Pig Earth

Into Their Labours #1

by John Berger

Set in a small village in the French Alps, Pig Earth relates the stories of sceptical, hard-working men and fiercely independent women. This book is an act of reckoning that conveys the precise wealth and weight of a world we are losing.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Literature, Novels, France, Poetry, British Literature

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

John Peter Berger was an English art critic, novelist, painter and author. His novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to a BBC series, is often used as a college text.

Later he was self exiled to continental Europe, living between the french Alps in summer and the suburbs of Paris in winter. Since then, his production has increased considerably, including a variety of genres, from novel to social essay, or poetry. One of the most common themes that appears on his books is the dialectics established between modernity and memory and loss,

Another of his most remarkable works has been the trilogy titled Into Their Labours, that includes the books Pig Earth (1979), Once In Europa (1983) Lilac And Flag (1990). With those books, Berger makes a meditation about the way of the peasant, that changes one poverty for another in the city. This theme is also observed in his novel King, but there his focus is more in the rural diaspora and the bitter side of the urban way of life.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pig Earth consists of naturalistic short stories and surrealistic verses…

The mother puts
the newborn day
to her breast
turnips
like skulls
are heaped
house high
before the blood has been washed
from the legs of the sky

Peasant labour is the most ancient in the world and the hardest… Peasants are isolated from the rest of society so they live by their own special cunning and they possess their own specific wisdom like this homegrown witticism: “The weather and the cunt do what they want.”
And they live in their own world.

At home, in the village, it is you who do everything, and the way you do it gives you a certain authority. There are accidents and many things are beyond your control, but it is you who have to deal with the consequences even of these. When you arrive in the city, where so much is happening and so much is being done and shifted, you realise with astonishment that nothing is in your control. It is like being a bee against a window pane. You see the events, the colours, the lights, yet something, which you can’t see, separates you. With the peasant it is the forced suspension of his habit of handling and doing.

The stories may seem to be down to earth, literally, but the writing is superb and The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol is a little masterpiece which is bigger than some thick books.

[Argos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Domuz Toprak (Pig Earth) mükemmel sekiz öykü, bir novella ve bir denemeden oluşuyor. Metinler arası şiirlerle zenginleştirilmiş. Ana tema köylülük. Buna bağlı olarak köy yaşamı, köylü düşünme tarzı ve köye dair başka unsurlar anlatılıyor.
Berger’in hümanist kaleminden doğa, insan ve sevgiye ait çok güzel hikayeler su gibi okunuyor. Novella ise “Cocadrille” tiplemesiyle bağlantılı üç öyküden oluşuyor.
Kaçınılmaz bir gelişme olan köylülüğün ortadan kalkmasını ironik, biraz öfkeli ama şiirsel ve coşkulu bir anlatımla sunuyor. Kitabın sonundaki köylülük hakkındaki denemesi de işin kaymağı oluyor. Okunması gerekenlerden bence.

[♑︎♑︎♑︎ ♑︎♑︎♑︎ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here is what Berger writes about, with overwhelming beauty and compassion: Lives of hard labor, lived with the passing of the seasons. The closeness of mortality. The way farm animals co-existed with their owners in harsh times and were so well known to their owners. The way these animals were slaughtered when the time came. The preoccupations of hard physical labor, work that never ends and that has no week-end or leisure time of any kind. The need to be working literally all the time. The brutality of living solely with the labor of one's hands and one's back. The ease with which an accident can happen when you life is one of hard labor: an accident that changes lives, or ends them. The way a human mind can see beauty in small ordinary things. The realization, as I read, that the lives of my great-grandparents were much like the hard-labor, desperate, and yet entirely meaningful lives of the people described here by Berger.

[T.J. Beitelman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well. I'm not objective. I believe that John Berger is a sage. His work makes my eyes go like Mowgli in that part of The Jungle Book where that crazy snake makes his eyes go all googly. So. Clearly you can take this review with a grain of salt.

And I'm not even going to review it like normal. There's good parts about peasants and nipples and the part about how they kill animals for meat and it both kills them and doesn't kill them in equal parts. Etc.

But this is the part that really matters to me:

So I'm reading it and I'm loving it so I'm trying to do the thing where you read a gajillion pages at once because you can't stop reading. That said, at the end, I got to the point where I was tired and my head was nodding and I wasn't exactly registering every single word. But! I wanted to keep reading.

BUT. I said, now wait. You have four pages left and is THIS the way you want to engage the last four pages of THIS book?

And the answer was an emphatic no. You want to SAVOR the last four pages of this book. So. I'm saving them. For the weekend. Which is four days from now. Just because this is a gratification well worth delaying.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

First book of the Into Their Labours trilogy (with Once in Europa and Lilac and Flag. The three have to be read together. It's a true trilogy; the books are distinct (and even have different forms--Pig Earth mixes short stories and poetry, Lilac and Flag is the only one that's a novel as such), and stand on their own, but the sum is much greater than the individual parts. One of the greatest works written in English in the past 50 years.

[Maede jadidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

جسم مرده اش به همان بلندی بود
خوابیده روی تخت
با پیراهن و چکمه
درست مثل روز عروسی اش
اما شانه ی راستش
کوتاه تر از شانه ی چپ بود
به خاطر همه ی آنچه
به دوش کشیده بود
در خاکسپاری اش
برف نرمی در روستا باریدن گرفت
تا قبل از گورکن
دفنش کند.

[David M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whatever the motives, political or personal, which have led me to undertake to write something, the writing becomes, as soon as I begin, a struggle to give meaning to experience. Every profession has limits to its competence, but also its own territory. Writing, as I know it, has no territory of its own. The act of writing is nothing except the act of approaching the experience written about... (pp 6)

From this perspective, the professionalization of 'creative writing' is a bit unfortunate. There's something heroic in the way John Berger lives out his vocation, seeking to do justice to extra-literary experience without ever compromising his aesthetic and intellectual standards. In this he reminds me a bit of William T. Vollmann.

It's probably time the Swedes give Berger the Nobel. I'm sure he would think of something creative to do with the prize money. No doubt his acceptance speech would include some not-so-subtle shade thrown at his hosts, the king of Sweden, and the neo-liberal world order in general; a 90-year-old man capable of shaming the rest of us with his passionate intensity.

[Mientras Leo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Conjunto de relatos en esta primera parte de la trilogía firmada por John Berger llena de realismo y tal vez un poso de tristeza que deja al lector la tarea de juzgar loleído. Me ha gustado

[Justin Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hey, I've got an idea! Why don't I write a trilogy of books about the French peasantry in the post-war period. And I'll combine vignettes, novellae, poems and short stories. And I'll do it all using the tricks of modernist literary prose. Oh, and I'll add an indignant, didactic essay at the start. Sounds... well, it sounds like a godawful idea, but somehow Berger makes it work, and work pretty well. He writes beautifully; he doesn't romanticize the way of life he's trying to describe, but nor does he vilify it; he mixes in humor pretty well; his characters aren't unduly literary. On the down-side, the dialogue is super-stilted. It actually reads like French dialogue translated into English, which is charmless but also, in a weird way, makes it feel more authentic: these are real French peasants who've been translated into English! Anyway, I read this after reading somewhere that it's comparable to McCarthy's Border Trilogy. The first book of this one's better than the first book of that one in a few ways, less impressive in a few others. But I certainly want to read the next two. A solid 3.5 stars, but I'm trying to be sparing with my stars.

[Hulyacln · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Köylü hayatı bütünüyle varkalmaya adanmıştır.'
'Varkalmacı sözcüğünün iki anlamı vardır. Belirli bir sınavı atlatan insanı gösterir. Aynı zamanda, başkaları yok olurken ya da ölürken yaşamaya devam eden birini de gösterir. Ben köylülere ilişkin olarak, sözcüğün bu ikinci anlamını kullanıyorum. Genç ölenler, göç edenler, dilenciliğe düşenlerden farklı olarak, köylüler çalışmayı sürdürdüler.'
.
'Onların Emeklerine' başlığı taşıyan üçlemenin ilk kitabı: Domuz Toprak.
Ne öykü ne roman türüne ait bu eser. Biraz öykü biraz şiir biraz novella ve biraz da deneme.
John Berger kitabın başında şunu diyerek ortaya çıkan eserin çeşitliliğinin kökenini anlatıyor sanki:
'Benim köylüler hakkında yazmam, hem beni onlardan ayırıyor hem de beni onlara yaklaştırıyor. Ne var ki ben, yalnızca bir yazar değilim. Ben aynı zamanda küçük bir çocuğun babasıyım, gerektiği zaman ekmek parası için çalışır iki elim; hikayelerin öznesiyim, konuğum, ev sahibiyim.'
Domuz Toprak köylere-köylülere yapılan bir güzelleme olmadığı gibi köylülerin destanı da değil. Berger'in köyleri mekan bellediği düşünceleri, hikayeleri aslında. Emektar insanlar da var bu sözlerde arkadan işler çeviren insanlar da..
Sanat yazıları ile tanıdığım Berger'i bu sefer farklı bir alan ve konuda okusam da anlatımındaki canlılık, kelimelerin bir resme ait renklermişçesine akması hiç de uzak hissettirmedi yazara.
.
Kapak resmi Jean François Millet'nin Angelus adlı çalışması iken; çeviride Taciser Belge yer alıyor.

[SG · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wat een ontdekking! Tot enkele weken geleden was John Berger voor mij een nobele onbekende, maar met 'Het varken aarde' heeft hij zich onmiddellijk in mijn top 3 aller tijden gekatapulteerd. In een sfeer van warme nostalgie, maar wars van elke vorm van zeemzoeterigheid, vertelt hij verschillende verhalen over de teloorgang van wat ik gemakshalve het boerenleven ga noemen. Hoewel het allemaal korte verhalen zijn, is de samenhang ertussen wat dit boek onvergetelijk maakt. Gaat het om het slachten van een varken, het tevergeefse redden van een koe of de koppigheid van een boer, Berger slaagt erin om de lezer vast te binden met zijn unieke vertelstijl en hem mee te trekken in de kleine dingen des levens. Uiteraard wordt stilstaan tegenwoordig beschouwd als achteruit gaan, maar na het uitlezen van dit pareltje kan ik mezelf er toch niet van weerhouden om licht nostalgisch te worden naar de vervlogen tijd, de verloren kennis en ervaring, die John Berger zo treffend weet te vatten in zijn beeldende taal waar geen woord te veel staat.
Hopelijk verdwijnt dit meesterwerk niet in de plooien van de tijd, maar houden we dergelijke parels levend voor andere, jongere lezers.

[Mateo Toledo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magnífico.Una prosa sencilla, directa, contundente. Inicio de una trilogía!! :-)

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rather than take it in spicks and specks (Bee Gees), I decided to just do one cumulative review of the tritone in the allotted spot of the last book, Lilac and Flag .

Find it…there? No clue how to link anything.

[Declan Leach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Such beautiful stories and poems about peasant life and how that lifestyle is always experienced as an interlude between the fruits of the labor of the previous generation, and the following generation for which you work. So vital and visceral and awesome, I can't wait for the rest of the trilogy.

"In the darkness, which precedes sight or place or name, man and calf waited."

[Анна · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reread this in two days and kicked myself for ever thinking this only merited a mere 4 stars; in hindsight, I know now that such a slighted judgement only could’ve been one obfuscated by the ever-perennial distraction of my material conditions overtaking primacy (a month ago lol).

Berger is by far the best English-language writer I have ever read, paralleled only by Nabokov (whose English works - even if self-translated - nevertheless can’t help but leave behind deposits of the scantest immaterial, uniquely-Russian, essence that makes his genius lost through the process of linguistic interpellation, as all translations do).

Every chapter encapsules a peasant vignette through the waxing and waning cycles of life and death, and every chapter is followed by a short, free-versed poem as intermission.
The resulting accumulative effect is almost as poignant as the prose embedded within it: Pig Earth is more than mere elegy, and more than mere tribute to the now-anachronistic trope of the peasant.

Now I’m too dumb to say what that “more” is, but I can identify a transcendental work when I read one.

This one earns an official *Borat voice*: Very Nice!

[IGNACIO ROMERO · Rating 5 out of 5]

Este libro lo leí bien lento, intentando no irme de escena antes de tiempo. Siempre me corre el apuro de querer leer 60 libros en un año. Pero pude aplazar esta ansiedad y logré disfrutarlo al máximo.
Gracias a esto, Berger logró transferirme el placer, esa realización que el campesino encuentra en su trabajo manual. Ese que la sociedad comúnmente llama analfabeto, aprende todo de la naturaleza, tierra y las estaciones.
Las diferentes historias de este libro, las diferentes voces, me cambiaron tanto que ya no soy el mismo. Por eso las cinco estrellas, aun cuando los poemas me parecieron malísimos.

[Moisés · Rating 5 out of 5]

Non sei por que non lin este libro ata agora. Hai anos que está no estante dos to-read e tiña a seguridade de que me ía gustar moito. E así foi. Un achegamento completo ao mundo campesiño europeo no seu proceso de desaparición (corenta anos despois: queda algo del?). Berger faino con dous ensaios certeiros ("Una explicación" e "Epílogo histórico"), oito poemas e oito relatos. Os contos son o cerne do libro. Cun estilo sobrio consegue transmitir o pensamento, os intereses, as preocupacións e as relacións do campesiñado do rural francés, a través de personaxes que non son simples arquetipos. A repudiada Cocadrille e a súa relación con Jean, cos seus irmáns e cos maquis; Marcel e a súa incomprensión do valor do diñeiro; a relación coa súa vaca da afanosa Martine e do distante Joseph... O que máis me impactou, que gardo xa no caixón dos meus relatos favoritos, é "Una mujer independiente", un texto moi sutil no que á anciá Catherine lle axudan o seu irmán e un veciño a atopar a auga que deixou de manar no prado.
Espero completar este ano a triloxía "De sus fatigas", que toma o nome dun versículo do evanxeo segundo San Xoán que non pode ser máis esclarecedor: "Outros fatigáronse e vós aproveitádesvos das súas fatigas".

[michal k-c · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s all a bit patronizing in its polemics, no? Not to mention that the stories themselves are all grossly overdetermined, but I think the politicking re: peasantry is just a bit misplaced. The locality of the peasant is its primary orientation in political mobilization: the enemy is the local landlord or landowner, the local money-lender, policeman or merchant, not a national ruling class, which on the level of the peasantry is a useless abstraction.
Berger takes on a bit of a “noble savage” in perspective towards the euro peasantry.

[Post Oogle Bohemianism · Rating 5 out of 5]

pretty damn perfect

[Carlos · Rating 4 out of 5]

"-The world has left the earth behind it, said the father.
-And what was on the earth? demanded the son angrily. Half the men here had to emigrate because there wasn't enough to eat! Half the children died before they grew up! Why don't you admit it?"

[belisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

üçlemenin ilk kitabı...
dikkat etmediğim için önce üçlemenin ikinci kitabını okumuş ve çok hoşlanmıştım...
bu kitap da elbette bir Berger olduğu için ortalamanın üstündeydi ancak ikincisi gibi akıp gitmedi
burada konular daha ağır, anlatı daha soyuttu...

bu yüzden ilk kitaptan yani bundan başlamanızı
ve ikinciye kadar yılmadan devam etmenizi tavsiye ediyorum

doğru sırayla okusaydım, bu kitap böyle ağır gelmezdi sanıyorum

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the 1970s the English novelist and art critic John Berger moved to a rural community in the French Alps. Berger wanted to see peasant society firsthad, and to take part in their work as to better understand the challenges they face and the traditions they maintain. While there, he began writing a trilogy called "Into Their Labours" ("Others have laboured and ye are entered into their labours" - John 4:38). PIG EARTH, published in 1979, is the first volume.

While referred to as a novel, it is really a collection of eight short stories and one novella. These share a similar setting but which do not overlap in plot or characters. In between each story Berger has interspersed poems, and at the end of the book he has placed a "Historical Afterword". The short stories here are generally entertaining. Berger in no way romanticizes peasant life. These are not jolly people wearing stainless national costumes and singing about how good life is. Rather, they are draw as people whose lives mix joy and sorrow evenly, and the conditions in which they live--packed in a room with livestock, urinating openly, drinking in abundance, butchering livestock--are straightfowardly presented. While Berger is generally known for his Marxist views, he thankfully injects no inflammatory rhetoric into his fiction. In fact, the one character in the book who calls for communist revolution is an intellectual city boy that the peasants laugh at.

Nonetheless, the novel is in no way flawless. Berger's poetry, free verse reminiscent of Gary Snyder, is unmemorable and could have been left out. The novella which ends the story, "The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol" begins as a story of a dwarf and how her village treats her, but unconvincingly veers off into magical realism. Finaly, his historical afterword, an essay explaining his views on the economy of peasant society, is dull reading after the entertaining stories, and he would have done better to integrate his views better into his fiction.

Nonetheless, if you find peasant societies intriguing--as I do, a linguist who often visits rural areas in Europe for fieldwork--this is a novel worth reading. In spite of my discontent over some portions, I'm going to move ahead to the next volume in the trilogy, ONCE IN EUROPA.

[Teresa]

Inspiration to read: NYTBR 'By the book' interview with Gabrielle Hamilton. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/...

Question: "What books do you find yourself returning to again and again?"
Response: "John Berger’s “Pig Earth” and the rest of the Into Their Labours trilogy. Berger should be mandatory on any food writing class syllabus. When he has a peasant milk a cow, or a villager drink a cup of wine; when a young shepherd holds a fistful of berries, or an old woman boils the soup, you not only get the soup, the wine, the berries and the milk — vividly, tangibly — but in the warm, fullness of the udder, in the blood-colored juice of the berries, in the rough sting of the wine, the weak steam of the soup, you get the poverty; the age; the geography; the politics and the humor; the culture and customs; the mores and ways of the collective village, the individual people and even the damned mountain!"

[Charlotte · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautifully written book about a way of life that was disappearing in the 70s (depicts the life of the peasant in the Savoy France). I wonder if it is gone by now. Much of the life seemed familiar to me from my own childhood growing up in rural South Carolina (although we didn't live on a farm). I don't think this is sentimentalized just clear straightforward writing about people who provide for themselves (and for others)by their own hands. I didn't read the Historical Afterward which he seemed to have modeled after Tolstoy...

There are two other books in a series called Into Their Labours which I plan to read very soon.

John Berger is very old now; I remember his TV series about art from the 70s.

I forgot to say that I have tried to stop buying books, but I have to admit that I'd love to own (and someday re-read) this beautiful book.

[Niki Vervaeke · Rating 4 out of 5]

IK zou dit boek nooit gekocht hebben.
Maar met dank aan de leesclub toch gekocht en gelzen en dit boek is een fascinerend geheel van verhalen en poëzie. Met momenten rauw en heel visueel het plattelandsleven in beeld gebracht.
De verschillende kortverhalen zijn heel goed geschreven en ademen een zekere romantiek en tegelijk ruwheid uit.
Het leven op en van de aarde, de natuur die zich niet laat dwingen, het ongerepte, het meedogenloze.

https://biblioklept.org/2011/01/09/pi...

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

The section "The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol" is some of the most enjoyable reading of the last few years for me. John Berger RIP.

[Gert De Bie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vol mededogen, in een mededeelzame, heldere en anekdotische stijl, schetst John Berger een prachtig portret van het leven in een boerendorp, tijdens het laatste kwart van de 20ste eeuw.

Het varken aarde is het eerste deel van de trilogie 'De vrucht van hun arbeid' waarin John Berger, die in 1974 aan de voet van de Franse Alpen ging wonen, het worstelende, langzaam verdwijnende traditionele boerenleven een gezicht geeft.

Aan de hand van verhalen, gedichten en essays geeft hij een inkijk in een bestaan waarvan hij vreest (getuige zijn slotessay) dat het tegen het begin van de 21ste eeuw helemaal verdwenen zou zijn. Berger vertelt helder, raakt het leven in zijn essentie en weet het - net door franjeloos te vertellen - in al zijn eenvoud de dagdagelijkse grootsheid te geven die het verdient.

De dood van een koe, het slachten van een varken, het standvastig overeind blijven van een vrouw in een mannenwereld: dagdagelijkse voorvallen die Berger aangrijpt om getuige te zijn van het overleversinstinct dat het boerenleven zo uniek maakt.

Straf in zijn eenvoud, raak in zijn helderheid, groots in zijn eerlijkheid en warmte.

[Tina Palmerio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pig Earth by John Berger, 1979: A read that lingers. When I do chores, the story continues to resonate as tasks initiate reflection of the book, the first of a trilogy. My first of John Berger, the writing makes you feel present in the peasant life that takes place in the French Alps. It is the time period when farming transitions to industry, the beginning of the end- hundreds years of heritage. The author is not shy with his descriptive realities, including the slaughter for food. I’ve gained new, humorous insight to stay warm on a cold night without firewood, and dilemmas of the tax collectors. Myself a French Canadian descent, a line from France and farming, I enjoyed a story with French names and references. Very well written, almost like a documentary that leaves you to ponder long after.

[Tineke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deel 1 van de trilogie De vrucht van hun arbeid, in de reeks Kritische klassieken, van Schokland. Berger schreef in de drie boeken over de boeren in de streek waar hij was gaan wonen, aan de voet van de Franse Alpen. Van Berger moet literatuur meer zijn dan entertainment, en inderdaad, in dit boek komen ook poëzie, politiek, filosofie en sociologie aan bod. Een fascinerende schrijver, die ik nu pas heb ontdekt dankzij een cadeautje! Ik ga nu meteen verder met Ways of seeing, en 2024 zou best wel eens een Berger-jaar kunnen worden.

[Frank McGirk · Rating 5 out of 5]

At first, I thought the beginning essay was weak, and I was going to suggest that the person I pass the book on to just skip to the excellent stories. I thought he was going too far in defending the peasant, even their gossipy introspection, but after reading his even-handed stories, I found myself much slower to perhaps over emphasize portions of his beliefs.

Excellent book. There are three or four people I would like to pass it on to, and I haven't had that impulse in a very long time.