January 1st, 2010 
admin 
- ISBN13: 9780871568779
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Berry’s assessment of modern agriculture and its relationship to American culture–our health, economy, personal relationships, morals, and spiritual values–is more timely than ever. This new edition of Berry’s work presents a a classic testament to the value of the American family farm.Amazon.com Review
The mid-20th-century environmental crisis that led to important protective legislation in the 1970s, is, to poet/farmer Wendell Berry’s mind, also a cr… More >>
Posted in
I had to read this in high school. It is a dangerously seductive piece of propaganda that persuasively hits all the “right notes,” especially for anyone with a muddle-headed agenda that exists in defiance of common sense. When looked at rationally, it is probably the single most evil, hate-filled piece of writing I have ever encountered. It could only have been written from one of two perspectives. Either the author has absolutely no understanding of the realities that make human life possible, or else he has a profound and deep-seated loathing of civilization. I am not exaggerating when I state my feeling that, if there is ever another truly dangerous ideology that, like Nazism, will be embraced by the weak-minded and easily misled, a book like this could very easily be their bible. In it, they will find all of the misguided ammunition they need to justify destroying everything of value and beauty in the human world.
Rating: 1 / 5
I suppose I should take comfort in that there are only nine reviews of this book so far, even if nearly all of them are wildly positive. It means Berry’s influence remains minimal both here and abroad.
Years ago, I found an old edition of this book at a yard sale. Back then I was much more to the left politically than I was now, so I read it and agreed with many of its points. Still, there were things that stuck in my throat. Such as Berry’s insistence that time-saving devices like washers and dryers had taken all the meaning and honest labor out of housework — can’t remember exactly how he worded it, but that was it in a nutshell: modern women had been cheated out of a kind of primal experience. (I wonder if Berry himself has ever had to pound clothes with rocks on a riverbank, or if he makes the little wifey do that.)
Also, from what I recall, he seemed to be insisting that “outside of nature” — that is, in the cities and suburbs — one could not get back in touch with one’s humanity, or creation, or ghod, or whatever. As a child of the suburbs who has always preferred to live in urban areas, this struck me as narrow-minded, just like when fundamentalist preachers insist that *their* sect is your only path to salvation.
Of course, this isn’t inconsistent with the devolution of environmentalism in recent years. It used to be about “preserving the trust” for future human generations — i.e., stewardship. Now it seems to be about *worshipping* nature as a force in and of itself, in the form of “Mother Earth,” “the Goddess,” “Gaia,” or various other anthropomorphisms for what is essentially a big chunk of rock with some greenery on it…and, conversely, demonizing humanity as “a disease on the Earth’s skin,” as Nietzsche did.
This new incarnation of environmentalism has some very disturbing allies: the more radical, virulently anti-male branches of feminism; Earth First!, the Earth Liberation Front, and other terrorist groups who don’t scruple to harm their fellow human beings or destroy their property in the name of “the earth”; the profoundly misanthropic animal-rights subculture, which would rather see all their grandmothers die of cancer (as mine did) than one lab rat perish; and various individuals unaffiliated with but sympathetic to these causes. Such as the morons I encountered this summer at a yard sale who were raising money for their pet dog’s chemotherapy…and who said in all seriousness, “We need a good plague to get rid of about a third of the people on this planet.”
But back to Berry. Other words and deeds of his I’ve noted over the years:
– In a _Harper’s_ feature entitled, “She comes to you for an abortion. What do you say?”, various political figures and social commentators gave their opinions. I was struck that even Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan’s one-time speechwriter and certainly not a liberal, wrote a piece in the second person, addressing the young woman with respect and empathy. So, by the way, did the representative of Feminists for Life.
Berry, however, didn’t even seem to grasp that he was asked to write something TO an unhappily pregnant woman. He instead produced a numbered list of reasons that he opposes abortion, each in the tone of a pulpit preacher denouncing adultery. I was, shall we say, less than comforted when he concluded with, “I could see how some women might get abortions, just as I could see how I might commit murder. All in all, I don’t think abortion is a topic to get self-righteous about.” Gee, thanks for clearing that up, Wend.
- Berry was once quoted in the _Boston Globe Magazine_ that he disapproved of motorboats. Fine, that’s his right; but he claimed that the owner of a motorboat is merely fulfilling the needs of the corporation who made the boat, not his own. Fortunately, Felicia Ackerman, a long-standing activist with the Rhode Island Civil Liberties Union, wrote in to tear Berry a new one: Maybe the boat owner IS fulfilling his needs, because he LIKES driving the damned thing! Given how popular motorboats have become, she just might be right, even if an arrogant technophobe like Berry would never choose to buy one.
- Finally, there is Berry’s practice of never using a computer, or even a typewriter, but always writing his stories, essays, etc. out long-hand, then having someone else type it up. I suppose this greatly endears him to the ’60s relics who stayed on the commune long after everyone else grew up and went home. To me, it smacks of Luddite pretension — and hypocrisy. *Someone* is going to have to type up that manuscript, so he’s not minimizing the net use of technology all that much.
Not to mention that the secretary or typesetter — and I’ve been both — is going to have to put a lot more work into the job than would have been true had Berry had the freakin’ basic consideration to type it up himself and save it to a floppy or CD-ROM. Ask anyone, like myself, who’s ever been paid piss-poor wages to transcribe up the hideous scrawls of doctors, lawyers, and others who felt that learning even to hunt and peck was “beneath” them.
Berry, and cohorts of his like Bill “Enough” McKibben, are the left-wing equivalents of William Bennett: they gratify their bottomless self-righteousness and desire to control others, comfort the ranks of Nature Nazis out there who wish for apocalyptic plagues and the razing of cities on a grand scale; impress the hordes of college students addled by Luddite ideology; and earn buttloads of money…by deploring the way most Americans prefer to live, work, and enjoy themselves. Too bad so many people with enough sense to ignore Bennett fall for this tripe.
Rating: 1 / 5
This book has many great ideas but unfortunately I found the presentation very boring/tedious. Much of the book is in reply to articles written by others and things said by others, which reads like something off an internet mailing list or newsgroup. This format is okay for a short email message but is not good for something as lengthy as a book, IMO.
I would still recommend this book to friends.. it introduces many ideas that challenge the traditional “corporate farm” which need to be heard.
Rating: 4 / 5
About 50 percent of the time I found myself agreeing with Wendell Berry. The other 50 percent I was convinced this man was completely off his rocker. Berry takes into consideration various sources of information to make his point that farms, that is farms that don’t use modern technology in terms of machinery, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, etc. are good.
Berry’s got a hard-on for farming. Any other way of life is somehow pitiful in his estimation. It’s a romantic idea, but it’s not realistic. Old fashioned farming is nice, but it’s not the end all be all. It’s not the pinnacle of human existence. I get the feeling that Berry has a nostalgic love for farming based on boyhood memories and wants that old farming way of life to continue. He wants us to go back to the way things used to be. The problem with this line of thinking is where does one stop in this trip back through time. Farming after all is not natural. Human beings started out as hunter gatherers and farming itself, no matter how practical we may see it, does go against nature.
Berry weighs in on anything and everything from birth control to suicide and seems to genuinely believe that all of it would be unnecessary if people just stopped using those dang tractors. Some of the examples that he calls upon are bizarre. Shakespeare’s King Lear is used to promote a simple agrarian lifestyle. Thomas Jefferson is held up as an example of a man who did not use machines on his farm, conveniently left out is the fact that the man did use people (the slaves he owned) as machines on it. When writing in favor of the use of draft horses on the modern farm, Berry quotes extensively from a publication called the Draft Horse Quarterly, who judging by the title of their publication might have a vested interest in the whole draft horse as farm workers thing. I would have appreciated a quote or two from a less partial source.
Berry holds up the Amish as a human ideal, but it’s hard to see people who are opposed to anything beyond an eighth grade education as ideal. In one section Berry comes up with a list of 8 falsehoods promoted by love songs which he feels lead people unwittingly into marriage. I have a hard time conceiving of anyone who takes a love song as proved fact. Perhaps his undereducated friends in the Amish community, although from what I understand they do not listen to this sort of music.
Despite all my complaining, I do agree with a lot of the things Berry says. Organic farming is very important. Factory farming is a nightmare that could lead to huge problems down the road. Still, I don’t know that one has to shun all technology to have a sustainable organic farm. Then again, I don’t really have any romantic notions about farms. If it worked out to be healthier for us to grow all our food in greenhouses that were staffed by a bunch of robots, well then I would have no problem accepting that.
Berry, on the other hand, is writing about a bygone way of life that he longs to bring back, and he tries to use everything from suicide rates to the environment to make it clear why we should do so.
Rating: 3 / 5
This book changed my life for the better. It reminded me of how I felt when I was 17 years old, when I had a sense of all the waste around me, but couldn’t put my finger on the reason.
As a teacher, I will begin to learn more about these issues of farming, distribution and big industry, and incorporate them into my lesson plans.
I’m also seriously considering buying a small farm.
Read the book, see for your self.
Rating: 5 / 5