Wendell Berry (AP photo); Screenshot of a graphic showing his farm, used in the video of an interview of Wendell Berry with Bill Moyers.
I don’t recall the last time I wrote notes or copied passages while reading a novel. Recently, that happened while reading Wendell Berry’s novel, Jayber Crow. I am embarrassed to admit that until now I knew very little about Wendell Berry. The noted author and poet died Aug. 31, 2026, at the age of 92.
Years ago, a work colleague extolled Berry’s vision about the depth of our connection to the land with agriculture as it should be, and not the industrialized version we have today. Back then I didn’t pay much attention. Recently, I have learned enough to appreciate his genius of putting into words many of the notions people have about faith, nature, community, even heaven.
From what I have read so far, Berry accepted the reality of technology, digital and otherwise, yet he retained hope and faith that humanity and all God’s creation would prevail as intended. A noted contrarian, it seems as though Berry was pushing back against the prevailing aspects of the Postmodern Era. Ahead of his time, he personified the Metamodern Era, “which revives hope, truth, and resolution.”
One thing data centers and AI will never replace, is the mystery of life in the human body and its connection with the natural world – land, water, plants and animals. I wonder what Berry would have said about all that and the future we now face in a digitally muddled world. According to Chat GPT, he might have said something like, “Ask not what AI can do for us; ask what it will do to us.”
Old Kentucky home
As a rising star in the academic and literary worlds, Berry was on a path to some degree of fame in New York City, far from his rustic origins in rural Kentucky. In his late twenties he left the big city, returning to the farm where his family had lived for generations. He needed to be close to the land, not an easy thing to do in New York City. And back in Kentucky he probably became more renown as writer, and better able to tap into his roots.
If you have about 40 minutes to spare (just steal it from doomscrolling), you will appreciate an interview of Berry with Bill Moyers in July 2025. Also, check out The Berry Center, “putting
Wendell Berry’s writings to work by advocating for small farmers, land-conserving communities, and healthy regional economies.”
“While Berry inspired writers, artists, local-food activists, environmentalists, agrarians and many others, some of his deepest admirers were moved by his spiritual vision,” writes Peter Smith for the Associated Press. “ ‘Persons cannot be whole alone,’ Berry wrote in The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, his classic 1977 work. ‘It is wrong to think that bodily health is compatible with spiritual confusion or cultural disorder, or with polluted air and water or impoverished soil’.”
Although a late comer to Berry and his work, I immediately identified with his experience. Leaving high school in a small city, I had no intention of returning. After years in the big city, attending school, driving truck, and working at newspapers, I never really felt at home. The noise, traffic, and crowds left me feeling unsettled. My later employment in the environmental field introduced me to sustainable agriculture, which Berry vigorously propounded.
After receiving a bachelor’s degree in animal science, my wife, a city girl, wanted to move to the country where she could have animals and work for veterinarians. We ended up back in my hometown where I got a job at the local newspaper. We joined the 71 percent of Minnesotans who remain living in their hometown or close to it, which is well above the national average of about 49 percent.
Barbershop wisdom
Berry’s return to Kentucky provides the fuel for the narrative in his 2000 novel, Jayber Crow, subtitled, The Life Story of Jayber Crow, Barber, of the Port William Membership, as Written by Himself. Jayber’s (Berry’s) musings about religion and spirituality come close to my thoughts and beliefs about such things. Several are mentioned in my Sept. 3 post, “Summer Postpourri.”
Writing in Christianity Today, editor Russell Moore describes Jayber Crow “as the memoir of a disillusioned would-be preacher who is irritated at all the same aspects of American Christianity that Berry was.” Jayber concludes that “Christ did not come to found an organized religion but came instead to found an unorganized one.”
Moore continues: “For Berry, an overemphasis on the spirituality of the eternal could lead to exactly what we see: a time in which creation is seen as ‘the environment’ and agriculture is seen as ‘food production’ and land is seen as ‘natural resources,’ and wilderness is seen as ‘scenery.’ To him, the problem is not just that this perspective hurts the land (though that would be enough) but also that it deforms human beings.”
Recently I learned about Lutherans Restoring Creation, a grassroots organization in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, that envisions “sustained, faith-fueled flourishing as part of Creation…The season of Creation is an optional season of the church year that turns worship toward God as Creator. It is typically celebrated from the beginning of September until St. Francis of Assisi Day.”
After reading Jayber Crow, my thoughts of basing a novel about a small town seen through the eyes and ears of its newspaper editor have diminished. Newspaper editors may have broad connections in community and its various groups, but for the most part with little depth. Jayber Crow, on the other hand, in his role as the town’s barber, hears stories that are much deeper, among the menfolk mostly.
Vertical narrative
If novels have both vertical and horizontal narrative, in Jayber Crow the former predominates. That is, the musings of Jayber, and his dialogue with other main characters and community in general, border on the profound (vertical narrative). This brings some criticism from readers who prefer more action and a faster pace (horizontal narrative).
I had no problem with the slow-paced narrative. It allows you to reflect on its meaning and savor the rustic yet graceful style of Berry’s writing. For many admirers he is almost better known as a poet. His most famous poem may be “The Peace of Wild Things,” published in 2012:
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Following are links to some of my previous posts on environmental issues:
The ‘state fair’ of agriculture – Food, farming, stewardship can bridge cultural, ideological differences, Aug. 6. 2026.
The nature of things – Amid weather and human turmoil, farms and gardens sustain our bodies and souls, June 11, 2026.
Where turkeys gobble, bison once grazed – On native prairie bison inspired thanks for physical and spiritual sustenance, Nov. 27, 2025
Down to earth – Living with healthy soil is a gut-level experience, July 31, 2025.
Earth Day shines on the environment – It’s complicated: From limnology, to climate, to cow farts? April 16, 2025.
Down the drain – World Water Day falls off US EPA calendar, March 26, 2025.
