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Port William
The Wild Birds: Six Stories of the Port William Membership
Now in paperback for the first time, Berry's popular collection of six interconnected stories traces his Port William characters through the Depression up to the 1950s.
146 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1986
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1176 people want to read
About the author
Wendell Berry
292 books4,867 followersWendell Berry is a conservationist, farmer, essayist, novelist, professor of English and poet. He was born August 5, 1934 in Henry County, Kentucky where he now lives on a farm. The New York Times has called Berry the "prophet of rural America."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 130 reviews
August 15, 2019
I was getting pretty homesick for my Port William family and neighbors so decided to pay a short visit. Sleazy politicians and celebrities can really get you down if you pay too much attention to them, so I decided to escape. Books are such an easy, safe way to travel, both over distances and through time, and I needed the solace of these characters I've come to know and love.
The first story was amusing, the second one gave me a lump in my throat, the third one brought tears to my eyes, the fourth one had tears running down my cheeks, and I was openly sobbing by the end of the fifth one. The sixth and last story starred Burley Coulter, who is my favorite person in the Port William membership. As always, Wendell Berry's fictional characters sometimes feel more real than people I see every day.
I'm not sure what it says about our world that reading about simple human decency and stewardship of the land and responsibility to one's friends and family can affect me so strongly. Berry doesn't so much tell a story as he just lets us follow these people in thought and action going about their everyday lives, which buries them in our psyches. They live and breathe along with me, thank goodness, because through them, I am reminded that there are a lot of decent people still in the world, always have been and always will be.
The first story was amusing, the second one gave me a lump in my throat, the third one brought tears to my eyes, the fourth one had tears running down my cheeks, and I was openly sobbing by the end of the fifth one. The sixth and last story starred Burley Coulter, who is my favorite person in the Port William membership. As always, Wendell Berry's fictional characters sometimes feel more real than people I see every day.
I'm not sure what it says about our world that reading about simple human decency and stewardship of the land and responsibility to one's friends and family can affect me so strongly. Berry doesn't so much tell a story as he just lets us follow these people in thought and action going about their everyday lives, which buries them in our psyches. They live and breathe along with me, thank goodness, because through them, I am reminded that there are a lot of decent people still in the world, always have been and always will be.
November 28, 2021
The character that holds this series of stories together is Wheeler Catlett, Andy’s father. For those who are familiar with Port William, Wheeler will be a known figure, and they will also encounter Old Jack again and Elton Penn, Burley Coulter, and of course, Andy Catlett, Berry's alter-ego.
1930 - Thicker Than Liquor. In this story I was introduced to Uncle Peach, a man I don’t recall having met before, brother to Wheeler’s mother. This story is about familial obligation and how that is passed along in families sometimes.
1947 - Where Did They Go?, is a story from Andy’s childhood, in which his father sends him off to work at the Branch place for the summer. It is a coming-of-age story in which Andy gets a glimpse of interpersonal relationships that help to inform his understanding of life.
1950 - My favorite story of the bunch is It Wasn’t Me, in which we find Wheeler, an attorney, struggling with how to execute the wishes of Old Jack regarding the disposal of his farm, when the legal cards are stacked against him. I have read The Memory of Old Jack, the book devoted to this character, and I was so happy to find myself in company with Wheeler and Elton Penn and their memories of Old Jack, as he is a favorite character.
This story is full of that remarkable Wendell Berry wisdom that, if processed and followed, could make a life so much richer than it might be otherwise.
He had done this assuming, as he often did, in a world that he assumed was ruled by instinctive decency. That Clara and Glad Pettit did not inhabit that particular world, they let him know fast.
And then he would think, no longer arguing but only mourning, that the Petits were playing a different game from any that Old Jack had ever played, and living in a different world from the one he had lived in. The letter in the notebook was written in a language the Pettits did not speak; they had forgot the tongue in which an old man might cry out from his grave in love and in defense of a possibility no longer his own in this world.
1965 - The Boundary was the story included to make me cry, and I did. It is about the last days of Mat Feltner, and what it is to grow old. Berry writes about the continuity of life and the passing of the torch the best of any author I have ever encountered. He makes me long to be part of a never-ending succession of people that stretch into the future and from the past, and he forces me to see how very small and insignificant I am, and at the same time, how central and important because I am part of the whirling pool of life that has been here and witnessed the awesome beauty of just living.
Now a voice in Mat’s mind that he did not want to hear says, “Gone. All of them are gone.” And they are gone. Mat is standing by the pool, and all the others are gone, and all that time has passed. And still the stream pours into the pool and the circles slide across the face.
1965 - The Distant Land - Almost a continuation of The Boundary, we see the passing of Mat and how that influences those around him. This one is told from Andy’s point of view.
Mrs. Feltner gives Andy Mat’s shoes to work in:
Burley studied them, and then me. And then he smiled and put his arm around me, making the truth plain and bearable to us both: “You can wear ‘em honey. But you can’t fill ‘em.”
I thought about the truth of how much smaller we have all become than our ancestors who worked this land and knew it so well. I have never thought anyone could fill my Daddy’s shoes, or for that matter, wear my mother’s apron.
1967 - The Wild Birds, our last story, brings with it Burley Coulter, one of my favorite citizens of Port William. He is a very down-to-earth man, in this story trying to square his life through the making of his will. He makes a comment about the younger generation (note that in 1967, that would have included me).
They began to go and not come back--or a lot more did than had before. And now look at how many are gone--the old ones dead and gone that won’t ever be replaced, the mold they were made in done throwed away, and the young ones dead in wars or killed in damned automobiles, or gone off to college and made too smart ever to come back, or gone off to easy money and bright lights and ain’t going to work in the sun ever again if they can help it. I see them come back here to funerals--people who belong here, or did once, looking down into coffins at people they don't have anything left in common with except a name.
I always feel nostalgic and happy and calmer and sadder when I close the pages of a Wendell Berry book. It is appropriate that I started this one over the Thanksgiving weekend, because Berry makes me thankful for the world I once knew, that I had the privilege to know it before it mostly disappeared; and he makes me thankful that he has put all those people and memories down on paper, so that in the smallest way the generations after me can know it as well.
1930 - Thicker Than Liquor. In this story I was introduced to Uncle Peach, a man I don’t recall having met before, brother to Wheeler’s mother. This story is about familial obligation and how that is passed along in families sometimes.
1947 - Where Did They Go?, is a story from Andy’s childhood, in which his father sends him off to work at the Branch place for the summer. It is a coming-of-age story in which Andy gets a glimpse of interpersonal relationships that help to inform his understanding of life.
1950 - My favorite story of the bunch is It Wasn’t Me, in which we find Wheeler, an attorney, struggling with how to execute the wishes of Old Jack regarding the disposal of his farm, when the legal cards are stacked against him. I have read The Memory of Old Jack, the book devoted to this character, and I was so happy to find myself in company with Wheeler and Elton Penn and their memories of Old Jack, as he is a favorite character.
This story is full of that remarkable Wendell Berry wisdom that, if processed and followed, could make a life so much richer than it might be otherwise.
He had done this assuming, as he often did, in a world that he assumed was ruled by instinctive decency. That Clara and Glad Pettit did not inhabit that particular world, they let him know fast.
And then he would think, no longer arguing but only mourning, that the Petits were playing a different game from any that Old Jack had ever played, and living in a different world from the one he had lived in. The letter in the notebook was written in a language the Pettits did not speak; they had forgot the tongue in which an old man might cry out from his grave in love and in defense of a possibility no longer his own in this world.
1965 - The Boundary was the story included to make me cry, and I did. It is about the last days of Mat Feltner, and what it is to grow old. Berry writes about the continuity of life and the passing of the torch the best of any author I have ever encountered. He makes me long to be part of a never-ending succession of people that stretch into the future and from the past, and he forces me to see how very small and insignificant I am, and at the same time, how central and important because I am part of the whirling pool of life that has been here and witnessed the awesome beauty of just living.
Now a voice in Mat’s mind that he did not want to hear says, “Gone. All of them are gone.” And they are gone. Mat is standing by the pool, and all the others are gone, and all that time has passed. And still the stream pours into the pool and the circles slide across the face.
1965 - The Distant Land - Almost a continuation of The Boundary, we see the passing of Mat and how that influences those around him. This one is told from Andy’s point of view.
Mrs. Feltner gives Andy Mat’s shoes to work in:
Burley studied them, and then me. And then he smiled and put his arm around me, making the truth plain and bearable to us both: “You can wear ‘em honey. But you can’t fill ‘em.”
I thought about the truth of how much smaller we have all become than our ancestors who worked this land and knew it so well. I have never thought anyone could fill my Daddy’s shoes, or for that matter, wear my mother’s apron.
1967 - The Wild Birds, our last story, brings with it Burley Coulter, one of my favorite citizens of Port William. He is a very down-to-earth man, in this story trying to square his life through the making of his will. He makes a comment about the younger generation (note that in 1967, that would have included me).
They began to go and not come back--or a lot more did than had before. And now look at how many are gone--the old ones dead and gone that won’t ever be replaced, the mold they were made in done throwed away, and the young ones dead in wars or killed in damned automobiles, or gone off to college and made too smart ever to come back, or gone off to easy money and bright lights and ain’t going to work in the sun ever again if they can help it. I see them come back here to funerals--people who belong here, or did once, looking down into coffins at people they don't have anything left in common with except a name.
I always feel nostalgic and happy and calmer and sadder when I close the pages of a Wendell Berry book. It is appropriate that I started this one over the Thanksgiving weekend, because Berry makes me thankful for the world I once knew, that I had the privilege to know it before it mostly disappeared; and he makes me thankful that he has put all those people and memories down on paper, so that in the smallest way the generations after me can know it as well.
September 6, 2020
If there is a community in literary fiction I most wish to be part of, it will be Port William. Every now and then, I feel a homesickness for this close-knit farming community as if I were missing good old friends. Oh, the elation of being back in the company of folks I have grown to love!
The Wild Birds is a collection of six stories told in chronology from 1930 to 1967. The stories offer a glimpse into the lives of key characters: a newly married young lawyer, Wheeler Catlett, called away from his bride to care for a chronically drunk maternal uncle; 13-year-old Andy Catlett’s summer attachment as a farm hand; Wheeler’s help to Elton Penn over his legal tussle to secure a farm willed to him by his friend, Old Jack, which was challenged by the latter’s daughter; Mat Feltner’s illness and death, and its impact on his buddies; and Wheeler’s concern over Burley Coulter’s desire to will his farm to a son whose paternity was never established.
I loved the quiet center in these stories where the men found rest in nature. In the woods, the elderly Mat Feltner felt ‘the return of an ageless joy.’ When Andy Catlett at age 30 returned home to Port William after having lived many years in the city, he recounted a similar pleasure: ‘Every fold of the land, every glass blade and leaf of it gave me joy...’ Berry’s love of the land shines in his beautiful prose.
These stories bear testimony to the best in the Port William Membership. The stories speak of the men's loyalty to each other, availability in time of need, solicitude for each other’s well-being, and pleasure in laboring alongside each other in the fields. In friendship there are debts that cannot hope to be repaid, but it is alright. There is also immeasurable comfort in knowing that the members who have passed on are never forgotten. Of his maternal grandpa, Mat Feltner, Andy said, “We often spoke of him, because we missed him, or because he belonged to our stories, and we could not tell them without speaking of him.” It is an enviable community. A man who belongs to the Port William Membership is never in want because he is home.
The Wild Birds is a collection of six stories told in chronology from 1930 to 1967. The stories offer a glimpse into the lives of key characters: a newly married young lawyer, Wheeler Catlett, called away from his bride to care for a chronically drunk maternal uncle; 13-year-old Andy Catlett’s summer attachment as a farm hand; Wheeler’s help to Elton Penn over his legal tussle to secure a farm willed to him by his friend, Old Jack, which was challenged by the latter’s daughter; Mat Feltner’s illness and death, and its impact on his buddies; and Wheeler’s concern over Burley Coulter’s desire to will his farm to a son whose paternity was never established.
I loved the quiet center in these stories where the men found rest in nature. In the woods, the elderly Mat Feltner felt ‘the return of an ageless joy.’ When Andy Catlett at age 30 returned home to Port William after having lived many years in the city, he recounted a similar pleasure: ‘Every fold of the land, every glass blade and leaf of it gave me joy...’ Berry’s love of the land shines in his beautiful prose.
These stories bear testimony to the best in the Port William Membership. The stories speak of the men's loyalty to each other, availability in time of need, solicitude for each other’s well-being, and pleasure in laboring alongside each other in the fields. In friendship there are debts that cannot hope to be repaid, but it is alright. There is also immeasurable comfort in knowing that the members who have passed on are never forgotten. Of his maternal grandpa, Mat Feltner, Andy said, “We often spoke of him, because we missed him, or because he belonged to our stories, and we could not tell them without speaking of him.” It is an enviable community. A man who belongs to the Port William Membership is never in want because he is home.
March 24, 2023
I might just be under Berry's strong spell at the moment, but this might be the best collection of short fiction I've ever read. Each story is breathtaking, and the whole -- as always, a tender depiction of the Port William membership across generations -- is somehow more than the sum of its sublime parts.
June 20, 2015
Wendell Berry's stories about the "membership" of the fictional community of Port William, Kentucky never fail to astound and delight me. In a world filled with slipshod and poorly written fiction, seemingly dashed off with an eye on becoming the next bestseller or blockbuster screenplay, there is nothing reckless or mediocre about Berry's writing. Every word seems to have been weighed and considered before being placed. The pace of each of these stories is leisurely, careful … but in no way ponderous. And the characters … once you have read several Port William novels, many of the characters become old friends: the Catletts, the Coulters, the Feltners, Old Jack Beechum, the Penns. I have known them intimately as children, into adulthood, through births, illnesses, and deaths. They are hard working, kind, and decent people, people I wished I knew in my everyday life. Another thing that strikes me about Berry's stories is that they are entirely devoid of cynicism. There is no gratuitous anything here. They are suffused with Berry's land stewardship ethic, which he clearly considers to be inextricably linked with how people should be treated. Maybe his writing won't appeal to everyone, but personally, every time I come back to Port William I feel as if I am coming home.
May 9, 2019
“In body, now, he is an old man, but mind and eye look out of his old body into the shifting leafy lights and shadows among the still trunks with a recognition that is without age, the return of an ageless joy.” — Wendell Berry.
.
I raved about JAYBER CROW last month and immediately picked up another book by Wendell Berry. THE WILD BIRDS follows a handful of the Port William residents — living, dying, farming, and saving each other with lots of grace and forgiveness. I’ve found this collection to be very healing for me, particularly a story about a grandson sitting at his dying grandfather’s bedside. Berry has broken into my all-time-favorite authors because he writes about the quiet, mundane moments. He shows how every tiny detail of life can be observed and redeemed with love.
.
I raved about JAYBER CROW last month and immediately picked up another book by Wendell Berry. THE WILD BIRDS follows a handful of the Port William residents — living, dying, farming, and saving each other with lots of grace and forgiveness. I’ve found this collection to be very healing for me, particularly a story about a grandson sitting at his dying grandfather’s bedside. Berry has broken into my all-time-favorite authors because he writes about the quiet, mundane moments. He shows how every tiny detail of life can be observed and redeemed with love.
December 2, 2017
Berry comes through for me again, in this collection of short stories. I overdosed on his fiction a few years ago but have recently come back to finish all that I left unread.
One of the most meaningful aspects of Berry's prose is his ability to explore kinship ties, family relationships, without being judgmental.
In "Thicker than Liquor," he explores the relationship between Wheeler Catlett, and his mother and alcoholic brother (Wheeler's uncle). It's 1943, and his mother's younger brother has spent his entire adult life as drunk as they come. Wheeler is raised wondering along with the rest of the town why his mother keeps nursing him back to health and providing food and shelter for him, when he's wasted himself yet again. As a 30 year old man, he is at last able to see his uncle as his mother sees him, and her motivations. It's very moving to me and very relevant to my current life.
"Uncle Peach was, she thought, 'one of the least of these my brethren"---a qualification for her care that the blood connection only compounded. If one of the least of Christ's brethren happened to be her brother, then the obligation was as clear as the penalty. She had long ago given up hope for Uncle Peach. She cared for him without hope, because she has passed the place of turning back or looking back. Quietly, almost submissively, she propped herself against him, because in her fate and faith she was opposed to his ruin."
This was such a tender passage, as one of my daughters struggles with childhood depression, and while I haven't lost hope at this point, as I imagine the future, it seems a possibility. But this passage gave me peace of mind and also some clarity---that losing hope isn't a bad thing, a sign of weakness. It also reminded me that Christianity and modern psychology don't always agree.
In 1943, there were no recovery centers, no outpatient treatment programs, no AA to go to, no detox programs. No one understood alcoholism, and I have to say, would it have changed his aunt's relationship with her brother for the worse, if she had understood the textbook victim-persecutor-rescuer triangle, the drama triangle that all of us try to avoid, and behaved accordingly? If she decided to not feed him, bathe him, clean up his vomit, and withhold a bed to sleep in, in the name of not enabling---an expression that didn't even exist then, I'm guessing---what would have been the outcome? And would that outcome be more desirable than what she chose to do.
When interacting with my daughter, I've often chosen textbook behavior over true charity, or Christian love. I'm worried about doing the "wrong" thing, because all the professionals in her (our) life really emphasize teaching accountability, which is something I do believe in. But how could caring for someone, providing the basic human necessities, ever be wrong? After laying awake some of the night considering these ideas, I've decided it's possible that perhaps the answer isn't one or the other---as I am prone to think when faced with two choices that I don't fully understand--but both, and I'm thinking there must be something I have more to change and do, after seeing that hope or expectation are not always the primary motivators for rescuing someone from themselves.
Peach's sister had left her expectations for her brother fall by the wayside, but the language of "propping herself against him" came over me like a tidal wave and I can now reimagine what it means to care for someone who may or may not learn to fully take care of themselves. I feel like Berry is at his finest in exploring the simple but most important of all things--family. Good fiction like this that causes you to live differently from that moment on is invaluable. God bless you, Wendell.
One of the most meaningful aspects of Berry's prose is his ability to explore kinship ties, family relationships, without being judgmental.
In "Thicker than Liquor," he explores the relationship between Wheeler Catlett, and his mother and alcoholic brother (Wheeler's uncle). It's 1943, and his mother's younger brother has spent his entire adult life as drunk as they come. Wheeler is raised wondering along with the rest of the town why his mother keeps nursing him back to health and providing food and shelter for him, when he's wasted himself yet again. As a 30 year old man, he is at last able to see his uncle as his mother sees him, and her motivations. It's very moving to me and very relevant to my current life.
"Uncle Peach was, she thought, 'one of the least of these my brethren"---a qualification for her care that the blood connection only compounded. If one of the least of Christ's brethren happened to be her brother, then the obligation was as clear as the penalty. She had long ago given up hope for Uncle Peach. She cared for him without hope, because she has passed the place of turning back or looking back. Quietly, almost submissively, she propped herself against him, because in her fate and faith she was opposed to his ruin."
This was such a tender passage, as one of my daughters struggles with childhood depression, and while I haven't lost hope at this point, as I imagine the future, it seems a possibility. But this passage gave me peace of mind and also some clarity---that losing hope isn't a bad thing, a sign of weakness. It also reminded me that Christianity and modern psychology don't always agree.
In 1943, there were no recovery centers, no outpatient treatment programs, no AA to go to, no detox programs. No one understood alcoholism, and I have to say, would it have changed his aunt's relationship with her brother for the worse, if she had understood the textbook victim-persecutor-rescuer triangle, the drama triangle that all of us try to avoid, and behaved accordingly? If she decided to not feed him, bathe him, clean up his vomit, and withhold a bed to sleep in, in the name of not enabling---an expression that didn't even exist then, I'm guessing---what would have been the outcome? And would that outcome be more desirable than what she chose to do.
When interacting with my daughter, I've often chosen textbook behavior over true charity, or Christian love. I'm worried about doing the "wrong" thing, because all the professionals in her (our) life really emphasize teaching accountability, which is something I do believe in. But how could caring for someone, providing the basic human necessities, ever be wrong? After laying awake some of the night considering these ideas, I've decided it's possible that perhaps the answer isn't one or the other---as I am prone to think when faced with two choices that I don't fully understand--but both, and I'm thinking there must be something I have more to change and do, after seeing that hope or expectation are not always the primary motivators for rescuing someone from themselves.
Peach's sister had left her expectations for her brother fall by the wayside, but the language of "propping herself against him" came over me like a tidal wave and I can now reimagine what it means to care for someone who may or may not learn to fully take care of themselves. I feel like Berry is at his finest in exploring the simple but most important of all things--family. Good fiction like this that causes you to live differently from that moment on is invaluable. God bless you, Wendell.
July 28, 2020
What does membership mean ....?
It’s an important status to the residents of Port William, Kentucky. Dating from the Civil War to the 1960’s. Their connections are genuine, fun, heartbreaking, faithful and enduring from generation to generation. The word ‘wayward’ is discussed in the final story. I thought about it a lot and checked the meaning ... “turning away from what is right or proper; willful; disobedient”. Haven’t we all been wayward for a time?! What’s truly important is the turning back to what is right. The forgiveness and embrace that follows is what community/ membership is all about.
p.s. this review are my own thoughts
It’s an important status to the residents of Port William, Kentucky. Dating from the Civil War to the 1960’s. Their connections are genuine, fun, heartbreaking, faithful and enduring from generation to generation. The word ‘wayward’ is discussed in the final story. I thought about it a lot and checked the meaning ... “turning away from what is right or proper; willful; disobedient”. Haven’t we all been wayward for a time?! What’s truly important is the turning back to what is right. The forgiveness and embrace that follows is what community/ membership is all about.
p.s. this review are my own thoughts
February 7, 2022
I always want to be a better person after I read a book by Wendell Berry. Plus, I laugh a lot and shed a few tears.
April 6, 2025
Wendell Berry's fiction offers up a different kind of escapism; there are no spaceships or lasers or wizards. These are stories that, if I were to describe them (an attorney trying to fulfill a will, an old man going for a walk in the woods and remembering things, children working in fields and messing around), would sound pretty mundane. And it probably seems odd to call something that's so entrenched in realism "escapism".
But the more I get involved in the modern world (the more days I spend at a desk and the fewer days I spend out in the woods or playing in a stream or whatever), the more I wish to escape to Berry's Port William, where you know everyone's family history and where, sure, there are problems and conflicts, but they're all manageable, and for the most part the people are good people. Wouldn't it be nice to be a member of that membership?
But the more I get involved in the modern world (the more days I spend at a desk and the fewer days I spend out in the woods or playing in a stream or whatever), the more I wish to escape to Berry's Port William, where you know everyone's family history and where, sure, there are problems and conflicts, but they're all manageable, and for the most part the people are good people. Wouldn't it be nice to be a member of that membership?
July 27, 2025
I can confidently say I have found another option for my answer to the “If you could have coffee with anyone in history, dead or alive…” question.
Berry’s characters are living, breathing, deeply feeling yet unsentimental persons. They are Berry’s endeavor to show the world what a united, undistracted community (or membership) can look like. He reminds me of “that greater communion yet to come” and urges me to not only look forward to that communion, but to do the work of building it in my own life today.
Berry’s characters are living, breathing, deeply feeling yet unsentimental persons. They are Berry’s endeavor to show the world what a united, undistracted community (or membership) can look like. He reminds me of “that greater communion yet to come” and urges me to not only look forward to that communion, but to do the work of building it in my own life today.
July 15, 2023
Reading the fiction of Wendell Berry is like sitting down to talk with an old friend, it's so comforting and full of warmth. Absorbing the flow of words and story, and the tenderness with which he portrays the land (farm, wilderness, creek or river), as well as the characters means the reader can't help but share in his joy at the stories he tells.
November 21, 2023
It’s hard to write anything that I haven’t already written about Berry. This book, while examining different characters at different times in their lives, is still set in Port William and has therefore become almost as familiar as my own rural town.
This book is beautifully written. Well done, Berry. Another beautiful book.
This book is beautifully written. Well done, Berry. Another beautiful book.
September 3, 2024
i would pay a million dollars just to sit in Wheeler’s office
May 26, 2025
Port William is a peaceful, grounded community I can always come back to ❤️
November 22, 2025
My first experience with Wendell Berry. Wow! I’ll be reading more.
September 21, 2020
This is the second book of fiction from Wendell Berry I've read. The first one didn't connect so much with me, but this one drew me in from the start.
Berry, perhaps more well known as an essayist, has a tremendous feel for these stories and creates an indelible sense of place. For someone like me, having come from a small, rural background, the stories of these characters trying to preserve their sense of community as material life erodes away under their feet has an unmistakable bittersweet quality.
You might compare these stories with Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegone material, and there are some similarities, but Berry doesn't emphasize the darker elements the way Keillor does. Each story bursts with realness and interior life. Having spent their lives in this place, these characters can no more disconnect themselves from Port William than a fish can just crawl out of the water. If they weren't part of this community, they simply would not be themselves.
Reading about characters like these makes a person long for that kind of community in their own life. It's how I often felt as a child, but rarely feel now. I still live in a small community, but have to drive to a nearby city for work, and hardly know more than a handful of people in my community, even after living there many years. Reading this book is a reminder that we aren't supposed to be atomized individuals; we're built to function together, rely on each other, and build something that endures together. The way we live now - the requirements placed on us by our economic system, consumer lifestyle, and ingrained cultural practices - has given us a lot of stuff but robbed us of a key part of the human experience. As Marx would say, it has alienated us.
Here are stories about people who are mad, flawed, troubled, frustrated - but they are not alienated. They still live in community. Anyway, I guess I'm on one of my hobbyhorses. I very much liked this short book about decent people trying to do the right thing and help things keep hanging together. Berry deserves his excellent reputation and I can't wait to read more from him.
Berry, perhaps more well known as an essayist, has a tremendous feel for these stories and creates an indelible sense of place. For someone like me, having come from a small, rural background, the stories of these characters trying to preserve their sense of community as material life erodes away under their feet has an unmistakable bittersweet quality.
You might compare these stories with Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegone material, and there are some similarities, but Berry doesn't emphasize the darker elements the way Keillor does. Each story bursts with realness and interior life. Having spent their lives in this place, these characters can no more disconnect themselves from Port William than a fish can just crawl out of the water. If they weren't part of this community, they simply would not be themselves.
Reading about characters like these makes a person long for that kind of community in their own life. It's how I often felt as a child, but rarely feel now. I still live in a small community, but have to drive to a nearby city for work, and hardly know more than a handful of people in my community, even after living there many years. Reading this book is a reminder that we aren't supposed to be atomized individuals; we're built to function together, rely on each other, and build something that endures together. The way we live now - the requirements placed on us by our economic system, consumer lifestyle, and ingrained cultural practices - has given us a lot of stuff but robbed us of a key part of the human experience. As Marx would say, it has alienated us.
Here are stories about people who are mad, flawed, troubled, frustrated - but they are not alienated. They still live in community. Anyway, I guess I'm on one of my hobbyhorses. I very much liked this short book about decent people trying to do the right thing and help things keep hanging together. Berry deserves his excellent reputation and I can't wait to read more from him.
February 24, 2017
Within the membership of Port William, a close knit farming village, lays another more intimate still. It is the membership of a neighborhood of families who, working adjoining lands, make it their business to help each other through life. They help sow one another’s fields, and help reap them. Hannah Coulter, the story of a young widow adopted into this private membership, introduced it; in Wild Birds, Wendell Berry delivers six stories about its other members, advancing through the years, and delivering a sense of real people developing through time and through their relationships with one another. The young mature into older adults; Wheeler Catlett opens the piece as a young newlywed, tasked yet again with hunting down his drunken uncle, and closes it as an older lawyer contemplating retirement. There's a prevailing theme of coming of age and owning one's responsibilities here, though as always Berry creates a sense of timelessness: his characters have moments in which every season of their life is being lived simultaneously This is best exhibited in "The Boundary", which for me is the most tender piece I've ever read by Berry, about an aging farmer who decides to go on one last patrol of his fields to inspect a boundary fenceline. Leaving home, he departs from his wife with a hug, noting that she seems to have changed while he held her from schoolgirl to grandmother, a lifetime lived in one another's embrace. As he eases down a hill he scrambled down as a child, he relives the many times he and his fathers before him, and he and his sons after that, had walked those paths before, tended those places together. Berry is a master at creating intimacy, inviting the reader to draw close to his characters, so endearing even in their flaws. To read these stories is to take a deep draft of the milk of human kindness, to be loved almost by an author who delights in stirring one's soul and bringing to remembrance a sense of being at home in the world.
Related:
Hannah Coulter, Wendell Berry
Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry
Related:
Hannah Coulter, Wendell Berry
Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry
February 11, 2018
I've been meaning to read something by Wendell Berry for a while, and since I happened to have picked up this slim volume of short stories at a book sale or used book store at some point, I decided today's the day. I didn't realize that the stories all concerned a group of characters that occur throughout Berry's work, and my unfamiliarity might have detracted a bit from my appreciation of the stories, kind of like being invited to someone else's family reunion.
What I liked most is the writing itself; you can tell that Berry is a poet, as he has a real flair for memorable description, such as this depiction of a local dandy in "Where Did They Go?":
I have a special fondness for nature writing, and there are some wonderful passages of this as well, such as this paragraph from "The Boundary," about an old man walking around his land for the last time:
Despite these passages of great writing that are sprinkled through these stories, I couldn't really warm up to them, which is probably due entirely to personal preferences--the content felt too sentimental, almost cloying at times. Other reviewers have praised this quality as being an utter lack of cynicism and a depiction of human kindness, but I can't help it, I'm a cynic, and the world depicted herein seems too idealized and unrealistic. In all fairness, this is obviously a deliberate choice of the author's; I felt that a passage describing one of the characters, the lawyer Wheeler, was equally true of the book as a whole:
Ultimately, these stories simply do not resonate with me as a reader, but I appreciated the writing. I think I will look for Berry's poetry in future, but probably avoid any more of his fiction.
What I liked most is the writing itself; you can tell that Berry is a poet, as he has a real flair for memorable description, such as this depiction of a local dandy in "Where Did They Go?":
"A hundred times a day, Col would lift his hat in a three-fingered pinch as exquisite as a jeweler's, toss back his languorous forelock, and replace the hat as though preparing to meet, if not his Maker, perhaps the press. This procedure required him to stop absolutely whatever he might be doing, and was almost routinely concluded by a curse from is father-in-law, who in the meantime might have been holding up one end of a log. The smooth underside of Col's right forearm bore the tattoo of a scantily clad lady who danced when Col flexed his muscles, and in the midst of work he would sometimes spend long minutes studying it, slowly doubling and relaxing his fist, whether entranced by the loveliness of his own arm or by the lady who danced there, I could not tell."
I have a special fondness for nature writing, and there are some wonderful passages of this as well, such as this paragraph from "The Boundary," about an old man walking around his land for the last time:
"A water thrush moves down along the rocks of the streambed ahead of him, teetering and singing. He stops and stands to watch while a large striped woodpecker works its way up the trunk of a big sycamore, putting its eye close to peer under the loose scales of the bark. And then the bird flies to its nesting hole in a hollow snag still nearer by to feed its young, paying Mat no mind. He has become still as a tree, and now a hawk suddenly stands on a limb close over his head. The hawk loosens his feathers and shrugs, looking around him with his fierce eyes. And it comes to Mat that once more, by stillness, he has passed across into the wild inward presence of the place.
'Wonders,' he thinks. 'Little wonders of a great wonder.' He feels the sweetness of time. If a man of eighty years old has not seen enough, then nobody will ever see enough."
Despite these passages of great writing that are sprinkled through these stories, I couldn't really warm up to them, which is probably due entirely to personal preferences--the content felt too sentimental, almost cloying at times. Other reviewers have praised this quality as being an utter lack of cynicism and a depiction of human kindness, but I can't help it, I'm a cynic, and the world depicted herein seems too idealized and unrealistic. In all fairness, this is obviously a deliberate choice of the author's; I felt that a passage describing one of the characters, the lawyer Wheeler, was equally true of the book as a whole:
"A more compliant, less idealistic man than Wheeler might have been happier here than he has been, for this has been a place necessarily where people have revealed their greed, arrogance, meanness, cowardice, and sometimes their inviolable stupidity. And yet, though he has known these things, Wheeler has not believed in them. In loyalty to his clients, or to their Maker, in whose image he supposed them made, he has believed in their generosity, goodness, courage and intelligence. Mere fact has never been enough for him. He has pled and reasoned, cajoled, bullied, and preached, pushing events always towards a better end than he knew he should expect, resisting always the disappointment that he knew he should expect, and when the disappointment has come, as it too often has, never settling for it in his own heart or looking upon it as a conclusion."
Ultimately, these stories simply do not resonate with me as a reader, but I appreciated the writing. I think I will look for Berry's poetry in future, but probably avoid any more of his fiction.
June 14, 2020
An excellent collection of more short stories from the lives of Port William's membership. I esepcially appreciate the chronological organization of this book, and the progression of characters over time. As I read, I told my husband that Wendell Berry can say things perfectly in so few words, the mark of a wonderful writer. Perhaps my second favorite piece of his fiction, after Hannah Coulter.
July 25, 2021
As always, Wendell Berry has a way of expressing the heart of a man with stunning clarity. In these fragmented short stories, held together by the characters and the town of Port William, you see how the town holds steady even as things continue to change. Each book feels like revisiting old friends and becoming acquainted with new friends. I can’t get enough!
November 17, 2025
To so understand the workings of humankind, the shoulds, coulds & woulds of it with such a clear and plain voice is Berry’s blessing that he shares time and again in his Port William’s stories. And so, once again I’m washed in light and ever thankful.
June 3, 2020
Reading Wendell Berry’s fiction is like drinking from a cool glass of water.
October 14, 2024
4.5 stars only because the last story kind of drug on. Loved how these six short stories connected back to beloved members of Port William and gave further glimpses in their lives.
November 18, 2024
Extremely well written short stories about life. The last one in particular about friendship is beautiful in the most complex and compelling of ways.
Everyday life is a treasure.
Everyday life is a treasure.
June 8, 2025
blood is thicker than liquor
June 16, 2025
As always a wonderful book! Minnesota/Michigan listen with my favorite travel partner
December 31, 2021
Thank you to Julie Sucha Anderson for turning me on to this author! These (longish) short stories are beautifully written and enjoyable.
September 25, 2023
The Boundary was probably my favorite in this collection, telling the last days of Mat Feltner’s life. I’m not crying, you’re crying.
September 30, 2025
I love reading Wendell Berry!
This one was much more reflective on life. Left me a little melancholy, but the writing-as usual-is fantastic.
This one was much more reflective on life. Left me a little melancholy, but the writing-as usual-is fantastic.
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