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Port William
Nathan Coulter: A Novel
Nathan Coulter , Wendell Berry’s first book, was published in 1960 when he was twenty-seven. In his first novel, the author presents his readers with their first introduction to what would become Berry’s life’s work, chronicling through fiction a place where the inhabitants of Port William form what is more than community, but rather a “membership” in interrelatedness, a spiritual community, united by duty and bonds of affection for one another and for the land upon which they make their livelihood. When young Nathan loses his grandfather, Berry guides readers through the process of Nathan's grief, endearing the reader to the simple humanity through which Nathan views the world. Echoing Berry's own strongly held beliefs, Nathan tells us that his grandfather's life "couldn't be divided from the days he'd spent at work in his fields." Berry has long been compared to Faulkner for his ability to erect entire communities in his fiction, and his heart and soul have always lived in Port William, Kentucky. In this eloquent novel about duty, community, and a sweeping love of the land, Berry gives readers a classic book that takes them to that storied place.
117 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1960
272 people are currently reading
4166 people want to read
About the author
Wendell Berry
291 books4,863 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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May 17, 2022
Sometimes I just need a quiet place to go in a story without a lot of action or drama, characters who work hard and love their land, care about each other, told in beautiful prose . A Wendell Berry novel is the place for that. Don’t get me wrong, Port William is not an idyllic place. Life happens here, with the good and the bad, but I find it to be such a respite from the complications of modern life.
The novel opens with two young brothers, meandering around a farm, around the town, by the river, while their father works the farm and their mother who is ill, tends the house. What they do, what they say and who they see tell a good bit about the character and history and daily life of Port William, Kentucky. I first met these two boys Tom and Nathan Coulter, their Uncle Burley and others in my first visit there with a short story, Stand By Me. I was so moved by that story, I set aside this novel for a bit to reread it . I felt such an emotional connection again to the characters and I was drawn further into their story as well as others in Port William. The short story and this novel overlap, but each of them beautifully reflect what the place is all about. It’s as if Port William is a character, a melding of those who live there.
This is a coming of age story written in spare, but beautiful prose. I’m not going to say anything about what happens. It’s worth discovering this place and these characters yourself.
The novel opens with two young brothers, meandering around a farm, around the town, by the river, while their father works the farm and their mother who is ill, tends the house. What they do, what they say and who they see tell a good bit about the character and history and daily life of Port William, Kentucky. I first met these two boys Tom and Nathan Coulter, their Uncle Burley and others in my first visit there with a short story, Stand By Me. I was so moved by that story, I set aside this novel for a bit to reread it . I felt such an emotional connection again to the characters and I was drawn further into their story as well as others in Port William. The short story and this novel overlap, but each of them beautifully reflect what the place is all about. It’s as if Port William is a character, a melding of those who live there.
This is a coming of age story written in spare, but beautiful prose. I’m not going to say anything about what happens. It’s worth discovering this place and these characters yourself.
May 28, 2018
”Grandpa had owned his land and worked on it and taken his pride from it for so long that we knew him, and he knew himself, in the same way that we knew the spring. His life couldn’t be divided from the days he’d spent at work in his fields. Daddy had told us we didn’t know what the country would look like without him at work in the middle of it; and that was as true of Grandpa as it was of Daddy. We wouldn’t recognize the country when he was dead."
There is this moment in time, with proper longevity, when several generations might find themselves working a tobacco field together. The Coulter’s are one such family. One generation imprinting on the next generation, leaving traces of their work ethic and view of the world in those that follow them. My father, age fourteen, in the early 1950s went to see what was taking his father so long to feed the horses and found his lifeless body on the ground, tongue extended, looking like a grotesque version of the man that had dominated his life since he was first old enough to follow him out to the fields. At a tender age my father became the head of the family and sole support for his mother and two sisters. Our generation overlap was interrupted. According to my father my brother and I were fortunate to miss our grandfather. He was a hard man, more intent on finding a reason to administer a cuff than a reason to distribute praise. He might have been like Grandpa Coulter, if he had lived long enough to have white hair.
”He always hurried, even across a room, setting his feet down hard. You could never imagine him turning around and going the other way. When he walked through the house he made the dishes rattle in the kitchen cabinet, and you half expected to find his tracks sunk into the floor. He was tall and learn, his face crossed with wrinkles. His hair was white and it hung in his eyes most of the time when he wasn’t wearing a hat, because he didn’t use a comb for anything but to scratch his head. His nose crooked like a hawk’s and his eyes were pale and blue.”
Grandmother Leota (Chester) Keeten and Grandfather Dean Leo Keeten shortly after they are married.
Grandpa Coulter worked hard his whole life and Nathan’s Daddy is a chip off the old block. This is a book about the family, but it is really about the shaping force of the Grandfather on generations of Coulter men. His son Burley, Uncle to Nathan, explains about his father.
But I tell you, there’s no give in him. And no quit. You’ve got to admire that. He’s been a wheel horse in his time. He’s worked liked the world was on fire and nobody but him to put it out. It’s a shame to see him getting old.”
This isn’t discussed in the novel, but it isn’t hard to puzzle out that Burley gave up on being the perfect son. His brother fit that role so well, and a life of competing with his father and his grandfather was not appealing to him. He suffered under their disapproving gaze, but periodically he relieves that pressure by going on a drunk, or going fishing, or going hunting. All things the rest of his family has no time to mess with.
”Grandpa thought Uncle Burley was a disgrace because he’d rather hunt or fish than work. Grandma didn’t mind that so much, but she was always grieving because he was so sinful. He never was very sorry for his sins, and that got her worse than anything. But he hardly ever paid attention to their haggling. When it got more than Burley could stand, he’d leave and spend a few days in his camp house at the river.”
Kentucky Tobacco Field
Daddy relishes the competition he feels with his sons in the fields, often taunting them to beat him to the end of the row. He ain’t the boss, he’s the boss’s son, but he’s going to be boss when the boss is done. As Grandpa is reaching the twilight of his ability to compete in the field, Daddy is reveling in the zenith of his strength. The boys haven’t logged enough time in the fields to develop the muscle memory to compete, but it seems that Tom might be the best candidate to be the next force of nature in the family. The brothers discussed the ramifications of actually surpassing their father.
”And Brother and I had thought about it and talked about it between ourselves. In a way passing him would be the finest thing we could do, and the thing we could be proudest of. But in another way it would be bad, because it would kill him to have to get out of the way for anybody. We’d told each other that we might never do it, even when we were able, because of that. And both of us knew that if the time ever came it would be a hard thing to do, and a risky one. Once we’d passed him we could never be behind again. We’d have to stay in front, and it was a lonely and troublesome place.”
If that day happened they would have to be prepared to take over the farm and neither boy is prepared for that responsibility.
Berry has been compared to William Faulkner, but he is certainly more accessible. He builds his stories around a regional location in Kentucky much as Faulkner does around Oxford, Mississippi. This is the first novel in the Port William, Kentucky series. It is not his strongest book; in fact, I noticed other reviewers expressing their disappointment after reading his much more mature work Hannah Coulter. Hannah becomes Nathan’s wife and does not appear in this novel. Despite the fact that it is his first novel I found his descriptions up to the level that I have come to expect from Wendell Berry. Daddy’s barn burns down and Berry describes the crowd.
A crowd had gathered at the yard fence. The red light flickered and waved on their faces, and shone on the roofs of the automobiles behind them. Their faces looked calm and strange turned up into the light of the fire, like the faces of people around a lion’s cage, separate from it, only seeing.”
Wendell Berry, poet and novelist.
Reading this book I certainly felt a tug for a life that is now lost. Not only the life of my grandfather, but also the life on the farm where I had ample opportunity to work muscles, do a job, and feel that satisfaction in seeing the completion of a task. My job now is just one on going assembly line of paperwork and phone calls, rarely do things feel completed. I went to college so I could sit at a desk, and make decisions. I fix problems, and hire people to do the "real" work. I’m suited to it, but there are days when I feel the need to pick up a bale of alfalfa and fling it into a feed bunk or jostle around on a tractor turning the earth, revealing black soil, and feeling the surge of a diesel engine under my feet.
If my Grandfather had lived would I be a better person, probably not. With his heavy hand on the wheel of the family fortune I might have felt like I needed to be a farmer. Books would have been knocked from my hands and replaced with a pitchfork. I might have been trapped on the farm or I might have fled the farm too early, unprepared and doomed for failure, in an attempt to break away from his tyrannical reign. This is all idle speculation of course. He may have mellowed as he got older. My father is a kind man and probably would not be the man I respect so much today if his father had lived. You see...I get to respect him without fearing him. I have to feel that my kids benefit from not having my grandfather’s imprint on me. A book that gave me much to ponder
There is this moment in time, with proper longevity, when several generations might find themselves working a tobacco field together. The Coulter’s are one such family. One generation imprinting on the next generation, leaving traces of their work ethic and view of the world in those that follow them. My father, age fourteen, in the early 1950s went to see what was taking his father so long to feed the horses and found his lifeless body on the ground, tongue extended, looking like a grotesque version of the man that had dominated his life since he was first old enough to follow him out to the fields. At a tender age my father became the head of the family and sole support for his mother and two sisters. Our generation overlap was interrupted. According to my father my brother and I were fortunate to miss our grandfather. He was a hard man, more intent on finding a reason to administer a cuff than a reason to distribute praise. He might have been like Grandpa Coulter, if he had lived long enough to have white hair.
”He always hurried, even across a room, setting his feet down hard. You could never imagine him turning around and going the other way. When he walked through the house he made the dishes rattle in the kitchen cabinet, and you half expected to find his tracks sunk into the floor. He was tall and learn, his face crossed with wrinkles. His hair was white and it hung in his eyes most of the time when he wasn’t wearing a hat, because he didn’t use a comb for anything but to scratch his head. His nose crooked like a hawk’s and his eyes were pale and blue.”
Grandmother Leota (Chester) Keeten and Grandfather Dean Leo Keeten shortly after they are married.
Grandpa Coulter worked hard his whole life and Nathan’s Daddy is a chip off the old block. This is a book about the family, but it is really about the shaping force of the Grandfather on generations of Coulter men. His son Burley, Uncle to Nathan, explains about his father.
But I tell you, there’s no give in him. And no quit. You’ve got to admire that. He’s been a wheel horse in his time. He’s worked liked the world was on fire and nobody but him to put it out. It’s a shame to see him getting old.”
This isn’t discussed in the novel, but it isn’t hard to puzzle out that Burley gave up on being the perfect son. His brother fit that role so well, and a life of competing with his father and his grandfather was not appealing to him. He suffered under their disapproving gaze, but periodically he relieves that pressure by going on a drunk, or going fishing, or going hunting. All things the rest of his family has no time to mess with.
”Grandpa thought Uncle Burley was a disgrace because he’d rather hunt or fish than work. Grandma didn’t mind that so much, but she was always grieving because he was so sinful. He never was very sorry for his sins, and that got her worse than anything. But he hardly ever paid attention to their haggling. When it got more than Burley could stand, he’d leave and spend a few days in his camp house at the river.”
Kentucky Tobacco Field
Daddy relishes the competition he feels with his sons in the fields, often taunting them to beat him to the end of the row. He ain’t the boss, he’s the boss’s son, but he’s going to be boss when the boss is done. As Grandpa is reaching the twilight of his ability to compete in the field, Daddy is reveling in the zenith of his strength. The boys haven’t logged enough time in the fields to develop the muscle memory to compete, but it seems that Tom might be the best candidate to be the next force of nature in the family. The brothers discussed the ramifications of actually surpassing their father.
”And Brother and I had thought about it and talked about it between ourselves. In a way passing him would be the finest thing we could do, and the thing we could be proudest of. But in another way it would be bad, because it would kill him to have to get out of the way for anybody. We’d told each other that we might never do it, even when we were able, because of that. And both of us knew that if the time ever came it would be a hard thing to do, and a risky one. Once we’d passed him we could never be behind again. We’d have to stay in front, and it was a lonely and troublesome place.”
If that day happened they would have to be prepared to take over the farm and neither boy is prepared for that responsibility.
Berry has been compared to William Faulkner, but he is certainly more accessible. He builds his stories around a regional location in Kentucky much as Faulkner does around Oxford, Mississippi. This is the first novel in the Port William, Kentucky series. It is not his strongest book; in fact, I noticed other reviewers expressing their disappointment after reading his much more mature work Hannah Coulter. Hannah becomes Nathan’s wife and does not appear in this novel. Despite the fact that it is his first novel I found his descriptions up to the level that I have come to expect from Wendell Berry. Daddy’s barn burns down and Berry describes the crowd.
A crowd had gathered at the yard fence. The red light flickered and waved on their faces, and shone on the roofs of the automobiles behind them. Their faces looked calm and strange turned up into the light of the fire, like the faces of people around a lion’s cage, separate from it, only seeing.”
Wendell Berry, poet and novelist.
Reading this book I certainly felt a tug for a life that is now lost. Not only the life of my grandfather, but also the life on the farm where I had ample opportunity to work muscles, do a job, and feel that satisfaction in seeing the completion of a task. My job now is just one on going assembly line of paperwork and phone calls, rarely do things feel completed. I went to college so I could sit at a desk, and make decisions. I fix problems, and hire people to do the "real" work. I’m suited to it, but there are days when I feel the need to pick up a bale of alfalfa and fling it into a feed bunk or jostle around on a tractor turning the earth, revealing black soil, and feeling the surge of a diesel engine under my feet.
If my Grandfather had lived would I be a better person, probably not. With his heavy hand on the wheel of the family fortune I might have felt like I needed to be a farmer. Books would have been knocked from my hands and replaced with a pitchfork. I might have been trapped on the farm or I might have fled the farm too early, unprepared and doomed for failure, in an attempt to break away from his tyrannical reign. This is all idle speculation of course. He may have mellowed as he got older. My father is a kind man and probably would not be the man I respect so much today if his father had lived. You see...I get to respect him without fearing him. I have to feel that my kids benefit from not having my grandfather’s imprint on me. A book that gave me much to ponder
May 5, 2022
Friends who love Wendell Berry’s work will be interested to know that Nathan Coulter, published in 1960, is the first in this series of Port William novels. This story of a farming community in Kentucky and the Coulter family is a first-person narrative by young Nathan who is just a teenager.
The love of the land features strongly in this novel. To Nathan’s grandfather, land ownership is important: ‘That was all he lived for, to own his farm without having to say please or thank you to a living soul.’ By contrast, Nathan’s Uncle Burley does not own any land and lives only to fish or hunt. ‘He said land was worse than a wife; it tied you down, and he didn’t want to be in any place he couldn’t leave.’ I laughed reading this because this is the free-spirited Burley Coulter I’ve come to know from previous books.
There are no plots, no mysteries, no scandals. We read about the day-to-day life on the farm, what folks do for fun (going to the fair, hunting or fishing), how families cope with death and loss. There are light-hearted moments with plenty of mischief attributed to Nathan and his brother, Tom, and of course, Burley. There is heartbreak when Nathan’s sickly mother dies and life is never the same again for him and his brother given their father’s harsh parenting style.
What was lovely to read is Nathan’s closeness to Uncle Burley and their fishing/hunting trips. It was precious given the disharmony between Tom and their father. Berry succeeded in helping us to understand why family relationships can be difficult to navigate. Angry words. Fights. ”And things that had been so before never would be so again. We were the way we were; nothing could make us any different, and we suffered because of it. Things happened to us the way they did because we were ourselves.” Our personalities and what we stand for can be our greatest enemy.
I am no farm girl. Despite the difference in circumstances, place and culture, I recognized the family sentiments, especially the pain of family members falling out with each other, and the tricky complexities of communication, the intermingling of love and exasperation.
As always in Berry’s writing, there is lyrical description of the green and blue hills and white fog that covers the river and woods. In this novel, there is also some description of cruelty to animals that bothered me, a first in a Port William book. What is familiar is the camaraderie amongst the men in this close-knit community. I enjoyed meeting Big Ellis and his wife (Annie May), one-eyed Gander Loyd, and Jig Pendleton who will confess his sins whenever he is drunk.
Nathan Coulter is only 125 Kindle pages and can be read in one sitting. I read it in two so that I can linger a bit longer in Port William.
The love of the land features strongly in this novel. To Nathan’s grandfather, land ownership is important: ‘That was all he lived for, to own his farm without having to say please or thank you to a living soul.’ By contrast, Nathan’s Uncle Burley does not own any land and lives only to fish or hunt. ‘He said land was worse than a wife; it tied you down, and he didn’t want to be in any place he couldn’t leave.’ I laughed reading this because this is the free-spirited Burley Coulter I’ve come to know from previous books.
There are no plots, no mysteries, no scandals. We read about the day-to-day life on the farm, what folks do for fun (going to the fair, hunting or fishing), how families cope with death and loss. There are light-hearted moments with plenty of mischief attributed to Nathan and his brother, Tom, and of course, Burley. There is heartbreak when Nathan’s sickly mother dies and life is never the same again for him and his brother given their father’s harsh parenting style.
What was lovely to read is Nathan’s closeness to Uncle Burley and their fishing/hunting trips. It was precious given the disharmony between Tom and their father. Berry succeeded in helping us to understand why family relationships can be difficult to navigate. Angry words. Fights. ”And things that had been so before never would be so again. We were the way we were; nothing could make us any different, and we suffered because of it. Things happened to us the way they did because we were ourselves.” Our personalities and what we stand for can be our greatest enemy.
I am no farm girl. Despite the difference in circumstances, place and culture, I recognized the family sentiments, especially the pain of family members falling out with each other, and the tricky complexities of communication, the intermingling of love and exasperation.
As always in Berry’s writing, there is lyrical description of the green and blue hills and white fog that covers the river and woods. In this novel, there is also some description of cruelty to animals that bothered me, a first in a Port William book. What is familiar is the camaraderie amongst the men in this close-knit community. I enjoyed meeting Big Ellis and his wife (Annie May), one-eyed Gander Loyd, and Jig Pendleton who will confess his sins whenever he is drunk.
Nathan Coulter is only 125 Kindle pages and can be read in one sitting. I read it in two so that I can linger a bit longer in Port William.
December 27, 2022
I hurts my heart to give anything by Wendell Berry only 3-stars, however, this was his first Port William novel and it truly reads like a first effort in comparison to his later work. Two of my favorite characters in the later books, Nathan and Burley, are prominently featured, however, I felt like they were different characters altogether. Nathan is very young, and Burley does several things that just did not seem in keeping with the Burley I have come to know.
Everyone starts somewhere, and there is still much to be enjoyed (particularly the descriptions and Berry's signature understanding of the lifestyle of farmers and small town inhabitants), but I am so glad I started with one of the other books. I wonder if I would have fallen in love after reading this or just said "yeah, okay" and moved on. If that had happened, I would have missed some of the best writing I have ever had the pleasure to come across.
Everyone starts somewhere, and there is still much to be enjoyed (particularly the descriptions and Berry's signature understanding of the lifestyle of farmers and small town inhabitants), but I am so glad I started with one of the other books. I wonder if I would have fallen in love after reading this or just said "yeah, okay" and moved on. If that had happened, I would have missed some of the best writing I have ever had the pleasure to come across.
December 5, 2014
Nathan Coulter: Wendell Berry's Creation of the Port William Community
This novel was chosen as the Moderator's Choice by Laura Webber, "The Tall Woman", for On the Southern Literary Trail for December, 2014.
Wendell Berry: Poet, Novelist, Essayist. Born August 5, 1934,Henry County, Kentucky
Nathan Coulter, First Edition, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, Ma., 1960.
I have long loved the poetry of Wendell Berry. His The Peace of Wild Things is among my favorite poems. The man has a way with words that reveals his love of the land, the ways of nature, and his desire to preserve it. Here is his poem.
Those are fine words. But for all the poems I've read by this man, I have never read his fiction. Until now. I have discovered something else to love about Wendell Berry. Those are his stories of his fictional place, the Port William Community. The sheer joy of this is I have seven novels, thirty-eight short stories and seventeen poems telling the story of this wondrous place and the people who live there. It is a community. Or, as some of its residents refer to it, a membership. It is a place that one belongs to. You and all the others that live there are part of something, helping one another along the way from birth to crossing over.
Nathan Coulter: A Novel is the first Port William novel. It is the story of the Coulter family told through the eyes of young Nathan. This is Berry's developing theme of man's connection to the land, its sustenance of him, and his responsibility to preserve the land.
Nathan's father is no different than his grandfather. He, too must have his land, even though he must pay for it, over time. A long time.
Then there is Nathan's Uncle Burley, no farmer. Far from it. But he is no less tied to the land, hunting and fishing, captivated by the beauty of it all.
I identify with Berry's rendering of the Port William Membership. I am a mixture of town and country. More town than country, as I was born in a middling size southern city, the product of a will of the wisp father who abandoned my mother and me when I was an infant. My mother thought eloping to Columbus, Mississippi, where the age for marriage without parental consent was younger than in Alabama, was a good idea at the time.
So I came to be raised in the home of my grandparents, just as young Nathan Coulter and his sibling Brother were. However I was and remained an only child. My mother chose never to remarry. Once burned, twice shy.
My grandfather was Robert Haywood McConnell, born in 1908 in Union Hill, Alabama. My grandmother was Mason Ovilea Beasley McConnell, born in 1909, in Salem, Alabama. Both communities, not even townships, were in the outskirts of Limestone County. The County Seat was Athens, Alabama. A high and mighty name for a small town.
As the Coulters were one of the principal families of the Port William area, so were the McConnells and the Beasleys in that upstate region of Alabama. Between those two burgeoning clans, who began tied to the land as farmers, they branched out into other professions over the successive years. The McConnells produced preachers, storekeepers, morticians, a judge here and there and physicians. The Beasleys produced storekeepers, business men, bankers, a sensitive florist who kept a huge portrait of Elvis over his bed. Everyone acknowledged he was sweet but a little bit funny. There was a circuit court clerk, too. She was married to a man named Homer Price. They had twins they named Sheila and Shaniqua. I was in love with both of them, though they did not give me the time of day. Rather they stared solemnly into one another's eyes. It was easier than looking into the mirror.
And there was the Beasley who made it big in chicken farming. Canned whole chickens. It's called Sweet Sue Chicken. The stuff's sold everywhere. He ended up raising race horses. We hit one of them that got loose on a Sunday morning. That horse ignored the stop sign at the intersection. Papa was flying our 1967 Buick Wildcat as he was wont to do. Stood up on the brake. The Wildcat nosed down and just lifted that horse right up on the hood. I was in the passenger's seat. Nothing looks bigger than a horse's ass sliding into your face straight up the sleek hood of a 1967 Buick Wildcat. The horse did not come through the windshield. But slid off. Disappeared for a bit. Then the steed raised his head and craned his neck around and looked at Papa and me through the windshield. Puzzled.
The point of this is that in Limestone County, between the Beasleys and the McConnells, they birthed you, sold you your groceries, your seed, your farming implements, married you, baptized you, doctored you, judged you, managed your money, buried you if the doctoring didn't take, kept the records of everything on file down at the court house and put the flowers in the funeral home that ended up withering at the burial site. Your neighbors probably brought you a chicken casserole made out of good old Sweet Sue Chicken, too. It was a community and a membership.
As a youngster, I was pretty befuddled by all of this. I was especially confused by who was who and how everybody was connected to whom and how. Over time all the pieces began to come together. I had a particular fondness for my Grandfather's mother, Mama Ora. She lived in a simple clapboard sided house with a dogtrot running through the center of it. During my visits there I learned my appreciation for the land in the country, the country life, the independent way Mama Ora lived and how my Grandfather came alive with his stories of growing up in Union Hill.
Mama Ora's egg custard pie was smooth as cream. It was rich with butter and eggs pulled from beneath the setting hens. No running water. It came from the well just a few yards from the house. Water was never clearer or colder than that drawn from the well and sipped from the tin dipper hung from a post in the well house. Summers never seemed hot at Mama Ora's. A box fan sat in the bedroom window pulling air through the screen door facing the dogtrot and blowing it out the window. You napped on handmade patchwork crazy quilts of indeterminate design. If the weather turned off stormy, the roll of distant thunder was a lullaby, nothing to be alarmed over. The leaves would whisper, then rustle, then shake as they waved in the stiffening wind. The house was a sanctuary of calm. Throughout it all was the sonorous ticking of a clock, an eight day wonder, with soft but authoritative Westminster chimes. No indoor plumbing. A damned mean rooster that waited for you to sit down in the outhouse. He would wait in ambuscade and peck your jewels or worse. Mama Ora would snatch your slingshot if you took it after her prize rooster. He wasn't going to be Sunday dinner.
Perhaps you have concluded I sprang from affluence in Northern Alabama. But my Grandfather was a poor relation. His father, who might have been influential, died young, making my Grandfather the man of the house at a very young age. He made it through high school. Was an excellent student. However, he helped tend the crops that went on the table fresh in season and that were canned for the winter. He hunted for squirrel and rabbits. Those were the main meats. Chicken was a delicacy. Hams were few and far between. The cow was for milk for younger sister Gladys.
He was given a job at McConnell Brothers Funeral Home after graduation from high school. It was a family favor. He learned the trade. Never cared for it. The explosion of a road work truck carrying dynamite was the end of it. By the time he finished picking up the pieces of the crew sitting around that dynamite, he was done.
Haywood they called him. He was handsome. He met Ovilea at Beasley's Drug Store. She was the baby of the Beasley family. She thought he was silly. But he grew on her. Her Daddy had died. Her mother had died. She lived with her oldest brother, Brother Charley, the Banker in a huge house over on East Pryor Street.
They married in a fence corner out in the country. A country preacher officiated. Brother Charley and his wife were not in attendance. Nor were any other Beasleys.
And, thus began my Grandfather's long life of professions. Insurance salesman. Storekeeper. Plumber. Steamfitter. Shipbuilder. Union Organizer. Union Business Agent. Politician. An arguer of Labor cases before the National Labor Relations Board against batteries of Attorneys. He never lost. A self educated man. A charitable man. Shot at. Called a Communist because he was labor. Successfully negotiated contracts satisfactory to Union Members and Management alike.
Who taught me how to plant pole beans, squash, okra, peas, tomatoes, butter beans. Peppers. Sweet. Hot. Eating thin curling pods of hot peppers until the beads of sweat popped out on your forehead, saying, "Eat it like a man," while the tears streamed down his face, as he laughed. The man I thought would never die, but did.
But before he died, the times we had. How he walked me along the bank of Sugar Creek where he used to put drinks to keep them cold. How to bark a squirrel flattened out along the top of a tree limb. Walking along the Elk River where his horse pulled him through the current as he hung to its tail and he learned to swim. The identity of trees. Snakes. The ones to worry about. The ones not to fear at all. All the birds. The smoothness of a Buckeye and how to keep it in your pocket, not for luck, but for the feel of it, the touch of it that took you back into the woods and out of a stressful situation when you'd rather holler.
So, yes. I identify with Port William. I know Nathan Coulter. I have been Nathan Coulter. No matter how old I may get, I will not forget Salem, Union Hill, Athens, or any Beasleys or McConnells. Especially Papa.
No, Nathan, that's not right. You will recognize it. The land remains. It abides. You're just waiting your turn. Just like I am. Someone else will come along by and by.
This novel was chosen as the Moderator's Choice by Laura Webber, "The Tall Woman", for On the Southern Literary Trail for December, 2014.
1To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
2a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
3a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.
--Ecclesiastes, 3:1-8, Revised English Bible
Wendell Berry: Poet, Novelist, Essayist. Born August 5, 1934,Henry County, Kentucky
Nathan Coulter, First Edition, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, Ma., 1960.
I have long loved the poetry of Wendell Berry. His The Peace of Wild Things is among my favorite poems. The man has a way with words that reveals his love of the land, the ways of nature, and his desire to preserve it. Here is his poem.
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
From The Collected Poems, 1957-1982
Those are fine words. But for all the poems I've read by this man, I have never read his fiction. Until now. I have discovered something else to love about Wendell Berry. Those are his stories of his fictional place, the Port William Community. The sheer joy of this is I have seven novels, thirty-eight short stories and seventeen poems telling the story of this wondrous place and the people who live there. It is a community. Or, as some of its residents refer to it, a membership. It is a place that one belongs to. You and all the others that live there are part of something, helping one another along the way from birth to crossing over.
Nathan Coulter: A Novel is the first Port William novel. It is the story of the Coulter family told through the eyes of young Nathan. This is Berry's developing theme of man's connection to the land, its sustenance of him, and his responsibility to preserve the land.
“Grandpa’s farm had belonged to our people ever since there had been a farm in that place, or people to own a farm. Grandpa’s father had left it to Grandpa and his other sons and daughters. But Grandpa had borrowed money and bought their shares. He had to have it whole hog or none, root hog or die, or he wouldn’t have it at all.”
Nathan's father is no different than his grandfather. He, too must have his land, even though he must pay for it, over time. A long time.
“He said that when we finally did get the farm paid for we could tell everybody to go to hell. That was what he lived for, to own his farm without having to say please or thank you to a living soul.”
Then there is Nathan's Uncle Burley, no farmer. Far from it. But he is no less tied to the land, hunting and fishing, captivated by the beauty of it all.
“Uncle Burley said hills always looked blue when you were far away from them. That was a pretty color for hills; the little houses and barns and fields looked so neat and quiet tucked against them. It made you want to be close to them. But he said that when you got close they were like the hills you’d left, and when you looked back your own hills were blue and you wanted to go back again. He said he reckoned a man could wear himself out going back and forth.”
I identify with Berry's rendering of the Port William Membership. I am a mixture of town and country. More town than country, as I was born in a middling size southern city, the product of a will of the wisp father who abandoned my mother and me when I was an infant. My mother thought eloping to Columbus, Mississippi, where the age for marriage without parental consent was younger than in Alabama, was a good idea at the time.
So I came to be raised in the home of my grandparents, just as young Nathan Coulter and his sibling Brother were. However I was and remained an only child. My mother chose never to remarry. Once burned, twice shy.
My grandfather was Robert Haywood McConnell, born in 1908 in Union Hill, Alabama. My grandmother was Mason Ovilea Beasley McConnell, born in 1909, in Salem, Alabama. Both communities, not even townships, were in the outskirts of Limestone County. The County Seat was Athens, Alabama. A high and mighty name for a small town.
As the Coulters were one of the principal families of the Port William area, so were the McConnells and the Beasleys in that upstate region of Alabama. Between those two burgeoning clans, who began tied to the land as farmers, they branched out into other professions over the successive years. The McConnells produced preachers, storekeepers, morticians, a judge here and there and physicians. The Beasleys produced storekeepers, business men, bankers, a sensitive florist who kept a huge portrait of Elvis over his bed. Everyone acknowledged he was sweet but a little bit funny. There was a circuit court clerk, too. She was married to a man named Homer Price. They had twins they named Sheila and Shaniqua. I was in love with both of them, though they did not give me the time of day. Rather they stared solemnly into one another's eyes. It was easier than looking into the mirror.
And there was the Beasley who made it big in chicken farming. Canned whole chickens. It's called Sweet Sue Chicken. The stuff's sold everywhere. He ended up raising race horses. We hit one of them that got loose on a Sunday morning. That horse ignored the stop sign at the intersection. Papa was flying our 1967 Buick Wildcat as he was wont to do. Stood up on the brake. The Wildcat nosed down and just lifted that horse right up on the hood. I was in the passenger's seat. Nothing looks bigger than a horse's ass sliding into your face straight up the sleek hood of a 1967 Buick Wildcat. The horse did not come through the windshield. But slid off. Disappeared for a bit. Then the steed raised his head and craned his neck around and looked at Papa and me through the windshield. Puzzled.
The point of this is that in Limestone County, between the Beasleys and the McConnells, they birthed you, sold you your groceries, your seed, your farming implements, married you, baptized you, doctored you, judged you, managed your money, buried you if the doctoring didn't take, kept the records of everything on file down at the court house and put the flowers in the funeral home that ended up withering at the burial site. Your neighbors probably brought you a chicken casserole made out of good old Sweet Sue Chicken, too. It was a community and a membership.
As a youngster, I was pretty befuddled by all of this. I was especially confused by who was who and how everybody was connected to whom and how. Over time all the pieces began to come together. I had a particular fondness for my Grandfather's mother, Mama Ora. She lived in a simple clapboard sided house with a dogtrot running through the center of it. During my visits there I learned my appreciation for the land in the country, the country life, the independent way Mama Ora lived and how my Grandfather came alive with his stories of growing up in Union Hill.
Mama Ora's egg custard pie was smooth as cream. It was rich with butter and eggs pulled from beneath the setting hens. No running water. It came from the well just a few yards from the house. Water was never clearer or colder than that drawn from the well and sipped from the tin dipper hung from a post in the well house. Summers never seemed hot at Mama Ora's. A box fan sat in the bedroom window pulling air through the screen door facing the dogtrot and blowing it out the window. You napped on handmade patchwork crazy quilts of indeterminate design. If the weather turned off stormy, the roll of distant thunder was a lullaby, nothing to be alarmed over. The leaves would whisper, then rustle, then shake as they waved in the stiffening wind. The house was a sanctuary of calm. Throughout it all was the sonorous ticking of a clock, an eight day wonder, with soft but authoritative Westminster chimes. No indoor plumbing. A damned mean rooster that waited for you to sit down in the outhouse. He would wait in ambuscade and peck your jewels or worse. Mama Ora would snatch your slingshot if you took it after her prize rooster. He wasn't going to be Sunday dinner.
Perhaps you have concluded I sprang from affluence in Northern Alabama. But my Grandfather was a poor relation. His father, who might have been influential, died young, making my Grandfather the man of the house at a very young age. He made it through high school. Was an excellent student. However, he helped tend the crops that went on the table fresh in season and that were canned for the winter. He hunted for squirrel and rabbits. Those were the main meats. Chicken was a delicacy. Hams were few and far between. The cow was for milk for younger sister Gladys.
He was given a job at McConnell Brothers Funeral Home after graduation from high school. It was a family favor. He learned the trade. Never cared for it. The explosion of a road work truck carrying dynamite was the end of it. By the time he finished picking up the pieces of the crew sitting around that dynamite, he was done.
Haywood they called him. He was handsome. He met Ovilea at Beasley's Drug Store. She was the baby of the Beasley family. She thought he was silly. But he grew on her. Her Daddy had died. Her mother had died. She lived with her oldest brother, Brother Charley, the Banker in a huge house over on East Pryor Street.
They married in a fence corner out in the country. A country preacher officiated. Brother Charley and his wife were not in attendance. Nor were any other Beasleys.
And, thus began my Grandfather's long life of professions. Insurance salesman. Storekeeper. Plumber. Steamfitter. Shipbuilder. Union Organizer. Union Business Agent. Politician. An arguer of Labor cases before the National Labor Relations Board against batteries of Attorneys. He never lost. A self educated man. A charitable man. Shot at. Called a Communist because he was labor. Successfully negotiated contracts satisfactory to Union Members and Management alike.
Who taught me how to plant pole beans, squash, okra, peas, tomatoes, butter beans. Peppers. Sweet. Hot. Eating thin curling pods of hot peppers until the beads of sweat popped out on your forehead, saying, "Eat it like a man," while the tears streamed down his face, as he laughed. The man I thought would never die, but did.
But before he died, the times we had. How he walked me along the bank of Sugar Creek where he used to put drinks to keep them cold. How to bark a squirrel flattened out along the top of a tree limb. Walking along the Elk River where his horse pulled him through the current as he hung to its tail and he learned to swim. The identity of trees. Snakes. The ones to worry about. The ones not to fear at all. All the birds. The smoothness of a Buckeye and how to keep it in your pocket, not for luck, but for the feel of it, the touch of it that took you back into the woods and out of a stressful situation when you'd rather holler.
So, yes. I identify with Port William. I know Nathan Coulter. I have been Nathan Coulter. No matter how old I may get, I will not forget Salem, Union Hill, Athens, or any Beasleys or McConnells. Especially Papa.
“Grandpa had owned his land and worked on it and taken his pride from it for so long that we knew him, and he knew himself, in the same way that we knew the spring. His life couldn’t be divided from the days he’d spent at work in his fields. Daddy had told us we didn’t know what the country would look like without him at work in the middle of it; and that was as true of Grandpa as it was of Daddy. We wouldn’t recognize the country when he was dead.”
No, Nathan, that's not right. You will recognize it. The land remains. It abides. You're just waiting your turn. Just like I am. Someone else will come along by and by.
April 10, 2019
Life and death in Kentucky circa 1930. A strong sense of family shines through as the Coulters farm their tobacco fields, the livelihood of the household completely dependent on the whims of the weather. A pure love of the land is at their core, and so it has been for generations. A trip to the fair with Uncle Burley and the brothers is not to be missed. A slice of life served up simply, written without benefit of thrills, chills, or mysteries. And it works.
January 19, 2022
3.5 rounded to 3 stars
I finally decided it was time to start this classic series by Wendell Berry--the stories of the citizens of Port William, KY. Their community, their land, their lives.
I have seen review after review raving about these books and see that I have a lot to look forward to. I am glad I previewed some of the critiques of this novel, book one, as most say it doesn’t compare to many of those that follow. I thus went in with low expectations.
True, there isn’t a tension-driven, rip-roaring action tale between the covers of Nathan Coulter. What we have is a simple story meant, I believe, to slowly introduce us to some of the people of this community, their relationships with each other, and to give us a first look at the land they all call home. What most impresses me about Berry’s early writings (this was written in 1960), is the way he pulls the reader right into the scene. Not since William Kent Krueger has an author imbued into me the actual sense of being right there with the characters. I could see the air shimmering in the hot summer afternoons, the rolling of the ridges and the valleys, the bright coon eyes glowing in the dark; I could smell the tobacco fields and appreciate the essence of the land. It was almost mesmerizing it felt so real.
This book is set in the 1930s. The main characters are three generations of Coulters with Nathan being a young teen at the time. We meet a lot of their friends and acquaintances whom I am eager to see more of in future installments. The people of Port William live hard lives. They suffer a lot of pain, frustration, sadness, and grief, yet also realize the spirit of community, brotherhood, and a sense of pride and satisfaction despite all the hardships.
I was pleased to see an extensive family tree and a map of the area at the end of the book. I took screenshots of these in case they aren’t available in later books.
I am rating low (for me) as I understand these books get better and better, and I want to save room to reward the later books. But make no mistake, I did eagerly pick this one up whenever I had a spare moment and look forward to my next visit to Port William.
I finally decided it was time to start this classic series by Wendell Berry--the stories of the citizens of Port William, KY. Their community, their land, their lives.
I have seen review after review raving about these books and see that I have a lot to look forward to. I am glad I previewed some of the critiques of this novel, book one, as most say it doesn’t compare to many of those that follow. I thus went in with low expectations.
True, there isn’t a tension-driven, rip-roaring action tale between the covers of Nathan Coulter. What we have is a simple story meant, I believe, to slowly introduce us to some of the people of this community, their relationships with each other, and to give us a first look at the land they all call home. What most impresses me about Berry’s early writings (this was written in 1960), is the way he pulls the reader right into the scene. Not since William Kent Krueger has an author imbued into me the actual sense of being right there with the characters. I could see the air shimmering in the hot summer afternoons, the rolling of the ridges and the valleys, the bright coon eyes glowing in the dark; I could smell the tobacco fields and appreciate the essence of the land. It was almost mesmerizing it felt so real.
This book is set in the 1930s. The main characters are three generations of Coulters with Nathan being a young teen at the time. We meet a lot of their friends and acquaintances whom I am eager to see more of in future installments. The people of Port William live hard lives. They suffer a lot of pain, frustration, sadness, and grief, yet also realize the spirit of community, brotherhood, and a sense of pride and satisfaction despite all the hardships.
I was pleased to see an extensive family tree and a map of the area at the end of the book. I took screenshots of these in case they aren’t available in later books.
I am rating low (for me) as I understand these books get better and better, and I want to save room to reward the later books. But make no mistake, I did eagerly pick this one up whenever I had a spare moment and look forward to my next visit to Port William.
December 7, 2014
I think I love Wendell Berry's books so much because they always make me feel like there's much more to life than my petty little concerns. Nature girl I am not, but even just reading about the working of the land, the turning of the seasons, and good people maintaining connections with land and family makes me feel the whole "circle of life" thing. It sounds like such a cliché, but it's real. As Uncle Burley comments on a day when an old woman dies and a baby is born: "They put one under, and pull one out."
This novel is written in very spare and simple language, like the people in it. Some of the most important things here are not spoken or described, they are there to discover if the reader chooses. Lordamercy, what a good book.
This novel is written in very spare and simple language, like the people in it. Some of the most important things here are not spoken or described, they are there to discover if the reader chooses. Lordamercy, what a good book.
December 16, 2014
I think one of the best compliments one can pay an author is to say I felt like I was right there, in Port Williams his made up town, and with Nathan and all his other characters. I felt like I was with them walking through the woods, fishing and coon hunting. At the fair watching Uncle Burly and his ducks, picking tobacco and watching the fight between his brother and father.
The book opens with Nathan and his older brother always together, and then felt the anguish of Nathan as his brother outgrows their relationship. The love for the land, the hard work of his father and grandparents and the deaths in his family.
This is the first book I have read by Berry, but it will definitely not be my last.
The book opens with Nathan and his older brother always together, and then felt the anguish of Nathan as his brother outgrows their relationship. The love for the land, the hard work of his father and grandparents and the deaths in his family.
This is the first book I have read by Berry, but it will definitely not be my last.
February 14, 2019
This is the first in the sequence of books written by Wendell Berry, set in the fictional town of Port William, Kentucky. I did like this, but I liked A Place on Earth much more. Everything in the first book of the series is in fact told of in A Place on Earth, which I have just recently read Everything that happens I knew would happen! Only a few incidental events are added.
Nathan Coulter is terribly short. It did not bring me close to the characters, as the other book did. I considered giving the book three stars because of the author’s lyrical writing, the land is beautifully drawn, but have decided on two because I was disturbed by the inclusion of incidents related to the mistreatment of animals.
Both books have the same audiobook narrator—Paul Michael. In both books Paul Michael reads clearly and strongly. In both books I have given the narration performance five stars.
Read A Place on Earth instead.
*****************
A Place on Earth 4 stars
Stand By Me 4 stars
Jayber Crow 4 stars
Nathan Coulter 2 stars
Hannah Coulter 2 stars
The Memory of Old Jack TBR
Andy Catlett: Early Travels TBR
Nathan Coulter is terribly short. It did not bring me close to the characters, as the other book did. I considered giving the book three stars because of the author’s lyrical writing, the land is beautifully drawn, but have decided on two because I was disturbed by the inclusion of incidents related to the mistreatment of animals.
Both books have the same audiobook narrator—Paul Michael. In both books Paul Michael reads clearly and strongly. In both books I have given the narration performance five stars.
Read A Place on Earth instead.
*****************
A Place on Earth 4 stars
Stand By Me 4 stars
Jayber Crow 4 stars
Nathan Coulter 2 stars
Hannah Coulter 2 stars
The Memory of Old Jack TBR
Andy Catlett: Early Travels TBR
December 13, 2023
This was Wendell Berry’s first novel in the Port William series that I have grown to adore and love over the years since first being captivated by his writing and his character-driven stories of people who seem so very real and authentic. It’s difficult to rate this so much lower than his other works but in comparison to the others I’ve read, this one seems like a beginning. His writing is still very good and as he continues to create these characters over the years, Berry’s skills are honed and polished so brilliantly. It’s just this particular novel that seems somewhat lacking. I can see the drawing of the characters of Nathan and his brother Tom and their father, Jarrat. Nathan and his brother are young boys on the farm who must learn some very hard lessons in life at an early age. The death of their mother left the boys in the hands of a hard and uncompassionate father. Luckily Nathan and Tom’s grandparents took up the slack of parenting. Their Uncle Burley became a prominent member of their life, especially of Nathan’s. They spend much time in the woods, hunting and fishing, and in town making mischief at the fair. This younger Uncle Burley showed a different side than I have seen in later stories and some of the meanness he would get into just didn’t seem like him. But I guess we all grow and change as we live life and experience all that comes with it, good and bad.
October 4, 2025
Esta novela es perfecta y deliciosamente complementaria de Vida de Hannah Coulter.
Sí alguien, como yo, tuvo dudas de si el autor recreaba su propio pensamiento a través de sus personajes, la realidad es que cada novela tiene su voz propia, su narración especifica, incluso su momento concreto.
En "Nathan Coulter" nos cuenta solo su infancia, hasta el momento en que se cree adulto; refleja Port William desde la mirada de un niño, describe la vida cotidiana en la granja, sus obligaciones, los juegos, la familia, en un tono equilibrado entre la belleza de la naturaleza y la dureza de la vida rural, y mostrando cómo ese entorno se entreteje con la identidad de los personajes.
De alguna manera ir madurando implica entender esa pertenencia en la red de vínculos de esta pequeña comunidad.
Es una novela de aprendizaje vital, y el peso narrativo en esta ocasión recae en los personajes masculinos. Nathan, su hermano, su padre, muy duro y reservado, y sobre todo su tío Burley, que viene a ser en realidad una figura paterna, más libre, bromista, y afectivo hacia Nathan.
El estilo resulta muy sobrio y sencillo, de ritmo muy lento, con un lenguaje claro, sin artificios, y sin embargo casi lírico en el retrato de los paisajes y su afectación en las personas que forman parte de la comunidad.
Sí alguien, como yo, tuvo dudas de si el autor recreaba su propio pensamiento a través de sus personajes, la realidad es que cada novela tiene su voz propia, su narración especifica, incluso su momento concreto.
En "Nathan Coulter" nos cuenta solo su infancia, hasta el momento en que se cree adulto; refleja Port William desde la mirada de un niño, describe la vida cotidiana en la granja, sus obligaciones, los juegos, la familia, en un tono equilibrado entre la belleza de la naturaleza y la dureza de la vida rural, y mostrando cómo ese entorno se entreteje con la identidad de los personajes.
De alguna manera ir madurando implica entender esa pertenencia en la red de vínculos de esta pequeña comunidad.
Es una novela de aprendizaje vital, y el peso narrativo en esta ocasión recae en los personajes masculinos. Nathan, su hermano, su padre, muy duro y reservado, y sobre todo su tío Burley, que viene a ser en realidad una figura paterna, más libre, bromista, y afectivo hacia Nathan.
El estilo resulta muy sobrio y sencillo, de ritmo muy lento, con un lenguaje claro, sin artificios, y sin embargo casi lírico en el retrato de los paisajes y su afectación en las personas que forman parte de la comunidad.
July 22, 2025
After being introduced to the gorgeous writing of Wendell Berry in November through the GR group On The Southern Literary Trail (‘Fidelity - Five Stories’), I decided to read his eight novels in chronological order this year. ‘Nathan Coulter’ is Berry’s debut, originally published in 1960 when he was twenty-seven, and is the first book in his much loved fictional Port William, Kentucky series. Told through the voice of young Nathan, the story begins and ends with death, but in between is a whole lot of living: tobacco harvesting and fishing for catfish; coon hunting and sipping on whiskey; fistfighting between father and son and singing through the pain.
But what truly sets Berry apart for me is his superb ability to describe, as friend Diane B. put it, “the whole ‘circle of life’ thing,” not just in the land and the seasons, but in the people themselves: “He hated to be old and was ashamed of his weakness, because he was work-brittle; what had driven him to work all his life had used up his strength and outlasted it.” Part coming-of-age, part meditation on aging and family ties, this is an excellent foundation for the series. I’m definitely looking forward to my continuing “membership” in the community of Port William. Anyone who appreciates stories about rural life in a bygone time should read at least one book by Wendell Berry.
But what truly sets Berry apart for me is his superb ability to describe, as friend Diane B. put it, “the whole ‘circle of life’ thing,” not just in the land and the seasons, but in the people themselves: “He hated to be old and was ashamed of his weakness, because he was work-brittle; what had driven him to work all his life had used up his strength and outlasted it.” Part coming-of-age, part meditation on aging and family ties, this is an excellent foundation for the series. I’m definitely looking forward to my continuing “membership” in the community of Port William. Anyone who appreciates stories about rural life in a bygone time should read at least one book by Wendell Berry.
October 9, 2020
As the story is set in motion, Nathan and his brother seem joined-at-the-hip and are rarely apart, while their father grows even more distant after their mother dies. The brothers go to live with their grandparents, and there is little else that changes, the daily work on the farm, their legacy, takes precedent.
’Grandpa’s farm had belonged to our people ever since there had been a farm in that place, or people to own a farm. Grandpa’s father had left it to Grandpa and his other sons and daughter. But Grandpa had borrowed money and bought their shares. He had to have it whole hog or none, root hog or die, root hog or die, or he would have it at all...He said that when we finally did get the farm paid for we could tell everybody to go to hell. That was what he lived for, to own his farm without having to say please or thank you to a living soul.’
My gr-grandfather was the first of his family to move away from the family farm, I have cousins who still live on that land, the old house, the old farmstead which is less of a farm these days. Still, the barn that my father remembers still stands - if at a slight angle. I have photographs of his mother holding him as a relatively newborn infant up against that barn, and my father told me the story of his cousin putting him up on a horse at that barn, and then slapping the horse so that it took off running, which terrified my father as a very young boy. Years ago, I took some time off to visit the land where my father grew up, and ran into that same cousin while trying to find my gr-gr-gr-grandfather headstone in the cemetery that now lies almost across the street from the family farm. The first of my ancestors to live on that property around 1820. When my gr-grandfather moved away, he didn’t move more than a few miles, but he bought the property near where they were building the first college in town, but probably the only one for miles and miles, and built the house himself so that his children could benefit from the education provided. When I was there, it was a little worse for wear, but it is the house where both my grandfather and my father were born and lived for some time, and I was happy to see it was still standing. All this is to say that it was easy for me to picture this way of life, and how rooted they were in this place. Like Paul Maclean says to his brother, Norman “Oh, I’ll never leave Montana, brother.” And yet, others are born to fly away as soon as they can, but that place will always be a part of them, and the pull of your roots and home is strong. My father was one that was born to fly away, literally, but he never forgot that life, and he still had best friends that lived there until the day they died. I met one of his friends when I was there, Mario and his wife. Mario, my father, and two other young men bought their first plane together, and that story is one of my favourite stories.
While this didn’t have the same easy charm as Jayber Crow held for me, it was so easy for me to feel as though I was walking the fields beside them silently, listening to their stories, the rhythm and sense of peace and appreciation especially from Uncle Burley, who adds a splash of colour to this story.
‘Grandpa thought Uncle Burley was a disgrace because he’d rather hunt or fish than work. Grandma didn’t mind that so much, but she was always grieving because he was so sinful. He never was very sorry for his sins, and that got her worse than anything. But he hardly ever paid attention to their haggling. When it got more than Burley could stand, he’d leave and spend a few days in his camp house at the river.’
There’s such a sense of place, as well as love that permeates these pages, this story, despite the hardships. Love of family, love of place, the pride of doing a job well, and the joy of being surrounded by people you’d known your whole life, all of that seems to develop a life that has its own sense of rhythm that becomes the soundtrack of a life. Their life.
’And things that had been so before never would be so again. We were the way we were; nothing could make us any different, and we suffered because of it. Things happened to us the way they did because we were ourselves. And if we’d been other people it wouldn’t have mattered… And there was nothing anybody could do but let it happen.’
For what it’s worth - I read the first half of this, then switched over to listen to the audiobook as I was spending some time driving. Both were equally worthwhile, but generally I prefer non-fiction or memoirs for audiobook.
’Grandpa’s farm had belonged to our people ever since there had been a farm in that place, or people to own a farm. Grandpa’s father had left it to Grandpa and his other sons and daughter. But Grandpa had borrowed money and bought their shares. He had to have it whole hog or none, root hog or die, root hog or die, or he would have it at all...He said that when we finally did get the farm paid for we could tell everybody to go to hell. That was what he lived for, to own his farm without having to say please or thank you to a living soul.’
My gr-grandfather was the first of his family to move away from the family farm, I have cousins who still live on that land, the old house, the old farmstead which is less of a farm these days. Still, the barn that my father remembers still stands - if at a slight angle. I have photographs of his mother holding him as a relatively newborn infant up against that barn, and my father told me the story of his cousin putting him up on a horse at that barn, and then slapping the horse so that it took off running, which terrified my father as a very young boy. Years ago, I took some time off to visit the land where my father grew up, and ran into that same cousin while trying to find my gr-gr-gr-grandfather headstone in the cemetery that now lies almost across the street from the family farm. The first of my ancestors to live on that property around 1820. When my gr-grandfather moved away, he didn’t move more than a few miles, but he bought the property near where they were building the first college in town, but probably the only one for miles and miles, and built the house himself so that his children could benefit from the education provided. When I was there, it was a little worse for wear, but it is the house where both my grandfather and my father were born and lived for some time, and I was happy to see it was still standing. All this is to say that it was easy for me to picture this way of life, and how rooted they were in this place. Like Paul Maclean says to his brother, Norman “Oh, I’ll never leave Montana, brother.” And yet, others are born to fly away as soon as they can, but that place will always be a part of them, and the pull of your roots and home is strong. My father was one that was born to fly away, literally, but he never forgot that life, and he still had best friends that lived there until the day they died. I met one of his friends when I was there, Mario and his wife. Mario, my father, and two other young men bought their first plane together, and that story is one of my favourite stories.
While this didn’t have the same easy charm as Jayber Crow held for me, it was so easy for me to feel as though I was walking the fields beside them silently, listening to their stories, the rhythm and sense of peace and appreciation especially from Uncle Burley, who adds a splash of colour to this story.
‘Grandpa thought Uncle Burley was a disgrace because he’d rather hunt or fish than work. Grandma didn’t mind that so much, but she was always grieving because he was so sinful. He never was very sorry for his sins, and that got her worse than anything. But he hardly ever paid attention to their haggling. When it got more than Burley could stand, he’d leave and spend a few days in his camp house at the river.’
There’s such a sense of place, as well as love that permeates these pages, this story, despite the hardships. Love of family, love of place, the pride of doing a job well, and the joy of being surrounded by people you’d known your whole life, all of that seems to develop a life that has its own sense of rhythm that becomes the soundtrack of a life. Their life.
’And things that had been so before never would be so again. We were the way we were; nothing could make us any different, and we suffered because of it. Things happened to us the way they did because we were ourselves. And if we’d been other people it wouldn’t have mattered… And there was nothing anybody could do but let it happen.’
For what it’s worth - I read the first half of this, then switched over to listen to the audiobook as I was spending some time driving. Both were equally worthwhile, but generally I prefer non-fiction or memoirs for audiobook.
December 5, 2023
1.5 💔
Berry's first novel & a huge disappointment for me, a loyal fan of his work.
Seven years later he would publish A Place on Earth, a five star read for me.
The two books share an overlap of events and characters, but the comparison ends there.
The animal cruelty throughout the pages was a disturbing about-face, alongside of an out of character Uncle Burley.
I'm glad I didn't read this one first or I surely would have missed out on some of my most favorite books ever.
Berry's first novel & a huge disappointment for me, a loyal fan of his work.
Seven years later he would publish A Place on Earth, a five star read for me.
The two books share an overlap of events and characters, but the comparison ends there.
The animal cruelty throughout the pages was a disturbing about-face, alongside of an out of character Uncle Burley.
I'm glad I didn't read this one first or I surely would have missed out on some of my most favorite books ever.
December 12, 2014
A reverence for the land is evident in Wendell Berry's first novel, set in the fictional Port William. Narrated by Nathan Coulter, this is a 1930s coming-of-age story of a boy in a Kentucky family who grow tobacco on a riverside farm. Nathan's father and grandfather are hard men whose lives revolve around working the farm, driving themselves and their family members. The tension between the fathers and sons is broken by Uncle Burley, a relaxed nurturing man, whose vices provide a humorous contrast. There is a strong sense of community in the small town where people often offer support, but they also know everyone's business. The cycle of birth, maturity, and death is portrayed in the Coulter family as well as in the natural world. I enjoyed Wendell Berry's beautiful, thoughtful writing and will be looking to read more of his work in the future.
This is the December Moderator's Choice for the "On the Southern Literary Trail" group.
This is the December Moderator's Choice for the "On the Southern Literary Trail" group.
December 15, 2023
Nathan Coulter is the first book in the Port William series and is set in 1930s Kentucky with young Nathan Coulter as narrator. He lives with his father, brother, and extended family in Port William. Generations of Coulter’s have worked this land. In this male dominated story, the men are tough and have difficulty communicating with each other. There is little time for leisure here, yet despite the hardships, there is a powerful sense of community. It's a slow-paced story with sparse, matter of fact style writing that matches the characters.
This was my first introduction to Wendell Berry. Unfortunately, I didn’t find this as engaging as the average reader. However, I’ve read that the series improves as it goes. I’m a fan of southern literature, so I’ll give the next book a chance.
This was my first introduction to Wendell Berry. Unfortunately, I didn’t find this as engaging as the average reader. However, I’ve read that the series improves as it goes. I’m a fan of southern literature, so I’ll give the next book a chance.
June 19, 2015
Like William Faulkner Wendell Berry created his own patch of fictional land and started to people it with his personages.
The colourful characters of Nathan Coulter are the first literary settlers in this land.
“They’ll grieve in this old land until you’d think they were going to live on it forever, then grieve some more because they know damn well they’re not going to live on it forever. And nothing’ll stop them but a six-foot hole.”
The book is a brilliant coming-of-age story – a very special tale of fathers and sons.
The colourful characters of Nathan Coulter are the first literary settlers in this land.
“They’ll grieve in this old land until you’d think they were going to live on it forever, then grieve some more because they know damn well they’re not going to live on it forever. And nothing’ll stop them but a six-foot hole.”
The book is a brilliant coming-of-age story – a very special tale of fathers and sons.
July 25, 2025
Nathan Coulter
is Wendell Berry's first book, and introduction to readers of his gentle style and way of writing slowly. Nathan's time between the deaths of his mother and grandfather is a soul-shaping experience when the men in his life steer him in directions that force him to choose or not - each with consequences.
A powerful coming-of-age story, about who we trust (or don't) and which of the voices we hear to are the ones to which we listen.
A powerful coming-of-age story, about who we trust (or don't) and which of the voices we hear to are the ones to which we listen.
October 12, 2025
3.5 rounded down.
I like Wendell Berry books, as a rule. This short early effort was interesting, but less enjoyable than some I've experienced. I love how he evokes a time and place, in a quiet reflective way. I love how he brings basic life activities to life, creating a sense that you are there with him in the fields, sweating under the sun, an ache beginning in your back.
Maybe it was too short, or too focused on Y chromosome existence...IDK...it just didn't grab me as hard as some others I've read. While my husband chuckled (probably in recognition) at some moments he overheard on the audio, some young boy choices left me a bit horrified rather than amused.
A great writer, and solid story, just left me a bit more removed than some.
I like Wendell Berry books, as a rule. This short early effort was interesting, but less enjoyable than some I've experienced. I love how he evokes a time and place, in a quiet reflective way. I love how he brings basic life activities to life, creating a sense that you are there with him in the fields, sweating under the sun, an ache beginning in your back.
Maybe it was too short, or too focused on Y chromosome existence...IDK...it just didn't grab me as hard as some others I've read. While my husband chuckled (probably in recognition) at some moments he overheard on the audio, some young boy choices left me a bit horrified rather than amused.
A great writer, and solid story, just left me a bit more removed than some.
August 18, 2024
"We were the way we were; nothing could make us any different, and we suffered because of it. Things happened to us the way they did because we were ourselves."
It's been awhile since I've read Wendell Berry and I didn't remember it to be quite so gritty. Ingrained and dysfunctional patterns of relating, passed from father to son, are a major theme in this book.
Haunting and painful, yet with moments of beauty.
It's been awhile since I've read Wendell Berry and I didn't remember it to be quite so gritty. Ingrained and dysfunctional patterns of relating, passed from father to son, are a major theme in this book.
Haunting and painful, yet with moments of beauty.
April 30, 2021
I enjoyed this book but took a star off for the animal cruelty which was hard for me to read. The family tree and the small map at the end of my edition was so helpful. I am looking forward to the next Port William story- in fact, I may reread Jayber Crow and find my rating too low now that I have a better understanding of Berry's writing.
November 29, 2014
When life is work, the rest of the details have to fit around the long days spent farming tobacco, hunting racoons, and fishing. That's basically what this book is, and well written.
I have always meant to read Wendell Berry and would like to read more.
I have always meant to read Wendell Berry and would like to read more.
June 5, 2024
I concede I have no recollection of every having heard of (or considered reading) Wendell Berry's work, let alone the Port William collection of work, prior to my reading Wallace Stegner's Where the Bluebird Sings, in which he effusively praises and recommends the author and the work. I'm glad I gave it a try, and my guess is I'll read more.
To my mind, Stegner is one of the best, if not the greatest, of American writers. And, given his long and celebrated teaching career (and mentorship), I was inclined to trust Stegner's instincts. Berry's work was very much as Stegner described: clear, crisp, sparse, harsh, and unvarnished. As art, it's impressive. As a novel, it's not a happy or uplifting story, but it's powerful, evocative stuff.
It's very much a period piece or, maybe more accurately, a snapshot of or a peek at or a taste of a time (broadly, as I understand it, the 1930's) and place (rural Kentucky).
It's far too early to commit to a dozen books in the series or membership, but I'm relatively confident that this won't be the last one I read.
To my mind, Stegner is one of the best, if not the greatest, of American writers. And, given his long and celebrated teaching career (and mentorship), I was inclined to trust Stegner's instincts. Berry's work was very much as Stegner described: clear, crisp, sparse, harsh, and unvarnished. As art, it's impressive. As a novel, it's not a happy or uplifting story, but it's powerful, evocative stuff.
It's very much a period piece or, maybe more accurately, a snapshot of or a peek at or a taste of a time (broadly, as I understand it, the 1930's) and place (rural Kentucky).
It's far too early to commit to a dozen books in the series or membership, but I'm relatively confident that this won't be the last one I read.
July 18, 2020
Loved the writing ~ Loved the story!
My husband and I have spent many hours listening to our older loved ones telling us stories of their growing up and how life used to be. RIP Bruce Hettmansperger (1895-1990)
My husband and I have spent many hours listening to our older loved ones telling us stories of their growing up and how life used to be. RIP Bruce Hettmansperger (1895-1990)
August 17, 2021
So, I've now treated myself to another of Wendell Berry's books. I plan to work my way slowly through his entire Port William set, spacing them out to savor in small helpings like dipping into a cask of ancient brandy.
This relatively short novel — actually the first of the series recounting the lives of Port William residents — cannot achieve the glory of Jayber Crow but it's a smaller sample of the same vintage. Berry's work defines for me what the term 'down-to-earth' is all about. This is a community and a people who are so deeply anchored in the land they inhabit that the very soil becomes a part of them. They could not exist elsewhere. Bound to the earth, these people have grown into a love-hate relationship that resembles a life-long marriage. "Well, you work on this damned old dirt and sweat over it and worry about it, and then one day they'll shovel it in your face, and that'll be the end of it."
Plenty of gentle humor, lovingly drawn characters and the pervasive atmosphere of a particular, long gone time and place that draws you in. Delightful.
This relatively short novel — actually the first of the series recounting the lives of Port William residents — cannot achieve the glory of Jayber Crow but it's a smaller sample of the same vintage. Berry's work defines for me what the term 'down-to-earth' is all about. This is a community and a people who are so deeply anchored in the land they inhabit that the very soil becomes a part of them. They could not exist elsewhere. Bound to the earth, these people have grown into a love-hate relationship that resembles a life-long marriage. "Well, you work on this damned old dirt and sweat over it and worry about it, and then one day they'll shovel it in your face, and that'll be the end of it."
Plenty of gentle humor, lovingly drawn characters and the pervasive atmosphere of a particular, long gone time and place that draws you in. Delightful.
June 4, 2016
Exactly what I needed this week, being one of the busiest weeks of the year. An account of a portion of Nathan's life and his family relationships. A very relaxing read. Superb story telling.
December 30, 2014
A nice break from the typical coming of age books I tend to read that have hard lines; journeys that spiral into dysfunctional behavior. This book hits the same points probably, it just does so in a "days gone by" way.
Nathan Coulter is a young man growing up in the transitional period where likely the agrarian lifestyle is waning into a more industrial one. His strongest influences include (in increasing order) his father, his grandparents, and his Uncle Burley (and associates). Lessons from all involved, but by far the most entertaining ones come from his uncle.......you know, the typical things you learn from an uncle; how to dodge work and take up fishing, how to turn a quick dollar, escapades involving pool halls and whiskey, coon and duck hunting, maneuvering with riverboat dwellers who double as evangelical lighthouses.
In the blank spaces of the story are also themes of aging, generational struggles, the value of hard work in an agricultural context, coping mechanisms in life, and the connection we have to "our land". The reality implied being that "it" conquers "us" rather than the other way around. I have more than a few quotes written down. I am intentionally not putting them in this review (as most all of them deal with dying or degradation into something less grand than it once was) because out of context those words would paint the wrong picture of the book. It is really more about discovery- for the characters of what is to come, for the reader of what once was. Warm fuzzy feelings.
Nathan Coulter is a young man growing up in the transitional period where likely the agrarian lifestyle is waning into a more industrial one. His strongest influences include (in increasing order) his father, his grandparents, and his Uncle Burley (and associates). Lessons from all involved, but by far the most entertaining ones come from his uncle.......you know, the typical things you learn from an uncle; how to dodge work and take up fishing, how to turn a quick dollar, escapades involving pool halls and whiskey, coon and duck hunting, maneuvering with riverboat dwellers who double as evangelical lighthouses.
In the blank spaces of the story are also themes of aging, generational struggles, the value of hard work in an agricultural context, coping mechanisms in life, and the connection we have to "our land". The reality implied being that "it" conquers "us" rather than the other way around. I have more than a few quotes written down. I am intentionally not putting them in this review (as most all of them deal with dying or degradation into something less grand than it once was) because out of context those words would paint the wrong picture of the book. It is really more about discovery- for the characters of what is to come, for the reader of what once was. Warm fuzzy feelings.
March 30, 2024
This book took me back to my roots....farming life (not tobacco as was farmed here), fishing, swimming in the cow's water trough! Of course as a child growing up I never appreciated where I grew up (among much terrible family stuff), but as an adult, I'd love to go back to the country. We're never told Nathan and Tom's ages but we follow their lives for several years as they live and work on the farm with their Grandparents, Uncle, Daddy and sick Mamma. The story is told through Nathan's POV as he and his Brother go to live with their grandparents for awhile and we get to experience all the feelings Nathan goes through as his life changes in many ways.
I was on pace for a 5 star book but Nathan's uncle who is a main character especially in the second half of the book brought it down to a 4. His negative influences over Nathan and Tom really got under my skin and even reminded me of someone I knew long ago. Kudos to the author for making every character feel real and nearly bringing me to tears several times.
I'm addicted now and can't wait to read all of the books in this companion series.
I was on pace for a 5 star book but Nathan's uncle who is a main character especially in the second half of the book brought it down to a 4. His negative influences over Nathan and Tom really got under my skin and even reminded me of someone I knew long ago. Kudos to the author for making every character feel real and nearly bringing me to tears several times.
I'm addicted now and can't wait to read all of the books in this companion series.
December 15, 2024
Again, Berry is the best writer I have encountered. Very good.
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