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Wendell Berry and the Cultivation of Life: A Reader's Guide
Wendell Berry's poetry, fiction, and essays persistently ask the How can we live meaningful lives in a consumerdriven, fragmented age? His honest search for health in the midst of disease has garnered attention and discussion in both conservative and progressive circles. Wendell Berry and the Cultivation of Life thoroughly examines Berry's main themes of community, place, and conservation. It offers an apology for the power of Berry's vision and the ways in which his account of the world resonates with the biblical narrative. Pastors, students, professors, and laity will discover in this book how to flesh out Berry's worldview and foster a culture of life in their neighborhoods, churches, and schools.
- GenresPhilosophyNonfiction
208 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
January 8, 2018
A great companion to Berry's works. I look forward to going through it a second time. For what it is worth, I think chapter 8, "An Invitation to Hospitality," is one of the best essays I have read on Berry and is worth the cost of the book all on its own.
Good volume.
Good volume.
October 17, 2024
"Only the purpose of a coherent community, fully alive both in the world and in the minds of its members, can carry us beyond fragmentation, contradiction, and negativity, teaching us to preserve, not in opposition, but in affirmation, all things needful to make us glad to live." - Wendell Berry
Overall this is an interesting analysis of Berry's vision in his writings, but the writing style is fairly academic and I wish the authors had dug a little deeper practically. (It also seems like essays published as a book, which then always feels disjointed to me, even if there are the "transition" paragraphs added at the end of chapters; and there are quite a few typos.)
"The question for most of us is not "Should we return to the house of our childhood?" By now there might be a score of such houses, or none. But we can ask, "How do we enact the obligations of community and home in the place where we find ourselves?" As Berry reminds us, we must start where we are, and we're all somewhere."
Overall this is an interesting analysis of Berry's vision in his writings, but the writing style is fairly academic and I wish the authors had dug a little deeper practically. (It also seems like essays published as a book, which then always feels disjointed to me, even if there are the "transition" paragraphs added at the end of chapters; and there are quite a few typos.)
"The question for most of us is not "Should we return to the house of our childhood?" By now there might be a score of such houses, or none. But we can ask, "How do we enact the obligations of community and home in the place where we find ourselves?" As Berry reminds us, we must start where we are, and we're all somewhere."
September 6, 2017
I really wanted to like this book, but it needlessly made Wendell Berry more complex with academic-ese. Favorite line: “What Berry calls for in his essays, longs for in his poems, and embodies profoundly in his fiction is the possibility of ‘membership’ for every person” (197). So read Wendell Berry!
July 26, 2024
This is probably 3.5 stars. I'm a big Wendell Berry fan and have read a lot of his books. This book looked at 10 philosophies of his writing and then pulled together thoughts from his various writings to show what was meant. If I had never read Berry, this might have been a good starting point.
December 5, 2022
An academic peer into the work of Wendell Berry. After studying Berry's work for a semester the last three chapters of this guide have made it so applicable.
January 29, 2023
This book is really not necessary. I suggest you read Wendell Berry in his own words.
May 21, 2024
If you like Berry and would enjoy dissecting the principles behind his book, this is the book for you.
March 25, 2015
Thankfully, this book does not depend on the reader being familiar with WB's entire catalog. Having read some of his non-fic, and none of his fic, this guide is a great overview of WB's main themes and undercurrents running throughout all of his writings. While not as impactful as reading WB's stuff straight, this helps pull threads together and the author's do a bit of extrapolating into their personal contexts (Christian university profs in GRMI).
The extrapolations hit home for me as a Christian and someone invested and interested in higher education. Those are not places that Berry himself focuses on exclusively, but the ideas of place and membership are incredibly relevant for both church and university today. Others might not have as much interest as I do in those topics, but I appreciated that these felt like natural points of connections to WB's agricultural and cultural leanings.
I did have a bit of interesting meta-thought while reading this. I found out before reading that the authors are professors at Cornerstone, which I understand to be a private school with conservative evangelical leanings. I had the thought "oh, these must be like the liberal guys at Cornerstone" because they like WB, care about the environment, and seem to be communally-minded. After a few minutes I realized this was ridiculous - why do they have to be liberal for us to share a similar ethic and favorite author? It was a good moment for me to realize how easily I fall into those lines of "like me = good, not like me = bad". The important thing is that I agree with the authors on the importance of place, of membership to a community, and of connection. And we agree on those things, no matter our politics or faith.
The extrapolations hit home for me as a Christian and someone invested and interested in higher education. Those are not places that Berry himself focuses on exclusively, but the ideas of place and membership are incredibly relevant for both church and university today. Others might not have as much interest as I do in those topics, but I appreciated that these felt like natural points of connections to WB's agricultural and cultural leanings.
I did have a bit of interesting meta-thought while reading this. I found out before reading that the authors are professors at Cornerstone, which I understand to be a private school with conservative evangelical leanings. I had the thought "oh, these must be like the liberal guys at Cornerstone" because they like WB, care about the environment, and seem to be communally-minded. After a few minutes I realized this was ridiculous - why do they have to be liberal for us to share a similar ethic and favorite author? It was a good moment for me to realize how easily I fall into those lines of "like me = good, not like me = bad". The important thing is that I agree with the authors on the importance of place, of membership to a community, and of connection. And we agree on those things, no matter our politics or faith.
January 14, 2014
This book creates something of a paradox in that attempts to systematize Wendell Berry's diverse and certainly non-systematic writing into something of a coherent whole. Thankfully, the authors admit the futility of this project and don't therefore insist on some machine-like system by which we can interpret the essayist/poet/novelist. Rather, the authors settle on a broad theme of Berry's work within which they then seek to investigate a variety of paths coming off of that initial theme.
The broad theme involves living life together in local communities. From that basic starting point, the authors take a closer look at Berry's critique of the modern, abstractionist world; the elements in Berry's work that make up real, healthy communities; the practices that individuals help to lead away from disease and toward health; and the way institutions like churches and schools can function within Berry's vision of healthy communities.
The authors were largely successful in their task, even if sometimes the prose seems a bit wordy or unclear. I couldn't help but wonder if the fact that the book had multiple authors contributed to a few hiccups along those lines. That minor point aside, what I most appreciated about the book is that it drove me back toward Berry's work. And I think I'll be able to do that with a better understanding of Berry's broader concerns, thanks to this volume.
The broad theme involves living life together in local communities. From that basic starting point, the authors take a closer look at Berry's critique of the modern, abstractionist world; the elements in Berry's work that make up real, healthy communities; the practices that individuals help to lead away from disease and toward health; and the way institutions like churches and schools can function within Berry's vision of healthy communities.
The authors were largely successful in their task, even if sometimes the prose seems a bit wordy or unclear. I couldn't help but wonder if the fact that the book had multiple authors contributed to a few hiccups along those lines. That minor point aside, what I most appreciated about the book is that it drove me back toward Berry's work. And I think I'll be able to do that with a better understanding of Berry's broader concerns, thanks to this volume.
August 30, 2012
Wendell Berry is a great author and a great thinker. These two guys are not, in my opinion. They took what is clear in Berry and buried it in obscure, obtuse academic prose. They have sentences that do not end, and quite frankly, don't really MEAN anything. They ramble indefinitely, quickly shifting from "public sexuality" (what does that mean anyway?) to rootlessness to home economics to Super Wal-Mart.
Instead of reading this book, spend some more time reading Wendell Berry himself. Don't worry. You'll be able to figure it out. You're a smart person. And if you can't, well, whose fault is that anyway?
Instead of reading this book, spend some more time reading Wendell Berry himself. Don't worry. You'll be able to figure it out. You're a smart person. And if you can't, well, whose fault is that anyway?
March 30, 2010
The authors assess Berry's "patchwork" of ideas and derive a more comprehensive worldview based not on nostalgia but locality and hospitality. Sometimes their analysis reaches a bit too far, but I would recommend this book for Christians seeking holistic reflection on the importance of communities. A good follow-up to "The Hidden Art of Homemaking" by Edith Schaeffer.
May 12, 2009
This just arrived on inter-library loan and looks to be really good. Wendell Berry has not written anything like a definitive statement of his thought and this book looks to do that for him in a way. Laura and Nik, perhaps this would be a good book to recommend to your friends. Good night.
May 16, 2019
This was my second reading of this commentary on the writings of Wendell Berry. I appreciate the authors connection of Berry's triad of health-disease-healing with the Biblical drama of creation-fall-redemption. Berry recognizes and acknowledges both human finitude and fallenness (ignorance).
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January 18, 2013while fancinating this is not something to turn your mind off with, so it is going to take me a while
April 30, 2012
This is the book that made me want to read Wendell Berry. I read this because Michael Stevens is a close friend of mine. Now, so is Wendell Berry, in a way.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews