re weird.”
Based on some on-the-ground market research I’ve done (i.e. living in a city where everyone doesn’t think exactly like me), it’s come up true. All of the liberal, earth-loving, smart people I went to college with can spout off names beyond Thoreau because our professors in rural Vermont (of course) assigned nature writing with urgency and conviction. Anyone else I’ve ever met has never heard of them or that thing called “nature writing.” I have two reactions to that:
#1 Really?
#2 Well, that makes sense because environmentalists are famous for marginalizing themselves. Preaching to the choir might feel good, but it’s ultimately only as useful as the energy the choir has to go mingle with, let’s say, Republicans, if your choir is Democratic.
For all the pushing against it I did while living in New York, I am now re-reading Wendell Berry’s agrarian essays, ‘The Art of the Commonplace,” which I’m guessing most of you reading this blog haven’t read or heard of. Taking stock of the hour and the day, 3pm Mountain Time, United States of America, August 21, 2009, Berry’s words could not be more apt. Sure, some of the language is outdated, he uses words like household; some might be jargony, not witty, too idealistic. But many of his ideas are radical and would appropriately offend people. Usually, he is wise, sharp, humble and moral, a word not highly-prized these days, even by me (I think “oh, moral, how boring, how 1950’s).
But in an era where knowledge of elders is underused, I wish…everyone was reading him right now. The essays deal with agriculture AND sex and racism and feminism and economics and fidelity and community and health. I mean, what’s not interesting? Our world’s churn seems to be on overdrive these days. So in response, I’m looking for a resurrection,… a resurrection of all those writers, nature writers or not, who lurk somewhere on the margins.
For tid-bits of Wendell Berry’s essays…
“My mind is never empty or idle at the joinings of streams.”
“Where the creation is whole nothing is extraneous.”
“I do not believe that ‘employment outside the home’ is as valuable or important or satisfying as employment at home, for either men or women.”
“It is not from ourselves that we will learn to be better than we are.”
“There was the assumption that the life of the metropolis is the experience, the modern experience, and that the life of the rural towns, the farms, the wilderness places is not only irrelevant to our time, but archaic as well because it is unknown or unconsidered by the people who really matter–that is, the urban intellectuals.”
“I am not an authority on men or women or any of the possible connections between them. In sexual matters I am an amateur, in both the ordinary and the literal senses of that word. I speak about them only because I am concerned about them; I am concerned about them only because I am involved in them; I am involved in them, apparently, only because I am human, a qualification for which I deserve no credit.”
Tags: nature writing, wendell berry
How refreshing. I love this man. I am employed both inside and outside the home, and I do find the former more satisfying. I recently spend 10 days cooking and cleaning for friends who just had their first baby and found it to be some of the most enjoyable work I’ve had. It put many of my city ambitions at bay! Will all the nature readers in NYC please make yourself known, this here is one who would love some discussion and engagement on this theme.
I’m another one of W Ber’s peeps. He thinks deep and writes expansively about things that are important to everyone. 18 years living on a hobby farm in western PA has taught me a lot about helping and depending on my neighbor, listening to the earth, and finding creative satisfaction in work. He is indeed an elder with a valuable voice.
Katinka and Jas,
Glad to know there are some Berry readers out there in blogland.
Berry is, as you write Jas, an advocate of finding “creative satisfaction in work” of all types– love that about his message.
have heard and read wendell berry. life changes when you dive into his writings. thanks for bringing him to our attention