Tag: Wendell Berry
Working the Soil in American Literature: A Review of Ethan Mannon’s...
Do we love the soil and the creatures put in our stead, or do we prefer the images our devices project at us? While the choice is not always so cut and dry, Mannon’s book can help us begin to retool our imaginations and ennoble common labor again.
Every Day Do Something that Won’t Compute
How has your intellectual practice prepared you not just for success but also for failure?
Bjartur and Berry: Contrasting Visions of Community and Affection
Seen through his most redemptive lens, Bjartur stands as a cautionary tale for those who would pursue independence as an end in itself.
Working for the Life Beyond Words
In his brief and not altogether satisfying rejoinder to the question, “why write?” Berry says, “To serve that triumph I have done all the rest,” and he ends the poem there. “That triumph” is the triumph of the way of love, the life of silence.
Thinking About Wendell Berry’s Leftist Lament (and More)
Wendell Berry’s sprawling, uneven, brilliant, and sometimes frustrating The Need to Be Whole: Patriotism and the History of Prejudice will likely not, I think,...
The Long Row
So to all my friends in this haven, this meeting place, this village green—you lovers of federalism, distributism, neighbors, neighborhoods, regional accents, little platoons, and forty acres and a mule—happy anniversary.
Walk Boldly, Darlin’ Clementine
Walk boldly. Whistle not, but do keep walking. Keep walking right on by it and let the dead bury the dead.
It Started with a Dis…
The Empire did not fall the day Front Porch Republic rose. But in 15 years FPR has done much more than simply add weight to the human scale. It has revivified the most humane and practical traditions in American social, cultural, economic, and political life and thought.
FPR at 15: Friendship on the Porch
Friendship is, in fact, a vital key to any flourishing political order, for friendship is rooted in affection and a commitment to the good of the friend, which translates in the aggregate to a commitment to the common good. And friendship is necessarily local.
Why We Don’t Believe in Free Will
A quarter of a century ago, Wendell Berry wrote, “the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.” That division has come, and all must choose on which side of the divide to stand.