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Port William
Andy Catlett: Early Travels
Nine-year-old Andy Catlett embarks on a trip going alone by bus to visit his grandparents. It is Christmas 1943 and—as he sees modern life crowding out the old ways—those he meets become touchstones for his understanding of a precious and imperiled world.
This beautiful short novel is a perfect introduction to Wendell Berry’s rich and ever-evolving saga of the Port William Membership.
115 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 9, 2006
87 people are currently reading
1850 people want to read
About the author
Wendell Berry
297 books5,068 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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January 6, 2018
"… knowledge grows with age, and gratitude grows with knowledge."
Once upon a time, nine year old Andy Catlett boarded a bus all alone to visit his two sets of grandparents in Port William, Kentucky, a mere ten miles from his own home. However, to a young, impressionable boy this was a momentous undertaking… "it was nothing less than my first step into manhood." With the passing of nearly sixty years and the wisdom of age, Andy recounts that journey after the Christmas of 1943. This story is serene and reflective and full of Wendell Berry’s keen insight that I loved in his novel Jayber Crow.
Andy shares his memories of his grandparents and their neighbors, his parents, and other relatives in such a way that you feel they just might be your own recollections of those precious to you. The passage of time certainly has a way of making us understand people better and more greatly appreciate the value they have or have had in our lives. My own grandmother lived with me, my sister and my parents for the first eighteen years of my life. While at the time it felt much like having a second mother supervising your every move, I still recognized the value of her position in the family home. As more and more years go by since she left this world, I treasure even more that time she spent with us on a daily basis and am cognizant of the unique and loving relationship we had with one another. But, I am drifting away here from Andy’s story with my memories of Grandma…
Straddling the old ways and the new, Andy’s grandparents have reached a juncture which will be difficult to ignore. Even in his innocence, Andy recognizes this when he notes the differences between the two sets of grandparents. His Catlett grandparents still make use of a mule team and buggy, while his Feltner grandparents own a car. "The men and women who had known only the old ways were departing fast. I knew well at that time that the two worlds existed and that I lived in both." While World War II only vaguely looms in the thoughts of a young boy, one feels the significance and eventualities of the conflict will soon become apparent as Andy’s early travels come to an end. Some members of the family and the Port William community have gone off to fight and life will change once again.
This is my second Wendell Berry novel, and it is my understanding that I will have the opportunity to meet some of these characters again in his other Port William books. I look forward to continuing my relationship with some of them as well as making some new acquaintances.
"Time, then, is told by love’s losses, and by the coming of love, and by love continuing in gratitude for what is lost… No one who has gratitude is the onliest one. Let us pray to be grateful to the last."
Once upon a time, nine year old Andy Catlett boarded a bus all alone to visit his two sets of grandparents in Port William, Kentucky, a mere ten miles from his own home. However, to a young, impressionable boy this was a momentous undertaking… "it was nothing less than my first step into manhood." With the passing of nearly sixty years and the wisdom of age, Andy recounts that journey after the Christmas of 1943. This story is serene and reflective and full of Wendell Berry’s keen insight that I loved in his novel Jayber Crow.
Andy shares his memories of his grandparents and their neighbors, his parents, and other relatives in such a way that you feel they just might be your own recollections of those precious to you. The passage of time certainly has a way of making us understand people better and more greatly appreciate the value they have or have had in our lives. My own grandmother lived with me, my sister and my parents for the first eighteen years of my life. While at the time it felt much like having a second mother supervising your every move, I still recognized the value of her position in the family home. As more and more years go by since she left this world, I treasure even more that time she spent with us on a daily basis and am cognizant of the unique and loving relationship we had with one another. But, I am drifting away here from Andy’s story with my memories of Grandma…
Straddling the old ways and the new, Andy’s grandparents have reached a juncture which will be difficult to ignore. Even in his innocence, Andy recognizes this when he notes the differences between the two sets of grandparents. His Catlett grandparents still make use of a mule team and buggy, while his Feltner grandparents own a car. "The men and women who had known only the old ways were departing fast. I knew well at that time that the two worlds existed and that I lived in both." While World War II only vaguely looms in the thoughts of a young boy, one feels the significance and eventualities of the conflict will soon become apparent as Andy’s early travels come to an end. Some members of the family and the Port William community have gone off to fight and life will change once again.
This is my second Wendell Berry novel, and it is my understanding that I will have the opportunity to meet some of these characters again in his other Port William books. I look forward to continuing my relationship with some of them as well as making some new acquaintances.
"Time, then, is told by love’s losses, and by the coming of love, and by love continuing in gratitude for what is lost… No one who has gratitude is the onliest one. Let us pray to be grateful to the last."
October 8, 2021
When I get lonely for times long gone and people who no longer populate my world, I feel a great need to read Wendell Berry and visit Port William. There is so much in these stories that harkens back to my own early life, particularly the older people, the two women Andy Catlett calls “grandma” and “granny” (which just happens to be the same names had for my two grandmothers), and his two grandfathers, who are so different and yet so much a part of the same mosaic of life.
Wendell Berry can paint that world so vividly that you are walking in it once again. He has all the details right: the night time slop jars, the cold barn, the smoky stripping room, the aromatic kitchen, the hard labor and the sense of satisfaction. Life seems simple, but life is complicated, and the skills are an art, unpraised and taken for granted, but missed.
She did not do much in the way of exact measurement. She seasoned to taste. She mixed by experience and to the right consistency. The dough for a pie crust or biscuits, for instance, had to be neither too flabby nor too stiff; it was right when it felt right. She did not own a cookbook or a written recipe.
Exactly the way my mother and grandmother cooked and the reason no one else could EVER make biscuits like Mama’s or blackberry pie like Grandma’s.
For the most part, Berry just gives us this world without too much expounding upon what it means. You cannot fail, under his spell, to see what it means. But, in this novel particularly, he does tackle the difficult question of race relations, and he does so in a way that I’m not sure anyone else has ever done, and in a way that rings so true of my own childhood and that I find impossible to explain to those younger than myself. It was such an unfair and unbalanced system, a political travesty, but between individuals, it was sometimes very much genuine respect and love.
And so perhaps I offend current political etiquette, as I offend the racism to which it is opposed, by saying that, in and in spite of the old racial arrangement into which we both were born, I loved Dick Watson, and he treated me with affection and with perfect and unfailing kindness.
We were living in the history of “race relations”, to be sure, but, like everybody else, we were living as ourselves in it.
Andy is a boy born into a world that is changing rapidly from agrarian to industrial, and he can see the changes taking place before his young eyes, as horses and wagons give way completely to automobiles and trains. Looking back, he wonders (as I often do) why he failed to ask all the obvious questions about family and life before his time; how he let the people with the answers slip away without writing the stories down or tapping the wealth of knowledge they alone possessed. Mostly, though, he remembers the love and the closeness, the sense of family and belonging, the details of his first bus trip alone and his feelings of passing from childhood to something closer to manhood, if only a small step closer. For, Andy is on the cusp of darker days, World War II is about to have its lasting impact, and he is about to find out about the things that make a boy a man.
And so that year of 1943 was in a sense my last year of innocence, of the illusion of permanence and peace. I was about to enter the time that is told by change, by death and loss, by the absence of the past and its members. By now, of all the people I have been remembering from those days in Port William, I alone am still alive. I am, as Maze Tickburn used to say, the onliest one.
Every time I read a Wendell Berry novel, I am grateful, immensely grateful. Grateful for my own life experience, for the window I had into that past that haunts but warms my own old age, and grateful for God’s grace in giving us such an author, such a man, who could capture it again and put it into words, and make it live on--forever.
Wendell Berry can paint that world so vividly that you are walking in it once again. He has all the details right: the night time slop jars, the cold barn, the smoky stripping room, the aromatic kitchen, the hard labor and the sense of satisfaction. Life seems simple, but life is complicated, and the skills are an art, unpraised and taken for granted, but missed.
She did not do much in the way of exact measurement. She seasoned to taste. She mixed by experience and to the right consistency. The dough for a pie crust or biscuits, for instance, had to be neither too flabby nor too stiff; it was right when it felt right. She did not own a cookbook or a written recipe.
Exactly the way my mother and grandmother cooked and the reason no one else could EVER make biscuits like Mama’s or blackberry pie like Grandma’s.
For the most part, Berry just gives us this world without too much expounding upon what it means. You cannot fail, under his spell, to see what it means. But, in this novel particularly, he does tackle the difficult question of race relations, and he does so in a way that I’m not sure anyone else has ever done, and in a way that rings so true of my own childhood and that I find impossible to explain to those younger than myself. It was such an unfair and unbalanced system, a political travesty, but between individuals, it was sometimes very much genuine respect and love.
And so perhaps I offend current political etiquette, as I offend the racism to which it is opposed, by saying that, in and in spite of the old racial arrangement into which we both were born, I loved Dick Watson, and he treated me with affection and with perfect and unfailing kindness.
We were living in the history of “race relations”, to be sure, but, like everybody else, we were living as ourselves in it.
Andy is a boy born into a world that is changing rapidly from agrarian to industrial, and he can see the changes taking place before his young eyes, as horses and wagons give way completely to automobiles and trains. Looking back, he wonders (as I often do) why he failed to ask all the obvious questions about family and life before his time; how he let the people with the answers slip away without writing the stories down or tapping the wealth of knowledge they alone possessed. Mostly, though, he remembers the love and the closeness, the sense of family and belonging, the details of his first bus trip alone and his feelings of passing from childhood to something closer to manhood, if only a small step closer. For, Andy is on the cusp of darker days, World War II is about to have its lasting impact, and he is about to find out about the things that make a boy a man.
And so that year of 1943 was in a sense my last year of innocence, of the illusion of permanence and peace. I was about to enter the time that is told by change, by death and loss, by the absence of the past and its members. By now, of all the people I have been remembering from those days in Port William, I alone am still alive. I am, as Maze Tickburn used to say, the onliest one.
Every time I read a Wendell Berry novel, I am grateful, immensely grateful. Grateful for my own life experience, for the window I had into that past that haunts but warms my own old age, and grateful for God’s grace in giving us such an author, such a man, who could capture it again and put it into words, and make it live on--forever.
October 8, 2021
Whenever life feels a bit overwhelming, I naturally seek out my favorite place in literary fiction. As many readers have discovered, Port William is a refuge of sorts in which one can be refreshed by congenial company.
Andy Catlett looked back on his childhood some sixty years later. It was the fourth day after Christmas, 1943. Nine-year-old Andy was taking the bus alone for the first time from Hargrave to Port William to visit his paternal and maternal grandparents. Andy recalled, “It was going to be an adventure, as my parents saw it, a new experience that I would greatly enjoy. As I saw it, it was nothing less than my first step into manhood.” I shared his eager anticipation.
Berry had a lovely way of capturing Andy’s new experiences. He had his first cup of coffee at the Poppy Shop where he was to catch the bus to Port William, stirring it as he had seen other coffee drinkers do. The verdict? “…I took a sip from the spoon and was amazed that anything could taste so little like it smelled. The bitterness of it puckered my mouth.”
As one would expect, Andy was warmly welcomed by both sets of grandparents including their hired help and folks in Port William. Those were war years and food, especially sugar, was being rationed but Andy enjoyed lavish treats. Reminiscing old times, Andy gained a deeper gratitude for the love he received. Of Grandpa Catlett, he reflected, ”Something in his aspect and his bearing called love from me, as if love were not so much a common bond as a common condition of both our lives.” Of Grandma Catlett, he had this to say, “But knowledge grows with age, and gratitude grows with knowledge. Now I am as grateful to her as I should have been then, and I am troubled with love for her, knowing how she was wrung all her life between her cherished resentments and her fierce affections.”
Berry’s writing conferred a touch of sanctity upon the ordinary - everyday life as it was lived in Port William. Andy was inducted into the community of men who labored together in the fields or in the stripping room drying tobacco, as well as widowers and aging bachelors who gathered in the evening at Milton Burgess’s store for a pint and conversation to fend off loneliness. I was delighted to meet Jayber Crow, the town barber. (Jayber Crow is my first and favorite book by Wendell Berry.) Andy said of him, "Jayber was always good to me, as he was to everybody, and I went and stood beside him as I would have gone to shelter in a storm. He looked down at me and smiled, gave me two pats on the shoulder, and said, 'How you doing, Andy?'" Yes, that was the Jayber I knew.
Life in the 1940’s was changing. Andy could not help being aware that he lived in two worlds. The first was inhabited by the town folks of his grandparents’ generation accustomed to the old ways of life symbolized by the mule team and wagon. The second in which he lived had expanded to paved roads, speed, and mechanization. Andy observed the camaraderie that existed between his grandparents and the colored laborers who lived and worked with them. In this short stint in Port William, Andy modeled after his grandparents and learned first-hand lessons in racial co-existence and inclusivity.
Read Andy Catlett: Early Travels. In this quiet book is one of the best expressions of love.
Andy Catlett looked back on his childhood some sixty years later. It was the fourth day after Christmas, 1943. Nine-year-old Andy was taking the bus alone for the first time from Hargrave to Port William to visit his paternal and maternal grandparents. Andy recalled, “It was going to be an adventure, as my parents saw it, a new experience that I would greatly enjoy. As I saw it, it was nothing less than my first step into manhood.” I shared his eager anticipation.
Berry had a lovely way of capturing Andy’s new experiences. He had his first cup of coffee at the Poppy Shop where he was to catch the bus to Port William, stirring it as he had seen other coffee drinkers do. The verdict? “…I took a sip from the spoon and was amazed that anything could taste so little like it smelled. The bitterness of it puckered my mouth.”
As one would expect, Andy was warmly welcomed by both sets of grandparents including their hired help and folks in Port William. Those were war years and food, especially sugar, was being rationed but Andy enjoyed lavish treats. Reminiscing old times, Andy gained a deeper gratitude for the love he received. Of Grandpa Catlett, he reflected, ”Something in his aspect and his bearing called love from me, as if love were not so much a common bond as a common condition of both our lives.” Of Grandma Catlett, he had this to say, “But knowledge grows with age, and gratitude grows with knowledge. Now I am as grateful to her as I should have been then, and I am troubled with love for her, knowing how she was wrung all her life between her cherished resentments and her fierce affections.”
Berry’s writing conferred a touch of sanctity upon the ordinary - everyday life as it was lived in Port William. Andy was inducted into the community of men who labored together in the fields or in the stripping room drying tobacco, as well as widowers and aging bachelors who gathered in the evening at Milton Burgess’s store for a pint and conversation to fend off loneliness. I was delighted to meet Jayber Crow, the town barber. (Jayber Crow is my first and favorite book by Wendell Berry.) Andy said of him, "Jayber was always good to me, as he was to everybody, and I went and stood beside him as I would have gone to shelter in a storm. He looked down at me and smiled, gave me two pats on the shoulder, and said, 'How you doing, Andy?'" Yes, that was the Jayber I knew.
Life in the 1940’s was changing. Andy could not help being aware that he lived in two worlds. The first was inhabited by the town folks of his grandparents’ generation accustomed to the old ways of life symbolized by the mule team and wagon. The second in which he lived had expanded to paved roads, speed, and mechanization. Andy observed the camaraderie that existed between his grandparents and the colored laborers who lived and worked with them. In this short stint in Port William, Andy modeled after his grandparents and learned first-hand lessons in racial co-existence and inclusivity.
Read Andy Catlett: Early Travels. In this quiet book is one of the best expressions of love.
December 6, 2017
Time travel is a real thing you know. All you have to do is open the pages of a book, and it's the portal to anywhere and time you wish to go. In this case, it's 1943 Kentucky, the village of Port William, to be exact, and we travel there with 9 year old Andy Catlett, who takes his first bus trip alone to visit both sets of grandparents in the days after Christmas. It's just a matter of 10 miles up the road, but to him it's a voyage of independence.
WWII is blazing in Europe, but other than shortages and Uncles and friends away from home, not much has changed for Andy. It will shortly, as we are told by the much older Andy who is remembering this journey and his grandparents and the people important to him. But for now, we have the memories of a boy on the cusp of manhood, remembering a time on the cusp of the modern world. It's a good place to be for a short while, when things seemed so much simpler, and people more caring, and small things more important.
WWII is blazing in Europe, but other than shortages and Uncles and friends away from home, not much has changed for Andy. It will shortly, as we are told by the much older Andy who is remembering this journey and his grandparents and the people important to him. But for now, we have the memories of a boy on the cusp of manhood, remembering a time on the cusp of the modern world. It's a good place to be for a short while, when things seemed so much simpler, and people more caring, and small things more important.
July 18, 2021
Port William could be my home away from home. It is a place I long to experience on a regular basis, to visit with and learn about what’s happening with the people I am growing to love there. This time, my journey took me 10 miles from Hargrave to Port William with 9 year old, Andy Catlett, who was venturing out for a special bus ride all by himself to see his grandparents. Older Andy Catlett is remembering this first big adventure alone and how important and grown up it made him feel. It was the last 4 days of the year 1943 when Andy set out. Looking forward to his time with both sets of grandparents, Andy knows he’ll be on his best behavior, despite the nuisance he could be at home and school, because in Port William, his Catlett and Feltner grandparents just might spoil him a little.
It was as though a curtain had fallen on a stage and the credulous audience (I, that is to say) was now in a different world from the one I had waked up in only a short time ago. The world I was in now was an older one that had been in existence a long time, though it would last only a few more years. The time was about over when a boy traveling into the Port William community might be met by a team of mules and a wagon.
Wendell Berry writes so perfectly the feelings, actions, views and behavior of a 9 year old boy. Here he is able to provide a look back at this time in history when the world was dividing and forming into something new and completely different. Electricity and mechanical devices are beginning to become prevalent but in places like Port William where folks live off of the land and work hard to produce all things needed, this new world brought with it a reality that the old ways would be reduced to becoming relics. One of my favorite parts is when young Andy is thinking about and comparing the view of the world from his Grandpa Catlett’s wagon and his Granddaddy Felnter’s car.
The car was not only easier and faster than the team and wagon. It gave a new aspect and a new motion to the world. The wagon passed through the country at a speed that allowed your eyes to come to rest. Whatever you wanted to look at…your sight could dwell on and you could see it. But from the side window of Granddaddy’s car…the country seemed to be turning like a great wheel…turning so fast that everything was a blur…To pick out a detail…was impossible.
What is so special about this novel of Port William is the respect and love that Andy Catlett demonstrates for the elders in his family. He understands the struggle that his family has endured to make a life lasting for themselves and those after them. This is a place that is as much a part of him as it was of the generations before him. He says in reference to his Grandpa Catlett, I love him now more than I did then, for now, sixty-some years later, I understand that his life had been lived in devotion to our place here and its creatures, as my own life, in its way, also has been lived. And I know now how to value his passion for good crops, good animals, and good work, and how to appreciate his grief when he failed to live up to his passion…..His life, his very flesh, had been shaped by weather, work, and the struggle to keep what he had and what he loved.
This being my 5th Port William novel, I have come to appreciate Wendell Berry’s quiet yet meaningful prose. He does not waste words as that is not a part of who he is and what he believes in. The nostalgia one feels when reading about his beloved community is genuine and earnest. He is one of my favorite authors and I just can’t get enough of the people and the place he has created in Port William, Kentucky.
It was as though a curtain had fallen on a stage and the credulous audience (I, that is to say) was now in a different world from the one I had waked up in only a short time ago. The world I was in now was an older one that had been in existence a long time, though it would last only a few more years. The time was about over when a boy traveling into the Port William community might be met by a team of mules and a wagon.
Wendell Berry writes so perfectly the feelings, actions, views and behavior of a 9 year old boy. Here he is able to provide a look back at this time in history when the world was dividing and forming into something new and completely different. Electricity and mechanical devices are beginning to become prevalent but in places like Port William where folks live off of the land and work hard to produce all things needed, this new world brought with it a reality that the old ways would be reduced to becoming relics. One of my favorite parts is when young Andy is thinking about and comparing the view of the world from his Grandpa Catlett’s wagon and his Granddaddy Felnter’s car.
The car was not only easier and faster than the team and wagon. It gave a new aspect and a new motion to the world. The wagon passed through the country at a speed that allowed your eyes to come to rest. Whatever you wanted to look at…your sight could dwell on and you could see it. But from the side window of Granddaddy’s car…the country seemed to be turning like a great wheel…turning so fast that everything was a blur…To pick out a detail…was impossible.
What is so special about this novel of Port William is the respect and love that Andy Catlett demonstrates for the elders in his family. He understands the struggle that his family has endured to make a life lasting for themselves and those after them. This is a place that is as much a part of him as it was of the generations before him. He says in reference to his Grandpa Catlett, I love him now more than I did then, for now, sixty-some years later, I understand that his life had been lived in devotion to our place here and its creatures, as my own life, in its way, also has been lived. And I know now how to value his passion for good crops, good animals, and good work, and how to appreciate his grief when he failed to live up to his passion…..His life, his very flesh, had been shaped by weather, work, and the struggle to keep what he had and what he loved.
This being my 5th Port William novel, I have come to appreciate Wendell Berry’s quiet yet meaningful prose. He does not waste words as that is not a part of who he is and what he believes in. The nostalgia one feels when reading about his beloved community is genuine and earnest. He is one of my favorite authors and I just can’t get enough of the people and the place he has created in Port William, Kentucky.
December 23, 2017
An older Andy Catlett is looking back to a trip he made alone by bus in 1943, during his Christmas break, to visit his two sets of grandparents. It's a quiet, gentle book with lots of observations about a simpler way of life. The grandparents of nine-year-old Andy lived on farms doing hard physical work, and possessed survival skills that most of us do not have today. He remembers their kindness as they showed him how to work around the farm.
Many of the characters from Wendell Berry's other books about the village of Port William, Kentucky, show up again here. There's a warmth among the people from this small village, many of whom are related by blood or by marriage. Andy notices that some of the black hired hands have worked for his family all their lives--as did their parents--and wonders if his ancestors might have held slaves.
It was New Years Day 1944 as the book ends. A shadow of death hangs over the families who had loved ones fighting in World War II. A few had already been killed, and more would be lost in the coming year. Young Andy Catlatt was seeing a changing world.
Many of the characters from Wendell Berry's other books about the village of Port William, Kentucky, show up again here. There's a warmth among the people from this small village, many of whom are related by blood or by marriage. Andy notices that some of the black hired hands have worked for his family all their lives--as did their parents--and wonders if his ancestors might have held slaves.
It was New Years Day 1944 as the book ends. A shadow of death hangs over the families who had loved ones fighting in World War II. A few had already been killed, and more would be lost in the coming year. Young Andy Catlatt was seeing a changing world.
September 2, 2025
I really don’t have time to fall in love with a 14 book series (finding the number or order is very confusing) but god did I love spending some time with it. The audiobook is terrific but feel it might be better capture in written word because it’s easier to flip back and forth over these beautiful passages
Thank you Kate for the recommendation
Thank you Kate for the recommendation
July 3, 2020
Affettuosa e sincera dichiarazione d’amore per Port William, un borgo nella remota campagna del Kentucky, e per un mondo semplice e autentico, ormai irrimediabilmente perduto.
“Era un mondo collocato fermamente dentro le stagioni, sotto la piena luce del giorno e l’oscurità assoluta. Pensavo che sarebbe sempre stato così e che sarebbe rimasto così per sempre”.
Chi narra è ormai anziano, ma il tempo evocato è quello dell’infanzia e del solido legame con la terra e con gli avi.
È il 1943 e Andy, un ragazzino di 9 anni, viaggia per la prima volta da solo dalla cittadina in cui vive con i genitori alla fattoria dove vivono i nonni paterni. Sarà l’occasione per sentirsi grande e responsabile ma anche per godere di quella atmosfera particolare della campagna e degli affetti, ancora fedele ai cicli naturali, che ben presto sarebbe stata trasformata dai ritmi della modernità e dell’artificio.
“In pochi anni il mondo della velocità, dell’asfalto e dell’insoddisfazione universale aveva messo radici in quasi ogni luogo e ogni mente, e il vecchio mondo del carro e della coppia di muli era semplicemente sparito, lasciandosi alle spalle una manciata di ruderi sempre meno comprensibili.”
“Era un mondo collocato fermamente dentro le stagioni, sotto la piena luce del giorno e l’oscurità assoluta. Pensavo che sarebbe sempre stato così e che sarebbe rimasto così per sempre”.
Chi narra è ormai anziano, ma il tempo evocato è quello dell’infanzia e del solido legame con la terra e con gli avi.
È il 1943 e Andy, un ragazzino di 9 anni, viaggia per la prima volta da solo dalla cittadina in cui vive con i genitori alla fattoria dove vivono i nonni paterni. Sarà l’occasione per sentirsi grande e responsabile ma anche per godere di quella atmosfera particolare della campagna e degli affetti, ancora fedele ai cicli naturali, che ben presto sarebbe stata trasformata dai ritmi della modernità e dell’artificio.
“In pochi anni il mondo della velocità, dell’asfalto e dell’insoddisfazione universale aveva messo radici in quasi ogni luogo e ogni mente, e il vecchio mondo del carro e della coppia di muli era semplicemente sparito, lasciandosi alle spalle una manciata di ruderi sempre meno comprensibili.”
June 24, 2024
A delightful story, full of nostalgia for a time long past, when the horse and buggy gave way to automobiles, and radios broadcast news of the war. Listening to the audiobook made me want to write the stories of visits to my grandparents, too. Perhaps I will!
December 22, 2023
4***
What an incredible, wholesome story recounted by an old man reminiscing about his time as a 9-year-old boy spending weeks with his grandparents on their farms during 1943. This nostalgic story is chock full of wisdom, nature (as only Wendell Berry can do), memories, meaning, and family. Looking back, Catlett peers into the future of technology with trepidation, wishing that the slowness of time could persist so that future generations could savor the value of friendships and the subtle hum of the refreshing, healing countryside.
This book, while deeply sentimental, I think may only be appreciated by the older generation of folks looking back to a simpler time. I can hear the crickets chirping, see the blanket of moonlit stars, taste the freshly baked pies, and smell the lofty bales of hay. I imagined hearing Andy’s mother reading Huckleberry Finn and King Arthur next to a fire, a voice that Berry still fondly imagines as he writes his own novels.
While I fervently wish that younger people could experience the beauty of this fading generation, it is in these gems of stories that the true atmosphere can be treasured and brought at least to their imaginations, and possibly persuade them of the value of being totally unplugged. Sit back and allow the time to slowly envelope you as you read, and immerse yourself in the beauty of ages past that will likely, if it hasn’t already, disappear. At the very least, Berry reminds us of the need for each other and the need for rich connection both with family and with nature.
What an incredible, wholesome story recounted by an old man reminiscing about his time as a 9-year-old boy spending weeks with his grandparents on their farms during 1943. This nostalgic story is chock full of wisdom, nature (as only Wendell Berry can do), memories, meaning, and family. Looking back, Catlett peers into the future of technology with trepidation, wishing that the slowness of time could persist so that future generations could savor the value of friendships and the subtle hum of the refreshing, healing countryside.
This book, while deeply sentimental, I think may only be appreciated by the older generation of folks looking back to a simpler time. I can hear the crickets chirping, see the blanket of moonlit stars, taste the freshly baked pies, and smell the lofty bales of hay. I imagined hearing Andy’s mother reading Huckleberry Finn and King Arthur next to a fire, a voice that Berry still fondly imagines as he writes his own novels.
While I fervently wish that younger people could experience the beauty of this fading generation, it is in these gems of stories that the true atmosphere can be treasured and brought at least to their imaginations, and possibly persuade them of the value of being totally unplugged. Sit back and allow the time to slowly envelope you as you read, and immerse yourself in the beauty of ages past that will likely, if it hasn’t already, disappear. At the very least, Berry reminds us of the need for each other and the need for rich connection both with family and with nature.
January 2, 2018
If you haven't read Wendell Berry, I highly suggest that be one of your reading goals for 2018. He never disappoints with his descriptions of a more simplistic life.
June 20, 2021
What a comforting book. I didn’t love it as much as Hannah Coulter, but I did very much enjoy this story of Andy spending time with his grandparents. I couldn’t help but think of my own memories of times with my own maternal grandparents.
February 16, 2018
Simple book, sweet. Seen through peaceful childhood's eyes. And they are travels that Wendell accomplished.
This brought back a lot of memories, although most could not be more different than Port Williams' surrounds. But especially detail minutia memories, like the ice man coming to bring in the huge cubes. We had that at the store until way past 1950. And the times with grandparents, and taking the bus "alone" etc. Wendell Berry is about 15 years older than I am but some of the comparisons to his experiences to mine were remarkable.
Very simple and within a world filled with good natured strangers and good intent folks doing much slower paced and constant chores. And you doing them also. So completely different than the present.
This brought back a lot of memories, although most could not be more different than Port Williams' surrounds. But especially detail minutia memories, like the ice man coming to bring in the huge cubes. We had that at the store until way past 1950. And the times with grandparents, and taking the bus "alone" etc. Wendell Berry is about 15 years older than I am but some of the comparisons to his experiences to mine were remarkable.
Very simple and within a world filled with good natured strangers and good intent folks doing much slower paced and constant chores. And you doing them also. So completely different than the present.
June 29, 2019
QUOTES
Page 118-119
And so that year of 1943 was in a sense my last year of innocence, of the illusion of permanence and peace. I was about to enter the time that is told by change, by death and loss, by the absence of the past and its members. By now, of all the people I have been remembering from those days in Port William, I alone am still alive. I am, as Maze Tickburn used to say, the onliest one.
Lying in bed that night, in the midst of my journey alone to my home places, still free of all that was to come, I felt even so the current of time flowing over me and over the house and through all the dark night outside. For a longish while, before sleep finally overtook my thoughts, I would have given a lot to see my mother.
Pages 119-120
Time is told by death, who doubts it? But time is always halved -- for all we know, it is halved -- by the eye blink, the synapse, the immeasurable moment of the present. Time is only the past and maybe the future; the present moment, dividing and connecting them, is eternal. The time of the past is there, somewhat, but only somewhat, to be remembered and examined. We believe that the future is there too, for it keeps arriving, though we know nothing about it. But try to stop the present for your patient scrutiny, or to measure its length with your most advanced chronometer. It exists, so far as I can tell, only as a leak in time, through which, if we are quiet enough, eternity falls upon us and makes its claim. And here I am, an old man, traveling as a child among the dead.
We measure time by its deaths, yes, and by its births. For time is told also by life. As some depart, others come. The hand opened in farewell remains open in welcome. I, who once had grandparents and parents, now have children and grandchildren. Like the flowing river that is yet always present, time that is always going is always coming. And time that is told by death and birth is held and redeemed by love, which is always present. Time, then, is told by love's losses, and by the coming of love, and by love continuing in gratitude for what is lost. It is folded and enfolded and unfolded forever and ever, the love by which the dead are alive and the unborn welcomed into the womb. The great question for the old and the dying, I think, is not if they have loved and been loved enough, but if they have been grateful enough for love received and given, however much. No one who has gratitude is the onliest one. Let us pray to be grateful to the last.
Page 139
The next evening Granddaddy would go with me to catch the bus on its daily trip to Hargrave, and I would complete my trip, alone as I had started, back to our house in the new year. It was going to be a year that would teach me something about loss that I had not learned in all the years before: It could happen to me. But there in that little room at the end of the old year, I was already learning something that I have never stopped learning and will never learn completely.
As I watched, it came to me that they were waiting: Granddaddy and Frank Lathrop, each with a son in the army; Grover Gibbs, whose son, Billy, was in the air force; Burley Coulter, whose nephews, Tom and Nathan, had gone off to the army, and who now could hope that Nathan only might return; Jayber Crow, whose calling seems to have been to wait with the others. They were suffering and enduring and waiting, waiting together, joined in their unending game, submitted as the countryside around them was submitted. We had come into the silence that is deeper than any other -- the silence of what is yet to come, the silence of one who is waiting for what is yet to come.
Page 118-119
And so that year of 1943 was in a sense my last year of innocence, of the illusion of permanence and peace. I was about to enter the time that is told by change, by death and loss, by the absence of the past and its members. By now, of all the people I have been remembering from those days in Port William, I alone am still alive. I am, as Maze Tickburn used to say, the onliest one.
Lying in bed that night, in the midst of my journey alone to my home places, still free of all that was to come, I felt even so the current of time flowing over me and over the house and through all the dark night outside. For a longish while, before sleep finally overtook my thoughts, I would have given a lot to see my mother.
Pages 119-120
Time is told by death, who doubts it? But time is always halved -- for all we know, it is halved -- by the eye blink, the synapse, the immeasurable moment of the present. Time is only the past and maybe the future; the present moment, dividing and connecting them, is eternal. The time of the past is there, somewhat, but only somewhat, to be remembered and examined. We believe that the future is there too, for it keeps arriving, though we know nothing about it. But try to stop the present for your patient scrutiny, or to measure its length with your most advanced chronometer. It exists, so far as I can tell, only as a leak in time, through which, if we are quiet enough, eternity falls upon us and makes its claim. And here I am, an old man, traveling as a child among the dead.
We measure time by its deaths, yes, and by its births. For time is told also by life. As some depart, others come. The hand opened in farewell remains open in welcome. I, who once had grandparents and parents, now have children and grandchildren. Like the flowing river that is yet always present, time that is always going is always coming. And time that is told by death and birth is held and redeemed by love, which is always present. Time, then, is told by love's losses, and by the coming of love, and by love continuing in gratitude for what is lost. It is folded and enfolded and unfolded forever and ever, the love by which the dead are alive and the unborn welcomed into the womb. The great question for the old and the dying, I think, is not if they have loved and been loved enough, but if they have been grateful enough for love received and given, however much. No one who has gratitude is the onliest one. Let us pray to be grateful to the last.
Page 139
The next evening Granddaddy would go with me to catch the bus on its daily trip to Hargrave, and I would complete my trip, alone as I had started, back to our house in the new year. It was going to be a year that would teach me something about loss that I had not learned in all the years before: It could happen to me. But there in that little room at the end of the old year, I was already learning something that I have never stopped learning and will never learn completely.
As I watched, it came to me that they were waiting: Granddaddy and Frank Lathrop, each with a son in the army; Grover Gibbs, whose son, Billy, was in the air force; Burley Coulter, whose nephews, Tom and Nathan, had gone off to the army, and who now could hope that Nathan only might return; Jayber Crow, whose calling seems to have been to wait with the others. They were suffering and enduring and waiting, waiting together, joined in their unending game, submitted as the countryside around them was submitted. We had come into the silence that is deeper than any other -- the silence of what is yet to come, the silence of one who is waiting for what is yet to come.
December 31, 2023
This book was a Christmas gift from a dear friend and I just knew I wanted to save it for my favorite week of the year. I could have flown through it if I’d chosen to, but I wanted to savor the simplicity of this sweet story. Wendell Berry’s words just speak to my soul. I’m grateful to have ended the year with one of his books. Can’t wait to read Jayner Crow in 2024.
January 3, 2026
A read that takes you back to Port William (fictional), Kentucky. Andy Catlett is the narrator looking back over his life to three days between Christmas and New Year's in 1943 when his 9-year old self had the opportunity to spend time with both sets of his grandparents. . . a time that would never happen again for him, or any of us as war and all it left behind ensured.
Nostalgic and poignant. Leaves one contemplative, reviewing past memories clicking through the slides of days long gone.
Nostalgic and poignant. Leaves one contemplative, reviewing past memories clicking through the slides of days long gone.
December 30, 2025
Andy Catlett: Early Travels is my fourth book in Wendell Berry’s series set in Port William, Kentucky, based on his hometown. The first one I read was Jayber Crow, the second was A Place on Earth. And the third was A World Lost, which also involved a young Andy Catlett.
Jayber Crow is the story of the town barber and we see everyone and every event through Jayber Crow’s eyes while we get his insights and philosophical musings over the span of many years.
A Place on Earth does not have a single center but the reader sees the people and events through the eyes of various Port William, Kentucky residents but in a shorter time period.
A World Lost is also told through the eyes of one character, Andy Catlett, but unlike Jayber Crow, it is about the impact of one event on a character rather than a depiction of a character over their lifetime.
I rated all three of these better than 4 stars with the scope of A Place on Earth warranting a 5 star rating. Andy Catlett: Early Travels did not live up to these previous reading experiences.
The story takes place in 1943, not long before the events of A World Lost as 9 year old Andy spends the weeks after Christmas visiting his grandparents, his father’s side near the large town of Hargrave and his mother’s parents near small-town Port William.
My major problem was the lack of any dramatic events. This is an atmospheric slice-of-life tale about a young boy’s time visiting at his grandparents. While there is a melancholic aura of the citizenry living while anticipating the possible death of loved ones in the armed services, overall this is a warm and nostalgic look at WWII American small town life and its effect on the development of a young boy. There are pleasant scenes clearly described by Berry’s skillful hands and some nice pieces of dialogue but there are no events to provide any drama.
This was a problem because of the timing of my read. I correctly anticipated this to be such an atmospheric undramatic slice-of-life tale and thought it might make for a pleasant Christmas read. However, I was so busy in the days before Christmas with getting out a major work project while also trying to prepare for Christmas visitors and two major meals that when I ‘stole’ some time to read I think I needed more plot and drama to make me feel it worth my time. While reading this book, I found myself impatient for something to happen even glossing over some of the dialogue and descriptions hoping I’d encounter some dramatic event. This need is why I preferred reading the melodramatic Armadale and the humorous Carry On Jeeves during this same reading period.
I may try reading this again in a few years at a time when I’m more patient and can take time to appreciate what this tale has to offer. But, based on this current reading experience, I rate this as 3 stars.
Jayber Crow is the story of the town barber and we see everyone and every event through Jayber Crow’s eyes while we get his insights and philosophical musings over the span of many years.
A Place on Earth does not have a single center but the reader sees the people and events through the eyes of various Port William, Kentucky residents but in a shorter time period.
A World Lost is also told through the eyes of one character, Andy Catlett, but unlike Jayber Crow, it is about the impact of one event on a character rather than a depiction of a character over their lifetime.
I rated all three of these better than 4 stars with the scope of A Place on Earth warranting a 5 star rating. Andy Catlett: Early Travels did not live up to these previous reading experiences.
The story takes place in 1943, not long before the events of A World Lost as 9 year old Andy spends the weeks after Christmas visiting his grandparents, his father’s side near the large town of Hargrave and his mother’s parents near small-town Port William.
My major problem was the lack of any dramatic events. This is an atmospheric slice-of-life tale about a young boy’s time visiting at his grandparents. While there is a melancholic aura of the citizenry living while anticipating the possible death of loved ones in the armed services, overall this is a warm and nostalgic look at WWII American small town life and its effect on the development of a young boy. There are pleasant scenes clearly described by Berry’s skillful hands and some nice pieces of dialogue but there are no events to provide any drama.
This was a problem because of the timing of my read. I correctly anticipated this to be such an atmospheric undramatic slice-of-life tale and thought it might make for a pleasant Christmas read. However, I was so busy in the days before Christmas with getting out a major work project while also trying to prepare for Christmas visitors and two major meals that when I ‘stole’ some time to read I think I needed more plot and drama to make me feel it worth my time. While reading this book, I found myself impatient for something to happen even glossing over some of the dialogue and descriptions hoping I’d encounter some dramatic event. This need is why I preferred reading the melodramatic Armadale and the humorous Carry On Jeeves during this same reading period.
I may try reading this again in a few years at a time when I’m more patient and can take time to appreciate what this tale has to offer. But, based on this current reading experience, I rate this as 3 stars.
April 16, 2024
Having just finished Hannah Coulter, it was fun to see Port William through another member's eyes; young Andy Catlett. He knew Hannah when she was young and getting ready to marry Virgil. I loved all the descriptions of life and people and the food from a bygone time.
June 14, 2025
Nine year old Andy takes his first solo trip on the bus from his town to his grandparent's town 10 miles away during his Christmas break from school. Adult Andy tells of his trip looking back on that time and how he felt being "so grown up". He recounts many memories and how those times with his grandparents fostered his path in life and trials that were to lie ahead for him in the coming year.
"And now, as often before, I am reminded how grateful I am to have been there, in that time, with these I have remembered. I was there with them; they remain here with me....never again to be far from my thoughts, no matter where I went or what I did."
"And now, as often before, I am reminded how grateful I am to have been there, in that time, with these I have remembered. I was there with them; they remain here with me....never again to be far from my thoughts, no matter where I went or what I did."
April 26, 2018
It was so lovely and comfortable to be with Andy and his family in a quiet time at the beginning of WWII, when life was a simpler thing, and people expected to work hard and eat the fruits of their labor.
June 29, 2021
this was the first time i got to see port william through a child's eyes. it was lighter, warmer, less marked by sorrow, and made me want to remember better.
June 29, 2021
Possibly my favorite of the Port William novels. Of course, my daughter says I say that about each one I finish.
June 27, 2023
I love these old-fashioned Port William books. This one is short, and written from 10 year old Andy's point of view. It tells of his visit to his grandparents houses over a week at Christmas 1943. These books remind me of my farming grandparents. The boy cousins used to go visit and help on the farm, too.
January 22, 2011
Another piece in the Port William puzzle, this book describes Andy's trips to visit his grandparents at the age of nine, but written through the lens of time and age, when he is much older. The characters you learn about in Berry's other books are seen through a child's eyes, which always puts a fun, new spin on things. Some quotes I loved:
Speaking of his Grandpa, "I knew that when he was studying he was thinking, but I did not know what about. Now I have aged into knowledge of what he thought about." (I love that "aged into knowledge" bit. I hope I do that and end up wiser one day. :))
Speaking of his father (and reminding me of mine), "...his love was proprietary, like Grandma's; it was magisterial, fierce, and demanding. When he hugged me, he hugged me tight, with an urgency just short of violence, as if foreseeing the times when he would be unable to decide for me or protect me, as if it were an immediate, almost a maternal, grief to him that we were not one flesh."
Of change in transportation (mules + buggy vs. a car) between his two sets of grandparents, "By fortune of birth and history, I know the world of horses and mules...I know also the world of the automobile, which excluded the older world by means of speed, comfort, and ease, and which oddly "made the world smaller" by increasing the distances between ourselves and the things we need. And like many others in this rational modern age, I have sat in airplanes going five hundred miles an hour and wished they would hurry up." (Who hasn't thought that?? Haha...)
Of change in the world, "Increasingly over the last maybe 40 years, the thought has come to me that the old world in which our people lived by the work of their hands, close to weather and earth, plants and animals, was the true world; and that the new world of cheap energy and ever cheaper money, honored greed, and dreams of liberation from every restraint, is mostly theater...a jumble of scenery and props never quite believable...The world I knew as a boy was flawed, surely, but it was substantial and authentic. The households of my grandparents seemed to breathe forth a sense of the real cost and worth of things. Whatever came, came by somebody's work."
Of his home, where he was born (and how I feel about where I grew up), "...the town of Port William, the nucleus, the navel, of the country that was most intimately home to me then and has been home to me all my life, even in the years when I did not live in it. It is my motherland, the mold I was cast in. As it has held and shaped me, so I have kept and contained it. Though I may have been thousands of miles away, it has been as present to me as my own flesh." (How DOES he do it? He makes putting feelings into words look so easy...)
Speaking of his Grandpa, "I knew that when he was studying he was thinking, but I did not know what about. Now I have aged into knowledge of what he thought about." (I love that "aged into knowledge" bit. I hope I do that and end up wiser one day. :))
Speaking of his father (and reminding me of mine), "...his love was proprietary, like Grandma's; it was magisterial, fierce, and demanding. When he hugged me, he hugged me tight, with an urgency just short of violence, as if foreseeing the times when he would be unable to decide for me or protect me, as if it were an immediate, almost a maternal, grief to him that we were not one flesh."
Of change in transportation (mules + buggy vs. a car) between his two sets of grandparents, "By fortune of birth and history, I know the world of horses and mules...I know also the world of the automobile, which excluded the older world by means of speed, comfort, and ease, and which oddly "made the world smaller" by increasing the distances between ourselves and the things we need. And like many others in this rational modern age, I have sat in airplanes going five hundred miles an hour and wished they would hurry up." (Who hasn't thought that?? Haha...)
Of change in the world, "Increasingly over the last maybe 40 years, the thought has come to me that the old world in which our people lived by the work of their hands, close to weather and earth, plants and animals, was the true world; and that the new world of cheap energy and ever cheaper money, honored greed, and dreams of liberation from every restraint, is mostly theater...a jumble of scenery and props never quite believable...The world I knew as a boy was flawed, surely, but it was substantial and authentic. The households of my grandparents seemed to breathe forth a sense of the real cost and worth of things. Whatever came, came by somebody's work."
Of his home, where he was born (and how I feel about where I grew up), "...the town of Port William, the nucleus, the navel, of the country that was most intimately home to me then and has been home to me all my life, even in the years when I did not live in it. It is my motherland, the mold I was cast in. As it has held and shaped me, so I have kept and contained it. Though I may have been thousands of miles away, it has been as present to me as my own flesh." (How DOES he do it? He makes putting feelings into words look so easy...)
May 7, 2018
Recensione: https://bit.ly/2HXQV9J
January 21, 2025
Wholesome, charming.
“The food, as I see it now but did not then, looked beautiful laid out before us on the table. And never then did I know that it was laid out in such profusion in honor of me. It was offered to me out of the loneliness of Grandma’s life, out of her disappointments, her craving for small comforts and pleasures beyond her reach, to which Grandpa was indifferent.”
“I am sure I said, “That was good.” I may even have said, “Thank you,” for I was ever conscious that I am traveling alone and therefore in need of my manners. But time has taught me greater thanks.”
“The world I knew as a boy was flawed, surely, but it was substantial and authentic. The households of my grandparents seemed to breathe forth a sense of the real cost and worth of things. Whatever came, came by somebody's work.”
I appreciated Andy’s hindsight look on an ordinary day of his childhood, at the characters of his family, grandparents, family friends, and the world the consciously created for him and for a little bit allowed him to be a part of. I know that Andy is the character who is most Wendell Berry himself, and at sometimes I felt Berry was overstating his own opinions (mostly his love for what he calls “the old way of doing things,”) which I would have agreed with more easily if he had just continued to make me love the old people and places of his childhood. So in this way I think he broke the “show don’t tell” rule just a bit. Otherwise, charming. I have such an affection for all these people and the lives they lead. I especially enjoyed how differently, with such an increase of appreciation, he saw the ordinary acts and lives of his grandparents. All throughout the novel was his rediscovery of something he loved, which had always had value but now, as an old man, he could comprehend fully. Some gifts, this reminded me, can only be received in retrospect: “time has taught me greater thanks.”
“The food, as I see it now but did not then, looked beautiful laid out before us on the table. And never then did I know that it was laid out in such profusion in honor of me. It was offered to me out of the loneliness of Grandma’s life, out of her disappointments, her craving for small comforts and pleasures beyond her reach, to which Grandpa was indifferent.”
“I am sure I said, “That was good.” I may even have said, “Thank you,” for I was ever conscious that I am traveling alone and therefore in need of my manners. But time has taught me greater thanks.”
“The world I knew as a boy was flawed, surely, but it was substantial and authentic. The households of my grandparents seemed to breathe forth a sense of the real cost and worth of things. Whatever came, came by somebody's work.”
I appreciated Andy’s hindsight look on an ordinary day of his childhood, at the characters of his family, grandparents, family friends, and the world the consciously created for him and for a little bit allowed him to be a part of. I know that Andy is the character who is most Wendell Berry himself, and at sometimes I felt Berry was overstating his own opinions (mostly his love for what he calls “the old way of doing things,”) which I would have agreed with more easily if he had just continued to make me love the old people and places of his childhood. So in this way I think he broke the “show don’t tell” rule just a bit. Otherwise, charming. I have such an affection for all these people and the lives they lead. I especially enjoyed how differently, with such an increase of appreciation, he saw the ordinary acts and lives of his grandparents. All throughout the novel was his rediscovery of something he loved, which had always had value but now, as an old man, he could comprehend fully. Some gifts, this reminded me, can only be received in retrospect: “time has taught me greater thanks.”
May 9, 2019
This was my first Wendell Berry novel. I'd like to read more. "Novel" hardly seems the right designation, though. There is scarcely any plot: a young boy makes his first trip away from home by himself to visit his grandparents. Nor are its characters explored with particular depth, though they are rounded, honest, and genial. Nonetheless, it does explore deeply the humanity of its titular character.
Berry achieves this by having an elderly Andy Catlett narrate the events of this boyhood week. The narrator thus gives us the wise perspective of a man nearing the end of his days, reflecting with great perception on the deeper implications of these seemingly insignificant events. And in the vein of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, the events really are the simple, everyday work and rest of a time and place that the older narrator is keenly aware was vanishing then and now is held only in memory. There is a wealth of commentary to be had here on the changes which mechanization, mass warfare, and other 20th-century phenomena have had on America's social fabric; there is also a wealth of wisdom on the living of a good life.
I loved Andy because he--both as a boy and much more as an old man--displays the intentional, inquisitive way of life that makes the difference between merely living day to day and continually discovering the nature of one's humanity and place in the world. This is a book of both remarkable richness and remarkable simplicity, much like the way of life it extols. Those who wish to contemplate and make intentional choices so as to live a good life will find in it a warm safe-haven.
Berry achieves this by having an elderly Andy Catlett narrate the events of this boyhood week. The narrator thus gives us the wise perspective of a man nearing the end of his days, reflecting with great perception on the deeper implications of these seemingly insignificant events. And in the vein of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, the events really are the simple, everyday work and rest of a time and place that the older narrator is keenly aware was vanishing then and now is held only in memory. There is a wealth of commentary to be had here on the changes which mechanization, mass warfare, and other 20th-century phenomena have had on America's social fabric; there is also a wealth of wisdom on the living of a good life.
I loved Andy because he--both as a boy and much more as an old man--displays the intentional, inquisitive way of life that makes the difference between merely living day to day and continually discovering the nature of one's humanity and place in the world. This is a book of both remarkable richness and remarkable simplicity, much like the way of life it extols. Those who wish to contemplate and make intentional choices so as to live a good life will find in it a warm safe-haven.
Want to Read
October 30, 2022*****************
A Place on Earth 4 stars
The Memory of Old Jack 4 stars
Stand By Me 4 stars
Jayber Crow 4 stars
Hannah Coulter 2 stars
Nathan Coulter 2 stars
Andy Catlett: Early Travels TBR
A World Lost TBR
Remembering TBR
A Place on Earth 4 stars
The Memory of Old Jack 4 stars
Stand By Me 4 stars
Jayber Crow 4 stars
Hannah Coulter 2 stars
Nathan Coulter 2 stars
Andy Catlett: Early Travels TBR
A World Lost TBR
Remembering TBR
October 1, 2022
Though shorter and a different perspective this title gave me a lot of the same feeling as when I read Jayber Crow for the 1st time. Jayber is still the standard by which I judge Berry's canon and this one came pretty close to kindling the same feeling I got when I first read that work.
I listened on audiobook and when I read it next I have a sneaking suspicion it may sneak up to 5 stars as I will have time to rest with the words on the page a little more.
This one also strikes a similar tone to Jayber Crow in that it effortlessly weaves what is happening, what has happened, and what will happen in Port William with what is happening, what has happened, and what will happen in the wide world without ever pulling you out of the intimacy of the Membership.
I listened on audiobook and when I read it next I have a sneaking suspicion it may sneak up to 5 stars as I will have time to rest with the words on the page a little more.
This one also strikes a similar tone to Jayber Crow in that it effortlessly weaves what is happening, what has happened, and what will happen in Port William with what is happening, what has happened, and what will happen in the wide world without ever pulling you out of the intimacy of the Membership.
May 3, 2022
Few authors have enough wit, insight, and humanity to make a story about a 9-year-old boy making his first solo bus trip to visit his grandparents an engaging story. Thankfully, Wendell Berry is one of those authors. There's just so much richness to the way Berry sees how the world and people change. Plus, the more Port Williams fiction I read, the more the books quietly link and it makes the world and characters seem all the more real.
Favorite Quote: Increasingly over the last maybe forty years, the thought has come to me that the old world in which our people lived by the work of their hands, close to the weather and earth, plants and animals, was the true world; and that the new world of cheap energy and ever cheaper money, honored greed, and dreams of liberation from every restraint, is mostly theater. This new world seems a jumble of scenery and props never quite believable, an economy of fantasies and moods, in which it is hard to remember either the timely world of nature or the eternal world of the prophets and poets.
Favorite Quote: Increasingly over the last maybe forty years, the thought has come to me that the old world in which our people lived by the work of their hands, close to the weather and earth, plants and animals, was the true world; and that the new world of cheap energy and ever cheaper money, honored greed, and dreams of liberation from every restraint, is mostly theater. This new world seems a jumble of scenery and props never quite believable, an economy of fantasies and moods, in which it is hard to remember either the timely world of nature or the eternal world of the prophets and poets.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 399 reviews