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Port William
A Place in Time: Twenty Stories of the Port William Membership
The story of the community of Port William is one of the great works in American literature. This collection, the tenth volume in the series, is the perfect occasion to celebrate Berry’s huge achievement. It feels as if the entire membership―all the Catletts, Burley Coulter, Elton Penn, the Rowanberrys, Laura Milby, the preacher’s wife, Kate Helen Branch, Andy’s dog, Mike―nearly everyone returns with a story or two, to fill in the gaps in this long tale. Those just now joining the Membership will be charmed. Those who’ve attended before will be enriched. For more than fifty years, Wendell Berry has been telling us stories about Port William, a mythical town on the banks of the Kentucky River, populated over the years by a cast of unforgettable characters living in a single place over a long time. In A Place in Time , the stories dates range from 1864, when Rebecca Dawe finds herself in her own reflection at the end of the Civil War, to one from 1991 when Grover Gibbs' widow, Beulah, attends the auction as her home place is offered for sale. "And so it's all gone. A new time has come. Various ones of the old time keep faith and stop by to see me, Coulter and Wilma and a few others. But the one I wait to see is Althie. Seems like my whole life now is lived under the feeling of her hand touching me that day of the sale, and every day still.
I lie awake in the night, and I can see it all in my mind, the old place, the house, all the things I took care of so long. I thought I might miss it, but I don't. The time has gone when I could do more than worry about it, and I declare it's a load off my mind. But the thoughts, still, are a kind of company."
― Beulah Gibbs
I lie awake in the night, and I can see it all in my mind, the old place, the house, all the things I took care of so long. I thought I might miss it, but I don't. The time has gone when I could do more than worry about it, and I declare it's a load off my mind. But the thoughts, still, are a kind of company."
― Beulah Gibbs
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
265 people are currently reading
1520 people want to read
About the author
Wendell Berry
287 books4,829 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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November 29, 2021
“Most of us, most of the time, think mostly of the past… Nevertheless, in this sometimes horrifying, sometimes satisfying, never-sufficiently-noticed present, between a past mostly forgotten and a future that we deserve to fear but cannot predict, some few things can be recalled.”
I’m not sure that’s true of me, even in “horrifying” times: I look sideways or to fiction, and have no interest in genealogy beyond those relatives I have known. Similarly, I condemn slavery, I acknowledge that its legacy leaves me with advantages that black Britons don’t have, and try in small ways to make the world a fairer place, but I can’t apologise on behalf of those I never even knew.
And yet I enjoyed exploring the fictional family trees of Port William, where people are at one with their land and livestock, where community is indistinguishable from family (hence the “Membership” of the title).
“People were neighbours then… You worked together. You saw each other in Port William on Saturday night, and in church like as not on Sunday morning.”
Image: Taking Burley Tobacco to dry and cure in a barn, Russell Spears Farm, near Lexington Kentucky, 1940 (Source.)
Change
These are set in “the much-folded landscape surrounding the town” of Port William, Kentucky, between 1864 (during the Civil War) and 2008. It’s as much a history and biography of the town and neighbouring settlements as those who live there: people and place can’t be separated and share a fate.
Though the pieces are short, the scope is huge. From the first, I was reminded of everything I loved about Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow (see my review HERE), though some of these have more humour.
Continuity is contrasted with change, fast and slow. There’s hardship and success, birth and death, staying and moving on. The legacy of slavery is mentioned, critically, but all the main characters seem ot be white. The nostalgic narrative arc is progressively sadder, as old ways change forever: first mechanisation, but increasingly, people sell up, leave, or die.
The stories
Individually and collectively, these pieces offer charming, characterful escapism - despite the difficulties many of the residents endure, only some of which they overcome. There is a warmth to each scene, and variety too.
They are mostly first-person narrations (several by Burley Coulter and Andy Catlett), often looking back to episodes in their youth. Even with the map and family trees at the back, it’s a little hard to keep track of all the connections. No matter. It’s a wonderful collection of stories of a community, spanning just a few miles, but nearly 150 years.
Image: Kentucky Farm by Tom Wooldridge, 2008 (Source.)
1. The Girl in the Window (1864)
A glimpse of what we now call PTSD.
“In Port William the [civil] war had a lot of sides… [being] both too Southern and too near the Ohio River.”
Times were hard and everyone was wary of outsiders stealing and recruiting. It leaves lifelong scars, even on those not directly involved.
2. Fly Away, Breath (1907)
The gentle death of an ancient matriarch, surrounded by her granddaughters:
“She is dying in no haste.”
But with a laugh at the end!
3. Down in the Valley Where the Green Grass Grows (1930)
A comic piece about Big Ellis, by his prankster friend, Burley Coulter.
4. Burley Coulter’s Fortunate Fall (1934)
Accidental slapstick humour from Burley, but before that, we meet grand Miss Charlotte, a rich widow and “an enjoyable lady” with a “long green car that was about the same color as folding money”.
5. A Burden (1882, 1907, 1941)
An introspective look at family dynamics, joys, and responsibilities, and how the same circumstances mark siblings differently. Andrew and Wheeler have a feckless but amusing alcoholic relative, Uncle Peach. Wheeler loves him as much as he loves his sensible, practical, absent father, but he’s conflicted:
“Wheeler inherited… two opposing attitudes toward him, and was never afterward free of either.”
(I can relate to that: one parent who praised to excess and another who was often too critical means I find it hard to evaluate myself.) One brother slips into their uncle’s footsteps, while the other makes a conscious choice to forge his own path.
6. A Desirable Woman (1938-1941)
“The town seemed to them to be inundated with self-knowledge. This knowledge moved over it in an unresting current, some of it in stories told openly that eddied with variations from teller to teller and place to place, some of it more darkly and quietly in an undertow of caution, sometimes fraught with the unacknowledged pleasure of malice, sometimes bearing a burden merely of anxiety or concern. It was to this subsurface current of gossip that Williams Maltby learned to listen with greatest care, for it told him where needs were.”
A charming portrait of a small, poor, but welcoming farming community, as newlywed Laura and Williams Maltby come to Sycamore - his first position as a priest.
“The consciousness of Sycamore as the continual, continually wandering story that in one way or another included everybody, carrying them through time like the current of the river.”
It seems idyllic. But Laura also sees the weight of her husband’s vocation and that his gift of being a comforter is a burden. The prospect of the US joining also WW2 looms.
7. Misery (1943)
“They lived by the fertility of the world and the farm, but their own fertility had been ‘a cross to bear’.”
Andy, born long enough ago to remember the last of “the old order” of rural life, reminisces about childhood days at his grandparents’ home and farm: his happy memories contrasted with the knowledge their marriage was long but not happy. The title refers to the specific episodes when his elderly grandfather would wake with “Misery”, for reasons Andy didn’t understand. As an adult, he finds comfort in imagining how his grandmother might have soothed his grandfather.
8. Andy Catlett: Early Education (1943)
“I probed the coastlines of her patience and sounded its estuaries like an early navigator…
I saw from her stance and demeanor that the situation was not as she would have preferred it to be.”
At 10, Andy is bright, inquisitive, and keen to push boundaries. His mother is quiet, patient, and clever when discipline is needed.
9. Drouth (1944)
“A drouth is an event of the atmosphere of the earth. It is also an event of the atmosphere of the human mind, which suffers a disturbance that affects everything… the meanings of memory and history… one’s sense of the future.”
Young Andy has a strong bond with Dick Watson, his father’s “black hired hand”, admiring and learning from his simple, unquestioning, naturalistic philosophy. But then “The Big Day” arrives: the annual festival/ parade/ homecoming for all the black folks. Andy loves hearing about it, but knows he can only watch from a polite distance, because he’s white.
10. Stand By Me (1921-1944)
“As your heart gets bigger on the inside, the world gets bigger on the outside… You remember them because they always were living in the other, bigger world.”
That reminds me of a common analogy I found helpful after my father's unexpected death. It's not perfect, but anyway, here's the grief in a jar meme:
This is a tear-jerking, pitch-perfect portrayal of bereavement. Jarrat Coulter’s wife dies when sons Tom and Nathan are 7 and 5. Their uncle Burley, who lives with his parents, becomes their de facto father and mother.
“I belonged to them because they needed me.”
He loves them to bits but sometimes feels inadequate. The boys have a distant relationship with their geographically proximate and emotionally broken father, causing tension in their teens. More people die, but on a farm, life must go on.
11. Not a Tear (1945)
Short, moving, and with a positive message about racial equality. Black and white people attend Dick Watson’s funeral. Part of the black pastor’s address is rendered as poetry.
12. The Dark Country (1948)
“Burley Coulter is bone-tired, thirsty, hungry, lost, and entirely happy.”
We observe Burley’s reflections on life in general, step-parenting, and the sights, sounds, colors, smells, and textures of the land: farming, hunting, and camping out with a fire as much for company as for warmth.
13. A New Day (1949)
“Elton Penn… knew he lived in the presence of mystery and of wonders, and he responded with his version of reverence, but he was not a churchman.”
A glimpse of life at the crossover from the living word to machines, from horse to tractor.
“The old moment of union and communion between man and team” has gone.
14. Mike (1939-1950)
Andy remembers his father’s favourite dog and hunting companion.
15. Who Dreamt This Dream? (1966)
Jayber Crow remembers Grover Gibbs lying for pleasure and pranks.
Image: Abandoned Kentucky homestead, surrounded by corn (Source.)
16. The Requirement (1970)
Burley’s lifelong friend, Big Ellis just died, and he muses on how one’s perception of mortality, death, and bereavement change from childhood through to old age. He recalls episodes of their friendship that illustrate why Big was so special and he feels a requirement to mark their bond.
17. An Empty Jacket (1974)
Ten-year old Marcie Catlett comes to terms with the death of his friend-cum-mentor, Elton Penn.
“Though everything clearly had changed, everything looked exactly the same.”
Then he sees Elton’s work jacket hanging, empty, on a nail.
“The name of the change was absence. It was loss.”
18. At Home (1981)
“When he went into the army in 1942, he passed from a world as old and elemental nearly as it had ever been into a world as ruthlessly new as by then it had managed to become.”
Continuity, belonging, and change, as Art Rowanberry contemplates the sale of his family farm.
19. Sold (1991)
Grover Gibbs’ widow, Beulah, now in a care home, watches a lifetime’s possessions being taken out of her house to be sold at auction, along with the farm itself.
“Everything already looked like it belonged to somebody else.”
20. A Place in Time (1938-2008)
Andy grew up inspired by Elton and Mary Penn: their love story and their example of craftsmanship, hard work, simple pleasures, and trying to make one’s piece of the world a better place.
“He farmed as a lover loves.”
Knowledge from Andy’s elders passed to him, via Elton, in “a current of love”, linking him to the land and people of the past.
That was the perfect place and theme to end, but then Andy learns that someone he long thought heartless and unforgiving may have repented, but that person is dead.
Other quotes
• "Over the striking of the knives and the steady rustling of the corn and the singing, the moonlight felt as if a greater silence were thus made visible."
• “The furniture… with its air of determined and deserted refinement.”
• “I don’t think I got as good a deal as I believe I did.”
• “It was a small place, humble enough in all its aspects, except for an ordinary splendor that would possess it from time to time in every season.”
• “A greater intimacy between himself and the things he wore and used” by repairing and repurposing them.
• “Walking… both through the place and through his consciousness of the presence and the past of it.”
• “Andy’s conscience was on one of its frequent absences from the neighborhood.”
• “It is perhaps impossible for a person living unhappily with a flush toilet to imagine a person living happily without one.”
• “He liked weather… its freedom from walls, its way of overcoming all obstructions and filling the world.”
I’m not sure that’s true of me, even in “horrifying” times: I look sideways or to fiction, and have no interest in genealogy beyond those relatives I have known. Similarly, I condemn slavery, I acknowledge that its legacy leaves me with advantages that black Britons don’t have, and try in small ways to make the world a fairer place, but I can’t apologise on behalf of those I never even knew.
And yet I enjoyed exploring the fictional family trees of Port William, where people are at one with their land and livestock, where community is indistinguishable from family (hence the “Membership” of the title).
“People were neighbours then… You worked together. You saw each other in Port William on Saturday night, and in church like as not on Sunday morning.”
Image: Taking Burley Tobacco to dry and cure in a barn, Russell Spears Farm, near Lexington Kentucky, 1940 (Source.)
Change
These are set in “the much-folded landscape surrounding the town” of Port William, Kentucky, between 1864 (during the Civil War) and 2008. It’s as much a history and biography of the town and neighbouring settlements as those who live there: people and place can’t be separated and share a fate.
Though the pieces are short, the scope is huge. From the first, I was reminded of everything I loved about Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow (see my review HERE), though some of these have more humour.
Continuity is contrasted with change, fast and slow. There’s hardship and success, birth and death, staying and moving on. The legacy of slavery is mentioned, critically, but all the main characters seem ot be white. The nostalgic narrative arc is progressively sadder, as old ways change forever: first mechanisation, but increasingly, people sell up, leave, or die.
The stories
Individually and collectively, these pieces offer charming, characterful escapism - despite the difficulties many of the residents endure, only some of which they overcome. There is a warmth to each scene, and variety too.
They are mostly first-person narrations (several by Burley Coulter and Andy Catlett), often looking back to episodes in their youth. Even with the map and family trees at the back, it’s a little hard to keep track of all the connections. No matter. It’s a wonderful collection of stories of a community, spanning just a few miles, but nearly 150 years.
Image: Kentucky Farm by Tom Wooldridge, 2008 (Source.)
1. The Girl in the Window (1864)
A glimpse of what we now call PTSD.
“In Port William the [civil] war had a lot of sides… [being] both too Southern and too near the Ohio River.”
Times were hard and everyone was wary of outsiders stealing and recruiting. It leaves lifelong scars, even on those not directly involved.
2. Fly Away, Breath (1907)
The gentle death of an ancient matriarch, surrounded by her granddaughters:
“She is dying in no haste.”
But with a laugh at the end!
3. Down in the Valley Where the Green Grass Grows (1930)
A comic piece about Big Ellis, by his prankster friend, Burley Coulter.
4. Burley Coulter’s Fortunate Fall (1934)
Accidental slapstick humour from Burley, but before that, we meet grand Miss Charlotte, a rich widow and “an enjoyable lady” with a “long green car that was about the same color as folding money”.
5. A Burden (1882, 1907, 1941)
An introspective look at family dynamics, joys, and responsibilities, and how the same circumstances mark siblings differently. Andrew and Wheeler have a feckless but amusing alcoholic relative, Uncle Peach. Wheeler loves him as much as he loves his sensible, practical, absent father, but he’s conflicted:
“Wheeler inherited… two opposing attitudes toward him, and was never afterward free of either.”
(I can relate to that: one parent who praised to excess and another who was often too critical means I find it hard to evaluate myself.) One brother slips into their uncle’s footsteps, while the other makes a conscious choice to forge his own path.
6. A Desirable Woman (1938-1941)
“The town seemed to them to be inundated with self-knowledge. This knowledge moved over it in an unresting current, some of it in stories told openly that eddied with variations from teller to teller and place to place, some of it more darkly and quietly in an undertow of caution, sometimes fraught with the unacknowledged pleasure of malice, sometimes bearing a burden merely of anxiety or concern. It was to this subsurface current of gossip that Williams Maltby learned to listen with greatest care, for it told him where needs were.”
A charming portrait of a small, poor, but welcoming farming community, as newlywed Laura and Williams Maltby come to Sycamore - his first position as a priest.
“The consciousness of Sycamore as the continual, continually wandering story that in one way or another included everybody, carrying them through time like the current of the river.”
It seems idyllic. But Laura also sees the weight of her husband’s vocation and that his gift of being a comforter is a burden. The prospect of the US joining also WW2 looms.
7. Misery (1943)
“They lived by the fertility of the world and the farm, but their own fertility had been ‘a cross to bear’.”
Andy, born long enough ago to remember the last of “the old order” of rural life, reminisces about childhood days at his grandparents’ home and farm: his happy memories contrasted with the knowledge their marriage was long but not happy. The title refers to the specific episodes when his elderly grandfather would wake with “Misery”, for reasons Andy didn’t understand. As an adult, he finds comfort in imagining how his grandmother might have soothed his grandfather.
8. Andy Catlett: Early Education (1943)
“I probed the coastlines of her patience and sounded its estuaries like an early navigator…
I saw from her stance and demeanor that the situation was not as she would have preferred it to be.”
At 10, Andy is bright, inquisitive, and keen to push boundaries. His mother is quiet, patient, and clever when discipline is needed.
9. Drouth (1944)
“A drouth is an event of the atmosphere of the earth. It is also an event of the atmosphere of the human mind, which suffers a disturbance that affects everything… the meanings of memory and history… one’s sense of the future.”
Young Andy has a strong bond with Dick Watson, his father’s “black hired hand”, admiring and learning from his simple, unquestioning, naturalistic philosophy. But then “The Big Day” arrives: the annual festival/ parade/ homecoming for all the black folks. Andy loves hearing about it, but knows he can only watch from a polite distance, because he’s white.
10. Stand By Me (1921-1944)
“As your heart gets bigger on the inside, the world gets bigger on the outside… You remember them because they always were living in the other, bigger world.”
That reminds me of a common analogy I found helpful after my father's unexpected death. It's not perfect, but anyway, here's the grief in a jar meme:
This is a tear-jerking, pitch-perfect portrayal of bereavement. Jarrat Coulter’s wife dies when sons Tom and Nathan are 7 and 5. Their uncle Burley, who lives with his parents, becomes their de facto father and mother.
“I belonged to them because they needed me.”
He loves them to bits but sometimes feels inadequate. The boys have a distant relationship with their geographically proximate and emotionally broken father, causing tension in their teens. More people die, but on a farm, life must go on.
11. Not a Tear (1945)
Short, moving, and with a positive message about racial equality. Black and white people attend Dick Watson’s funeral. Part of the black pastor’s address is rendered as poetry.
12. The Dark Country (1948)
“Burley Coulter is bone-tired, thirsty, hungry, lost, and entirely happy.”
We observe Burley’s reflections on life in general, step-parenting, and the sights, sounds, colors, smells, and textures of the land: farming, hunting, and camping out with a fire as much for company as for warmth.
13. A New Day (1949)
“Elton Penn… knew he lived in the presence of mystery and of wonders, and he responded with his version of reverence, but he was not a churchman.”
A glimpse of life at the crossover from the living word to machines, from horse to tractor.
“The old moment of union and communion between man and team” has gone.
14. Mike (1939-1950)
Andy remembers his father’s favourite dog and hunting companion.
15. Who Dreamt This Dream? (1966)
Jayber Crow remembers Grover Gibbs lying for pleasure and pranks.
Image: Abandoned Kentucky homestead, surrounded by corn (Source.)
16. The Requirement (1970)
Burley’s lifelong friend, Big Ellis just died, and he muses on how one’s perception of mortality, death, and bereavement change from childhood through to old age. He recalls episodes of their friendship that illustrate why Big was so special and he feels a requirement to mark their bond.
17. An Empty Jacket (1974)
Ten-year old Marcie Catlett comes to terms with the death of his friend-cum-mentor, Elton Penn.
“Though everything clearly had changed, everything looked exactly the same.”
Then he sees Elton’s work jacket hanging, empty, on a nail.
“The name of the change was absence. It was loss.”
18. At Home (1981)
“When he went into the army in 1942, he passed from a world as old and elemental nearly as it had ever been into a world as ruthlessly new as by then it had managed to become.”
Continuity, belonging, and change, as Art Rowanberry contemplates the sale of his family farm.
19. Sold (1991)
Grover Gibbs’ widow, Beulah, now in a care home, watches a lifetime’s possessions being taken out of her house to be sold at auction, along with the farm itself.
“Everything already looked like it belonged to somebody else.”
20. A Place in Time (1938-2008)
Andy grew up inspired by Elton and Mary Penn: their love story and their example of craftsmanship, hard work, simple pleasures, and trying to make one’s piece of the world a better place.
“He farmed as a lover loves.”
Knowledge from Andy’s elders passed to him, via Elton, in “a current of love”, linking him to the land and people of the past.
That was the perfect place and theme to end, but then Andy learns that someone he long thought heartless and unforgiving may have repented, but that person is dead.
Other quotes
• "Over the striking of the knives and the steady rustling of the corn and the singing, the moonlight felt as if a greater silence were thus made visible."
• “The furniture… with its air of determined and deserted refinement.”
• “I don’t think I got as good a deal as I believe I did.”
• “It was a small place, humble enough in all its aspects, except for an ordinary splendor that would possess it from time to time in every season.”
• “A greater intimacy between himself and the things he wore and used” by repairing and repurposing them.
• “Walking… both through the place and through his consciousness of the presence and the past of it.”
• “Andy’s conscience was on one of its frequent absences from the neighborhood.”
• “It is perhaps impossible for a person living unhappily with a flush toilet to imagine a person living happily without one.”
• “He liked weather… its freedom from walls, its way of overcoming all obstructions and filling the world.”
March 29, 2021
Needing some comfort and a familiar place to wander, I decided it was time to pick up another Wendell Berry and spend a little time among my friends in Port William. Whenever I step into a Berry book, I step into my own past, the past of my childhood and I view again all the small farmers I have known and see again the world they occupied, which was already almost extinct by the time I was a young girl.
The past is as it was. As it was it is forever. It cannot be changed, not by us, not by God. No doubt it is forgettable. We do surely forget some of it, and surely all of it in time will be forgotten.
What gets you is the knowledge, and it sometimes can fall on you in a clap, that the dead are gone absolutely from this world...Whatever was done or said before is done or said for good. Any questions you think of that you ought to’ve asked while you had a chance are never going to be answered. The dead know, and you don’t.
How often did I think just this, that there was so much I wanted to know from my great Uncle Naman, from my Grandpa, even from my own father, but never got around to asking until it was so finally too late.
If all Wendell Berry did was take me back in time, that would be a major gift, but there is so much more to his writing and his wisdom. He understands what it is to be human, to live, to work, to love, to die; to experience great happiness and sorrow; to know justice and injustice, as life surely throws some of each to all of us; and he has no difficulty in instilling all of this into his characters. He can tell you everything you need to know about a person, sometimes in one line.
Her heart is poorly now, maybe, because she’s given it away all her life to anybody that needed it, always doing for somebody.
If you think it is only the agricultural life of the pre-war 1940s that has disappeared, consider how much of what was common in your own life now exists no more. Think of how different the lives of your children are from your own. Think how technology has emerged so rapidly and become so commonplace.
It is hard to remember one world while living in another.
It is hard, but it is worthwhile, and whenever I am in Port William, I find myself wishing it were a place where I could stay.
The past is as it was. As it was it is forever. It cannot be changed, not by us, not by God. No doubt it is forgettable. We do surely forget some of it, and surely all of it in time will be forgotten.
What gets you is the knowledge, and it sometimes can fall on you in a clap, that the dead are gone absolutely from this world...Whatever was done or said before is done or said for good. Any questions you think of that you ought to’ve asked while you had a chance are never going to be answered. The dead know, and you don’t.
How often did I think just this, that there was so much I wanted to know from my great Uncle Naman, from my Grandpa, even from my own father, but never got around to asking until it was so finally too late.
If all Wendell Berry did was take me back in time, that would be a major gift, but there is so much more to his writing and his wisdom. He understands what it is to be human, to live, to work, to love, to die; to experience great happiness and sorrow; to know justice and injustice, as life surely throws some of each to all of us; and he has no difficulty in instilling all of this into his characters. He can tell you everything you need to know about a person, sometimes in one line.
Her heart is poorly now, maybe, because she’s given it away all her life to anybody that needed it, always doing for somebody.
If you think it is only the agricultural life of the pre-war 1940s that has disappeared, consider how much of what was common in your own life now exists no more. Think of how different the lives of your children are from your own. Think how technology has emerged so rapidly and become so commonplace.
It is hard to remember one world while living in another.
It is hard, but it is worthwhile, and whenever I am in Port William, I find myself wishing it were a place where I could stay.
March 26, 2024
I started reading ‘ A Place In Time’ as separate stories occasionally before bed, which of course Is fine, but I realised that I was lacking an overall sense of integration and continual flow from one story to the next. I am not a ‘short story’ reader and much prefer becoming acquainted with characters over the course of a few days or weeks. So with that in mind, I restarted this collection at the weekend, and it magically transformed into a completely immersive experience. The seperate stories, became one; one community and one membership; and Wendell Berry’s writing invites you to join in, to become part of that membership. I read the stories of the Catletts, Burley Coulter, Elton Penn, the Rowanberry’s…..and it’s just like visiting old friends. I find when I read Wendell Berry, a sense of calm washes over me. The act of reading his stories is like a kind of meditative experience for me, and they are so special that they can be reread and revisited over and over again, so they become almost like ones own memories. It’s been an absolute pleasure to spend the last few days in Port William, and I know with certainty that I shall be back soon.
‘They were a membership as Burley like to call it. A mere gathering, not held together by power and organisation like the army, but by kinship, friendship, history, memory, kindness, and affection, who were apt to be working together, in various combinations according to need, and even always, according to pleasure.’
August 12, 2020
4 ✚ 👩🌾 🧑🌾 👨🌾 🧑🌾
In the middle of a pandemic. . .
"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. . ."
to a place in time, Port William, and I rest in the grace of its world and words and wisdom, and I'm free and at peace for a while.
💚I love you Wendell Berry💚
In the middle of a pandemic. . .
"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. . ."
to a place in time, Port William, and I rest in the grace of its world and words and wisdom, and I'm free and at peace for a while.
💚I love you Wendell Berry💚
December 7, 2015
It had been only three months since I read Wendell Berry’s “Jayber Crow” and “Hannah Coulter” but I had such a longing to return to Port William (PW). It was very natural for me, therefore, to experience an immediate sense of relief to be back within the vast space of that great valley and to feel right at home in “A Place In Time”.
The twenty stories in this book spanned the middle of the 19th to the early 21st century and were told from the perspectives of a range of characters, many of whom seemed like old friends. Readers of Berry’s PW stories would instantly warm to the Catletts, Coulters, Rowanberrys, Penns, and the Gibbs. The bulk of these stories were told by Andy Catlett and Burley Coulter. Reading this book was an entry into an old and elemental world. It was an immersion into PW membership, a gathering defined by "kinship, friendship, history, memory, kindness, and affection".
As is often the case with close knit communities, history is a rich tapestry of the stories handed down by word of mouth from one person to another. There were stories within each story in this collection - affectionate documentaries that contributed to a very strong sense of time and place. The stories traced major life events in the lives of the PW stalwarts: childhood, marriage, crises linked to the Great Depression and the war years, loss, grief, and death. The characters “all belonged to the old story, the story of Port William before it was dominated by machines, the ancient story of people and animals moving over the earth."
There were several light-hearted and funny stories: Big Ellis winning the hand of Annie May in marriage, cheeky Burley clowning while painting a barn and surviving a fall, and Andy, the intractable child, trying to execute a Santa chimney climb. Some of the loveliest stories were about friendship. In “The Requirement (1970)”, Burley Coulter told a tender story about his fear of losing his buddy, Big Ellis, who was dying, and about the “requirement” to do something for his friends while they yet lived. In the titular story, Andy Catlett paid tribute to Elton Penn (a friend of his father) who became one of the shaping forces of his life.
The most poignant stories, however, were on loss and grief, what Berry termed “unchangeable change”. In “Drouth (1944), Andy revealed insights into the pain his elderly family members suffered on account of a drought and personal losses due to the war. In “Stand By Me (1921 – 1944)”, a moving story was told of how Burley Coulter sat companionably with his brother, Jarrat, every night for a long time when the latter’s son Tom was killed in the war. The strongest story for me was “An Empty Jacket (1974)” in which young Marcie Catlett reflected on the death of Elton Penn. His thoughts when he caught sight of Elton's work jacket hanging on a nail in the barn tore at my heart strings: "The name of the change was absence. It was loss. And the changed world was the world he knew. It was the world known to his father and mother, to his uncle Henry and his grandfather, in which a man might grow warm at his work, take off a jacket and hang it on a nail, and forever not come back to put it back on again." There was a different kind of loss In “Sold (1991)” – the loss of a dear family farm to the highest bidder who spared no time in mowing it down to rubbles and obliterating every feature that had meant the world to the owners.
Like the other Berry novels, “A Place in Time” had a quiet appeal. It celebrated nature and an artless way of living. It had no action, no plot, and no suspense. But it offered me distinct moments of refreshment. I like how in “At Home (1981)”, Art Rowanberry luxuriated in the needless haste of surveying the country as he went walking with his dog on a spring morning. I can relate to his sentiments: "He had never minded company... But to be alone was a different happiness. At times it was almost a merriment, when he liked his thoughts. In “A New Day (1949)”, Andy Catlett narrated how Elton Penn protected the Sabbath, preferring to spend it in the company of friends: "With them he loved to sit and talk, inside by the stove in cold weather, out on the porch overlooking the creek valley if the weather was fine, allowing the time to go by without wishing it would go faster or slower, or even thinking of it."
There is much lived wisdom and joy in the love of beauty in this book that I believe it is probably best read a story at a time. Berry writes beautiful prose and this is reason enough to read this book.
September 10, 2018
I fell in love with Port William and its membership a few years ago through the eyes of Jayber Crow, and all over again through Hannah Coulter.
Reading the stories of the membership; their hurts, failures, successes, love of life, coming together in friendship, moves you to want to get to know them even better. A Place In Time did just that. This book gives you a glimpse of the lives of so many of the members and their interwoven society of how they lived life.
Reading the stories of the membership; their hurts, failures, successes, love of life, coming together in friendship, moves you to want to get to know them even better. A Place In Time did just that. This book gives you a glimpse of the lives of so many of the members and their interwoven society of how they lived life.
February 11, 2021
A Place in Time
Stories from the Port William, Kentucky membership ...
This book reads like treasured journals or perhaps dairies kept from those folks we’ve grown to love. Wonderful characters brought to us from a prized author, Wendell Berry.
Stories from the Port William, Kentucky membership ...
This book reads like treasured journals or perhaps dairies kept from those folks we’ve grown to love. Wonderful characters brought to us from a prized author, Wendell Berry.
February 18, 2023
This is top shelf Wendell Berry. Hilarious, peaceful, and achingly beautiful.
November 14, 2016
Wendell Berry has been writing poetry and essays on farming life for more than half a century. But he has also written fiction set in Port William, Ky., which rivals William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County in terms of its breadth of imagined historical detail. A Place in Time includes 20 stories that feature familiar characters from earlier novels and stories, but it is not necessary to have read those to get pleasure out of these.
This is a good introduction to many of the families that inhabit Port William. The Catletts and Feltners are prominent in several stories. While individual characters like Burley Coulter, Elton Penn, and Andy Catlett stand out. The stories span more than a century and a half of history from the opening story, set in the Civil War era to the titular tale that ends the book during the first decade of the new millennium.
The stories are not plot driven but focus on character, including the character of Port William itself. The relationships of characters are as important as their actions in these beautiful vignettes of small town life. As someone who was raised in a small town I found moments that resonated with my own experience. "Andy Catlett: Early Education" reminded me of my own schooldays while also bringing my reading of books like Tom Sawyer to mind. One of the most potent stories, for instance, is markedly subtle: “A Desirable Woman” tracks the intersection of a pastor’s wife and a young farmhand shortly before the start of World War II, and the story turns on the young man’s unrequited crush on the woman shortly before he’s sent off to war. “Sold” has a similarly soft-focus, nostalgic cast, narrated by an elderly woman recalling the accumulations that are about to be sold at auction before she enters a nursing home. Some of the stories are suggestive of homespun tales or Twain (again), as in “A New Day,” which climaxes in a competition between two horse teams dragging bricks, or “A Burden,” about the antics of a drunk relation.
Throughout the collection Berry's writing style is poetic as he shares episodes of loss and love, achievement and angst; all set against the backdrop of the evolution of Port William through time. The historic context was omnipresent but not overwhelming. It intruded with tales of soldiers returning or not returning from war and notes of other events, although the focus was continually on the families -- their follies, their foibles, and their faith. Berry is a writer whose beautiful sentences are imbued with an agrarian spirit. That and a concern for both time past and time future make this a fine collection.
This is a good introduction to many of the families that inhabit Port William. The Catletts and Feltners are prominent in several stories. While individual characters like Burley Coulter, Elton Penn, and Andy Catlett stand out. The stories span more than a century and a half of history from the opening story, set in the Civil War era to the titular tale that ends the book during the first decade of the new millennium.
The stories are not plot driven but focus on character, including the character of Port William itself. The relationships of characters are as important as their actions in these beautiful vignettes of small town life. As someone who was raised in a small town I found moments that resonated with my own experience. "Andy Catlett: Early Education" reminded me of my own schooldays while also bringing my reading of books like Tom Sawyer to mind. One of the most potent stories, for instance, is markedly subtle: “A Desirable Woman” tracks the intersection of a pastor’s wife and a young farmhand shortly before the start of World War II, and the story turns on the young man’s unrequited crush on the woman shortly before he’s sent off to war. “Sold” has a similarly soft-focus, nostalgic cast, narrated by an elderly woman recalling the accumulations that are about to be sold at auction before she enters a nursing home. Some of the stories are suggestive of homespun tales or Twain (again), as in “A New Day,” which climaxes in a competition between two horse teams dragging bricks, or “A Burden,” about the antics of a drunk relation.
Throughout the collection Berry's writing style is poetic as he shares episodes of loss and love, achievement and angst; all set against the backdrop of the evolution of Port William through time. The historic context was omnipresent but not overwhelming. It intruded with tales of soldiers returning or not returning from war and notes of other events, although the focus was continually on the families -- their follies, their foibles, and their faith. Berry is a writer whose beautiful sentences are imbued with an agrarian spirit. That and a concern for both time past and time future make this a fine collection.
December 7, 2021
I first became aware of the writing of Wendell Berry listening to “The Daily Poem” podcast. I was riding my bike and I remember the exact part of the road I was on as Berry’s “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” rolled by. It seems fitting that a very specific experience of place accompanied my introduction to a writer with such a powerful sense of place.
I was intrigued by Berry’s Port William chronicles from when I first heard them mentioned. Finding the place to start in a series that has spanned an over fifty year creative season and which has no set chronology was a challenge, especially when one is conditioned by trilogies and chronicles which are generally best served by being read in order.
“A Place In Time” proved to be an ideal launching point, but probably proved that anywhere in the Port William opus would do the job. It’s a curious thing, to have read a book with such a powerful sense of time and continuity and memory yet which feels no constraint to tie itself to the telling of a big-arc story, start to finish. Perhaps memory is the key. Memories lie within a story, yet they rise and fall into our consciousness like birds appearing across the sky - eexplicable in that they are moved by instinct and environment, with a beauty that is both incidental and fundamental, their presence not of my doing…
There is a big story to Port William, and it is tenderly woven from the threads of all the small stories. Berry’s philosophy drives Port William with a profound power and he writes with such a poet’s deft hand. These tales could have so easily slipped into sentiment, nostalgia or that sort of politically driven art that is just a paint roller to plaster the recipient with the creator’s worldview. These stories, with all their honesty and simplicity and beauty and restraint had lifted me off the ground and I didn’t even know it.
On our family holiday, I became the butt of jokes for wanting to talk about this book at every opportunity. It’s that sort of book. Without feeling like Berry is trying to instruct you, you learn. He doesn’t correct you, but you feel you need to change. The wisdom is so embedded in the seemingly inconsequential that it stops you in your tracks, but you don’t feel ambushed. The ordinary - ordinary places, people, events, days, cycles - becomes the hero.
And again and again he lands each story with pathos, power, beauty, simplicity, profundity…how he does it never becomes a distraction. I just see the man burying his dog, the final clearing sale, the woman in the shadow of the window, the old man in front of Elton Penn’s team of horses. And I get a sense of the weight of the meaning they hold, the characters, for me, for us.
But what I was going to say is it’s really hard to do this book and the spirit of Wendell Berry’s remarkable achievement justice. I feel like I’m describing a meal. Taste and smell cannot be translated to language. You need to put the food in your mouth.
This book - and the many Port William stories I have become eager to experience - must be read to be experienced. Laura said “I feel like you’re describing sitting in a beautiful field and I really just need to go and sit in the field.” She got it.
Wendell Berry has written about a fictional locality on the other side of the earth. But he’s actually written about me, and love, and family, and work, and mortality, and our part and place in this world, a world which tech and mech and greed and noise turn from friend to foe, slave to master, something we feel we need to subdue or consume or profit from before it can fully justify itself by satisfying our appetites.
But there I go again. Take Laura’s advice.
Just go to Port William. Go and sit in the field.
I was intrigued by Berry’s Port William chronicles from when I first heard them mentioned. Finding the place to start in a series that has spanned an over fifty year creative season and which has no set chronology was a challenge, especially when one is conditioned by trilogies and chronicles which are generally best served by being read in order.
“A Place In Time” proved to be an ideal launching point, but probably proved that anywhere in the Port William opus would do the job. It’s a curious thing, to have read a book with such a powerful sense of time and continuity and memory yet which feels no constraint to tie itself to the telling of a big-arc story, start to finish. Perhaps memory is the key. Memories lie within a story, yet they rise and fall into our consciousness like birds appearing across the sky - eexplicable in that they are moved by instinct and environment, with a beauty that is both incidental and fundamental, their presence not of my doing…
There is a big story to Port William, and it is tenderly woven from the threads of all the small stories. Berry’s philosophy drives Port William with a profound power and he writes with such a poet’s deft hand. These tales could have so easily slipped into sentiment, nostalgia or that sort of politically driven art that is just a paint roller to plaster the recipient with the creator’s worldview. These stories, with all their honesty and simplicity and beauty and restraint had lifted me off the ground and I didn’t even know it.
On our family holiday, I became the butt of jokes for wanting to talk about this book at every opportunity. It’s that sort of book. Without feeling like Berry is trying to instruct you, you learn. He doesn’t correct you, but you feel you need to change. The wisdom is so embedded in the seemingly inconsequential that it stops you in your tracks, but you don’t feel ambushed. The ordinary - ordinary places, people, events, days, cycles - becomes the hero.
And again and again he lands each story with pathos, power, beauty, simplicity, profundity…how he does it never becomes a distraction. I just see the man burying his dog, the final clearing sale, the woman in the shadow of the window, the old man in front of Elton Penn’s team of horses. And I get a sense of the weight of the meaning they hold, the characters, for me, for us.
But what I was going to say is it’s really hard to do this book and the spirit of Wendell Berry’s remarkable achievement justice. I feel like I’m describing a meal. Taste and smell cannot be translated to language. You need to put the food in your mouth.
This book - and the many Port William stories I have become eager to experience - must be read to be experienced. Laura said “I feel like you’re describing sitting in a beautiful field and I really just need to go and sit in the field.” She got it.
Wendell Berry has written about a fictional locality on the other side of the earth. But he’s actually written about me, and love, and family, and work, and mortality, and our part and place in this world, a world which tech and mech and greed and noise turn from friend to foe, slave to master, something we feel we need to subdue or consume or profit from before it can fully justify itself by satisfying our appetites.
But there I go again. Take Laura’s advice.
Just go to Port William. Go and sit in the field.
September 3, 2020
I took my time with this book, reading a story occasionally & then going back for the next one. The stories are all episodes in the life of Port William, Kentucky, a farming/small town community. The book opens with "The Girl in the Window" set in 1864 and closes with "A Place in Time", where an old farm home place is sold in 2008.
The characters have probably all appeared in other Port William novels; there's a map with farms marked and a family tree for the Catletts, Coulters, Beechums, etc., that I kept referring to.
I enjoy these stories and they make me think a lot about my own father and grandparents & their lives as farmers. Berry really celebrates nature, farming and community with his Port William fiction, the characters think of themselves as a "membership" but the stories I vaguely remember don't reflect as strong of a sense of community as Berry portrays. Community yes, but "membership", I'm not sure about.
Will keep reading Wendell Berry, will keep thinking about the way of life that has been replaced and about the wonderful characters of Port William.
The characters have probably all appeared in other Port William novels; there's a map with farms marked and a family tree for the Catletts, Coulters, Beechums, etc., that I kept referring to.
I enjoy these stories and they make me think a lot about my own father and grandparents & their lives as farmers. Berry really celebrates nature, farming and community with his Port William fiction, the characters think of themselves as a "membership" but the stories I vaguely remember don't reflect as strong of a sense of community as Berry portrays. Community yes, but "membership", I'm not sure about.
Will keep reading Wendell Berry, will keep thinking about the way of life that has been replaced and about the wonderful characters of Port William.
October 26, 2022
The concepts and characters of Wendell Berry continue to take up more and more of my head and my heart. And I wouldn't have it any other way.
September 13, 2022
comfort author
September 20, 2023
Phenomenal
July 28, 2017
Wendell Berry in the preceding two months has quickly become my constant muse and companion. I hear his poems and thoughts anytime I take Route 16 between Gillespie and Litchfield and gaze out upon the wonder of Illinois prairie grass, wherever it lay untamed. And, too, I think of his agrarian insight when I converse with my grandmother, the daughter of farmers from Shipman, or when I visit my mentor in Nokomis, a community practically defined by its farming.
So, more Wendell Berry in my life is altogether welcome. I purchased this collection of stories to take with me when I prematurely finished Jayber Crow prior to our Summer 2017 vacation, so it has the added resonance of rural Michigan in the reading, the loveliness of Sleeping Bear and Lake Michigan... and even a poem or two of my own inspired by Berry's writing.
The collection is lovely and provocative, though at times this or that short story can feel too short or too long for its precis. While I have often enjoyed (in, for instance, Jayber Crow, the poems, and the essays) Berry's stark and apocalyptic criticisms of American capitalism, the short stories turn out not to be the best medium for that end of his work. Berry seems to know that, and he rarely attempts those critiques in this mode, leaving it for his novels, poems, and essays. Instead, the short stories are beautiful elongated episodes of the lives of Port William. We hear the humorous tale of how Big Ellis found a bride, or how Burley Coulter survived a deathly fall, or of Tom Coulter's romantic interest in a preacher's wife. And more, too, we hear the story of a generation who (unfortunately) has become unsung in our day and age. To enter into Berry's Port William is to re-engage with modes of life so foreign to American capitalistic life that we can hardly recognize it. Our world has changed too much.
Some of the stories are funny (and some so humorous I had to share!), while others are more deeply moving. Others still have a holiness to them that is hard to describe theologically, but present there nonetheless. If only our theologians understood this sense of holiness, maybe they would tread more cautiously! Berry's world of Port William is deep and wide, and more than worthwhile to dip into and experience.
So, more Wendell Berry in my life is altogether welcome. I purchased this collection of stories to take with me when I prematurely finished Jayber Crow prior to our Summer 2017 vacation, so it has the added resonance of rural Michigan in the reading, the loveliness of Sleeping Bear and Lake Michigan... and even a poem or two of my own inspired by Berry's writing.
The collection is lovely and provocative, though at times this or that short story can feel too short or too long for its precis. While I have often enjoyed (in, for instance, Jayber Crow, the poems, and the essays) Berry's stark and apocalyptic criticisms of American capitalism, the short stories turn out not to be the best medium for that end of his work. Berry seems to know that, and he rarely attempts those critiques in this mode, leaving it for his novels, poems, and essays. Instead, the short stories are beautiful elongated episodes of the lives of Port William. We hear the humorous tale of how Big Ellis found a bride, or how Burley Coulter survived a deathly fall, or of Tom Coulter's romantic interest in a preacher's wife. And more, too, we hear the story of a generation who (unfortunately) has become unsung in our day and age. To enter into Berry's Port William is to re-engage with modes of life so foreign to American capitalistic life that we can hardly recognize it. Our world has changed too much.
Some of the stories are funny (and some so humorous I had to share!), while others are more deeply moving. Others still have a holiness to them that is hard to describe theologically, but present there nonetheless. If only our theologians understood this sense of holiness, maybe they would tread more cautiously! Berry's world of Port William is deep and wide, and more than worthwhile to dip into and experience.
January 24, 2013
I grew up, in my twenties by way of listening to a hell of a lot of John Prine and reading Wendell Berry. Mostly his essays. Jim Harrison has helped make sense out of recent years and open places. I can't write objectively about anyone of those three by this point. I have no desire to anyway.
A place In Time is a collection of beautiful stories. I could have, and maybe should have rated it it fives stars, but I feel that way every time I rate a book. I have given four stars to every book I have bothered to rate here and I believe in keeping up with tradition. The stories really are beautiful. Berry requires of his readers, a certain investment of affection for agrarian people, their work and their place. I'm not sure a person who enjoys reading, and values rural life, could fail to enjoy most of Berry's writing, fiction or otherwise.
An old friend of mine confided in me, several times by now, that she often finds herself ill prepared for the tenderness he expresses within his fiction. These stories are compact and lovingly written. The shortest of them strike me as being very complete.
Of his fiction, I first read the revised edition of A Place On Earth. I then read most of his other novels including Fidelity, which is another collection of stories. A Place On Earth or Jayber Crow are perhaps where I would suggest a person start digging in. They are probably his longest pieces. They simply provide a greater physical sense of the place in Kentucky, or that place which resides in Wendell's heart and mind, that he has been writing about for the course of his life. This collection of short stories is no doubt more than strong enough to stand alone, but given the luxury, A Place On Earth is worth looking into as place to begin.
A place In Time is a collection of beautiful stories. I could have, and maybe should have rated it it fives stars, but I feel that way every time I rate a book. I have given four stars to every book I have bothered to rate here and I believe in keeping up with tradition. The stories really are beautiful. Berry requires of his readers, a certain investment of affection for agrarian people, their work and their place. I'm not sure a person who enjoys reading, and values rural life, could fail to enjoy most of Berry's writing, fiction or otherwise.
An old friend of mine confided in me, several times by now, that she often finds herself ill prepared for the tenderness he expresses within his fiction. These stories are compact and lovingly written. The shortest of them strike me as being very complete.
Of his fiction, I first read the revised edition of A Place On Earth. I then read most of his other novels including Fidelity, which is another collection of stories. A Place On Earth or Jayber Crow are perhaps where I would suggest a person start digging in. They are probably his longest pieces. They simply provide a greater physical sense of the place in Kentucky, or that place which resides in Wendell's heart and mind, that he has been writing about for the course of his life. This collection of short stories is no doubt more than strong enough to stand alone, but given the luxury, A Place On Earth is worth looking into as place to begin.
May 21, 2021
I’ve been reading stories of Port William for nearly a decade and the fictional characters in these stories feel so dear and real to me. Wendell Berry continues to amaze me with his ability to poignantly express our desire and need for a place and home. He simultaneously causes the reader to lament (that this sense of place is disappearing) and to hope (that it can be found again).
I especially enjoyed learning more about Tom Coulter (previously an under-introduced character in my opinion), Tol Proudfoot (was there ever a more endearing person?!?), Elton and Mary Penn, the Rowanberrys, Burley (of course!), and one of my favorites, Wheeler Cattlet.
I especially enjoyed learning more about Tom Coulter (previously an under-introduced character in my opinion), Tol Proudfoot (was there ever a more endearing person?!?), Elton and Mary Penn, the Rowanberrys, Burley (of course!), and one of my favorites, Wheeler Cattlet.
June 19, 2017
My first foray into Wendell Berry and I plan to read him again. As a suburbanite through and through, I enjoyed this collection of stories from a farming community in a different time. Berry's prose was elegant as it was plain and somehow managed to romanticize and be real at the same time. I will miss these characters and Port William for a while yet...
Read
August 21, 2016The stories, as you'd expect, are to-read-again. For those who like the Coulter family saga, "A Desirable Woman" adds yet another piece to the saga. It took me a long time to finish these, but that's just because the reading got scattered between other books.
April 13, 2020
i was recently introduced to Wendell Berry by Jeff Boyd and Juliette Chien and for this i am quite thankful. the first thing i ever read by Wendell Berry was his poem "Work Song," which i loved immediately. i've also read some snippets from his essays and lectures. i am drawn to the depth and deliberateness of Berry's writing, and to the gentleness of his characters and the simplicity and profundity of their small but honest lives. his stories are so grounded in time and place, and he knows his characters' stories and their inner lives to great depth. the stories are simple but they cut deep and draw out something very emotional and human in few words. favorites: stand by me, the empty jacket, a place in time.
September 30, 2024
“It was a life now simply to be lived, accepting hardships and pleasures, joys and griefs equally as they came.” (Page 192)
Tales from a bygone era that hold lessons that remain untouched by time. Stories of friendship and neighbors, of love and loss, of death and grief, and the changing of places and people. Funny and sad and full of beauty. Some of my favorites were “Fly Away, Breath,” “Stand By Me,” “Not a Tear,” “Mike,” and “Who Dreamt this Dream?”
Tales from a bygone era that hold lessons that remain untouched by time. Stories of friendship and neighbors, of love and loss, of death and grief, and the changing of places and people. Funny and sad and full of beauty. Some of my favorites were “Fly Away, Breath,” “Stand By Me,” “Not a Tear,” “Mike,” and “Who Dreamt this Dream?”
August 23, 2025
As pure and perfect prose as I've ever read. I could've finished this far, far sooner, but Berry's prose somehow forces me to savor, wait, consider, and reflect. I think of him as essentially a combination of the best of William Faulkner and the best of Cormac McCarthy. The final pages of the final story (the eponymous 'A Place in Time') are among the most beautiful, stirring, and Christ-haunted of any I've ever read.
May 31, 2019
It's official: Elton Penn is my favorite of the Port William membership. The story of Laura Milby, the preacher's life, was especially beautiful. Also: "Mike" was a wonderful story and I'm so glad it didn't end in complete and total tragedy; dog stories have a bad reputation for being horrifically sad, but this one was quite satisfying.
January 12, 2023
I started this when it released in 2012, but stalled out after stumbling over A Desirable Woman, because I just didn't know what to think about it. I'm still not entirely sure what I think, but all the other stories are lovely, quiet, hopeful, vintage Port William. A few Wheeler, a few Burley, even a couple about noble Elton Penn, and all excellent. Many dealt beautifully with grief.
March 5, 2019
It’s always great to revisit Port William and it’s characters. My favorite stories in this collection are A Desirable Woman, and Mike.
February 20, 2024
Beautiful, brilliant, and inspiring as always. Berry is a master of short story telling.
February 9, 2020
Reading about the struggles of these characters is a comfort to me.
"You think it's awful. And it is. But I'll tell you something. You can't believe it now, but times will come when this won't be on your mind. You won't think of it."
"You think it's awful. And it is. But I'll tell you something. You can't believe it now, but times will come when this won't be on your mind. You won't think of it."
June 27, 2025
A collection of wonderful short stories that explore our struggles with grief, sorrow, and modernization, but is held together with love, faith and communal living with families and friends. Wendell Berry also has a good sense of humor in a few of the stories. I think my favorite narrators tend to be Burley and Andrew.
January 24, 2019
Such a sublime, down-to-earth writer. LOVE him! The stories really slow you down and take you INTO time so thoroughly that you lose track of it.
August 5, 2014
I've never really been drawn to collections of short stories but I loved this book (as I have loved every Wendell Berry book). For someone new to Wendell Berry, I don't think this book is the place to start (try Hannah Coulter or Jaybar Crow). I say this because I found my self continually drawing from previous knowledge of the Port William characters ("the membership") and such knowledge made these stories more intriguing. As for the writing, it is hard to write anything about Wendell Berry after reading his perfectly constructed sentences without feeling self-conscious about your own inability to communicate clearly. So I won't try! Lastly, the barrier between Berry's fictional world and his real life experiences seems much more porous in this work than in his earlier works and I thoroughly enjoyed capturing glimpses of the extraordinary experiences that inspired him to create the "Port William Membership." Just enough of the "behind the scenes" story comes through satisfy the curiosity but without spoiling the imaginary world that has become such a blessed escape (at least to me!).
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