My favorite book, Part 32

For years, Wendell Berry has been one of my favorite writers. He is versatile, penning poems, essays, nonfiction, short stories, and novels. I like all of it. But perhaps my favorite of his works is Watch With Me: and Six Other Stories of the Yet-Remembered Ptolemy Proudfoot and His Wife, Miss Minnie, Née Quinch.

The stories are set in Berry’s fictional community of Port William, Kentucky. He has written several novels and lots of short stories about the place and its people, set from just after the Civil War till now, and their relationships to one another and the land.

Watch With Me: and Six Other Stories of the Yet-Remembered Ptolemy Proudfoot and His Wife, Miss Minnie, Née Quinch, stars Ptolemy “Tol” Proudfoot and Miss Minnie, who, later in life than is usual, become husband and wife. They are an unlikely pair—he an oversized and disheveled farmer whose slow and easy ways fool people into believing he is a bit dim upstairs, while she is a diminutive, prim and proper schoolmarm who is sharp as a tack. As their relationship develops over—roughly—the first half of the twentieth century, they learn to accommodate and appreciate one another’s ways and make a happy marriage.

Much of what the book recounts about Tol and Miss Minnie is humorous—some of it laugh-out-loud funny. There’s an incident in a country store featuring Tol and a basket of eggs that is one of the most amusing stories I have ever read or heard. In true Wendell Berry fashion, the book presents country folk as complex, layered characters rather than the hicks and bumpkins we so often see.

Wendell Berry’s writing has earned him the distinction of numerous literary prizes and honors, including receipt of the National Humanities Medal in 2010 and the Life Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle in 2016. In addition to a busy writing life, Berry practiced the old ways of agriculture he often writes about, farming with mule teams and raising crops on land where he and his wife still live. His way of writing is likewise old-fashioned—every one of the millions of his published words was written in longhand on paper with a pencil. You would be hard-pressed to find any author who has done more or better with the benefit of all the modern conveniences.

If you don’t know Wendell Berry, it’s time you met. Watch With Me: and Six Other Stories of the Yet-Remembered Ptolemy Proudfoot and His Wife, Miss Minnie, Née Quinch would make a fine introduction.

Anticipation.

Having something to look forward to makes life more interesting. At least I have always thought so. It can be something big or small, important or trivial, consequential or just for fun. But having something, anything, on the horizon helps spur us on in the direction of life.

At this writing, I have three new books on the shelf next to my bed that I cannot wait to get to. As soon as I finish the book I am enjoying now, I will open one of them—and I cannot decide which will come first. The books bear little resemblance to one another, but each is written by a writer I admire.

There’s The King of Taos by Max Evans. If it’s anywhere near as good as his Hi-Lo Country or The Rounders, it will be well worth the wait. I once had the privilege of having lunch with Ol’ Max Evans and a few other writers. He said something I will never forget; in fact, I used the line as the basis for a poem. He was telling us a story—something, he said, that happened a long time ago. He paused, then said, “Hell, when you get to be my age, everything was a long time ago.”

My friend Marc Cameron has a new novel, Stone Cross, featuring Arliss Cutter, a Deputy US Marshal stationed in Alaska—an assignment Marc knows all about, and his Arliss Cutter novels demonstrate that. Marc also knows about writing, and his political espionage thrillers featuring Jericho Quinn can keep you up nights.

Finally (for now), I have a new collection of short stories by Wendell Berry, Stand By Me. I have read many, probably most, of the stories elsewhere, but Berry is such a remarkable writer I can’t wait to read them again.

But I will have to wait.

I will wait shivering with anticipation.

My Favorite Book, Part 22.

Wendell Berry is, and always has been, more committed to doing things right than in doing them quickly, or efficiently. If he is still farming in Kentucky at his advanced age, he will be farming with horses, as he has done throughout his life.

And when he writes, he writes in longhand, with a pencil.

He writes poetry. He writes insightful and challenging essays. And he writes fiction. All of it is worth reading. Not quickly, but attentively, and thoughtfully.

Most of his fiction is about a made-up, but true, place called Port William, Kentucky. It is a farming community; a close-knit agglomeration of people, all with stories worth hearing. As much as his novels and stories are about people, they are about place, and how people and places are connected, and how those connections make our lives, and create the communities and world we live in.

A Place on Earth is but one of many novels about Port William, this one set during World War Two. In its pages, you meet—more than meet, become acquainted with—many of the families and individuals of Port William of that day; families and people whose pasts and futures populate other Port William novels.

There is one passage in A Place on Earth that seems to me to speak of the curious times we are living in today: “The life of the house will change, accommodate itself to the needs of the new life, and then in a few days the new will be learned, what once was unexpected will become a habit—and they will go on as before.”

My Favorite Book, Part 17

You’ll have to excuse me. I am not going to tell you about one of my favorite books this time. Instead, it’s an entire library of good reading from one of the finest writers of our (or any) time.

Wendell Berry loves the land. For years, he farmed the old-fashioned way in Kentucky, with horses and hand tools and husbandry that is about as far removed from modern “agribusiness” as you can get. He’s an outstanding poet, but we’ll leave that for another time. He writes some of the most incisive essays and social commentary you’ll ever read, but we’ll leave that for another time, as well.

His novels and stories of what he calls the “Port William Membership” are more than worth reading. Every one of them, and there are at least a dozen of them (I don’t have an exact count, because some of the novels stand alone but are also included in short novel collections), is worth reading.

Port William is a fictional small town in Kentucky, surrounded by land farmed through generations by the Catletts, Coulters, Penns, Feltners, and others. They are deceptively deep, touching, realistic stories of people and land, loves and friendships, work and play. Sometimes tragic, sometimes humorous, and always beautiful, Berry’s stories can make you wonder why we let the world change the way it has.

Read Wendell Berry. He writes every word of every book with pencil and paper—handcrafted prose in every sense of the word.