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Flatfoot Vertigo

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Hannah Coulter

by Wendell Berry

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Flatfoot Vertigo said: " I generally love reading Wendell Berry (see my review of Andy Catlett, Early Travels).

My mom's family were Kansas farmers and viewed the world much as Berry's characters do, with the same turns of phrase and the same love of the land and their famil I generally love reading Wendell Berry (see my review of Andy Catlett, Early Travels).

My mom's family were Kansas farmers and viewed the world much as Berry's characters do, with the same turns of phrase and the same love of the land and their families. When I sit down with Hannah Coulter, I return to the safety, peace, and earthly delights as I did visiting my grandparent's farm as a girl.

I had a revelation in the reading of this book, and that surprised me, but it reminded me how very much we take from fiction beyond the pure pleasure of reading. Hannah discusses an epiphany she has, rather in a great rush of realization and feeling, about someone she has resented all her life. She runs into this person many years later when they are in their dotage and she realizes things she had not been able to see in the past - not that these things lessened her valid resentments and hurts, but her view was expanded in a way. And a few minutes after briefly talking with this person she realizes that her resentment has been lifted, and that she is now free.

We hold resentments or repress them, sometimes for a lifetime. I resented the man who abused and molested me for most of my life - and after writing about it, a few weeks after publishing it, I find myself not only free of my resentment, I feel that I have forgiven him without trying, without praying for him. I knew that writing the memoir would be helpful for others, and for my own perspective and healing, but I had no idea that it would cause a sea change in my view of him. I was told by a therapist that I did not have to ever forgive him, and I was relieved by that. I never tried to forgive him - but I did everything I could to be healed. When I read the line about Hannah being free, I realized I was, too.

It's a truism that we are the victims of our resentments - the objects of our resentments suffer much less from it than we do. I've heard it referred to as drinking poison and hoping the other person will die. I just figured I'd always feel a certain way about this man, and I was wrong. Forgiveness has come over me rather by accident, the way it did with Hannah.

I do love reading Berry, but this particular book suffers in my eyes for the fact that much of the narration involves Hannah musing over her life, her relationships with her family and friends, in a sort of philosophical and abstract way that I found prosaic. There wasn't much recounting or description in large sections of the book and Berry's characters' vocabularies are simple - which usually I find evocative but in these long sections I find repetitive and dull.

What I love about this book is what I love about all the Berry books I've read so far, and it's the same thing I love about Willa Cather's My Antonia. The characters rest in their relationship with the land. They care for their farms and work hard. There is a beauty in hard physical work, especially with animals and with gardening. The characters also love the woods, to be there, to know the flora and fauna. There is a wonderful passage where Hannah describes the effect on her of the sound of running water that I share and loved reading:

"One of the happiest moments of my walks is when I get to where I can hear the branch. The water comes down in a hurry, tossing itself this way and that as it tumbles among the broken pieces of old sea bottom. The stream seems to be talking, saying any number of things as it goes along. Sometimes, at a certain distance, it can sound like several people talking and laughing. But you listen and you realize it is talking absolutely to itself." ...more "

Feb 13, 2013 09:14PM · see review