Wendell
Berry. What Are People For? Berkley:
Counterpoint, 2010.
The title of this collection of early essays of Wendell
Berry is taken from one small essay bemoaning the migration of country people
to the cities; the very places where unemployment is higher and the concomitant
social ills are compounded. In the
course of these essays Berry provides his answer to the question, “what are
people for?” The question is a deep
well. It could be the metanarrative of
all literary traditions from time immemorial.
Recently, as I was getting service at the local car wash I had this book
with me to read as I waited. While
paying the attendant she noticed the title and offered some comment about the
profundity of the question. “Yes,” I
replied, “it is a question that everyone has an opinion about.”
As I drove away in my nice clean 1992 Toyota Camry I thought
more deeply about the question. Everyone
does surely have an opinion on it, even though most rarely address it in
explicit terms. A few pontificate on the
question; probably more than we need or want, especially during major political
elections. Most of us, however, give
considered opinion on this most central of questions sooner or later. When we choose a life partner or decide that
a partner is not really for life. Our
time at the bedside of a dying family member or friend may be hallowed or
haunted by the question. When attending
the arrival of our first born child we might be making our clearest statement
on the question even without speaking a word.
Could it be that we even make our position on this question known
throughout life in the ordinary routine activities of daily living? Do I speak to it in the clothes I wear or the
car I drive? Will the pattern of my
daily work habits give commentary? How
do my choices in food and drink belie my opinion? In what ways are my daily interactions with
colleagues, neighbors, and family speaking to the question? In all my thoughts about various opinions on
this question I am left with one other question. Whose opinion matters most?
The twin lyric essays that open this collection suggest
Berry’s opinion on the question. He
speaks of his own craft as poet and how the conveyance of culture functions as
an archive of humanity. A few selected
sentences from the first entitled, Damage,
illustrate.
An art that heals and protects its subject
is a geography of scars.
When the road of excess has reached the
place of wisdom it is a healed wound, a long scar.
Culture preserves the map and the records
of past journeys so that no generation will permanently destroy the route.
These lines hint of what Berry sees as the proper task of the artist, whether poet or farmer. They alike are cataloging the “scars” of human technological progress. One gets the impression from these essays that for Berry only in the wisdom gained from protracted involvement with the community of a local place can there be healing; a healing that comes through the exercise of “good work.”
To be creative is only to have health: to
keep oneself fully alive in the Creation, to keep the Creation fully alive in
oneself, to see the Creation anew, to welcome one’s part in it anew.[2]
Throughout the remaining essays Berry illustrates these
ideas. He names the chief perpetrators
of the “scars” upon our good earth: power companies, industrial agriculture,
and human consumption. Some individuals who
speak prophetically in the face of those who would do damage to the environment
are also named: Wallace Stegner, Edward Abbey, Harry Caudill, and “Nate
Shaw.” Most of all, the essays provide
Berry’s observations on how to “live fully.”
A significant aspect of Berry's answer is what he defines
properly as "beloved community....common experience and common effort on a
common ground to which one willingly belongs."[3] His essay entitled, “The Work of Local
Culture,” may stand as a prĂ©cis of much of his work as a writer. Using the image of an old bucket hanging for
many years on a fence post where it collects fallen leaves, animal droppings,
periodic rain, and other of nature’s offerings which time turns to soil. It is for Berry a picture of the
community.
A human community, too, must collect leaves and stories, and
turn them to account. It must build
soil, and build that memory of itself—in lore and story and song—that will be
its culture.[4]
That is as close to Berry’s answer as any I know. An answer rooted in the theological
understanding that “God created all things for His pleasure….God’s pleasure in
all things must be respected by us in our use of things.”[5]
Steve Baker, Dean of Warren Library
Palm Beach Atlantic University
October 21, 2013