zbigi wrote: ↑Wed Aug 25, 2021 5:03 am
Interestingly, Czesław Miłosz (one of my favorite writers, and Polish Nobel laureate) has met Wendell Berry and was surprised and disappointed to basically see your standard liberal-arts college professor, in a tweed jacket, playing all the political games (being nice to everyone but esp. to people who matter etc.) and otherwise meeting the stereotype. He was expecting some kind of rebel farmer vibe instead.
Hmm, if you're going to criticize Wendell Berry on this journal, you're going to need to do a better job of it; this strikes me as a rather lazy ad hominem attack that seems to be entirely irrelevant to whether or not Berry's
The Unsettling of America is well reasoned and/or worthy of suggestion. Are you saying that Berry is some sort of a poser? And if so, what does that have to do with the wisdom and reasoning of his essays, and
The Unsettling of America in particular?
TakeTwo wrote: ↑Tue Aug 24, 2021 3:24 pm
I just spent the better part of a few workdays getting through your journal and I just wanted to say thank you for all the inspiration.
I'm flattered, though I could probably think of an infinite number of ways your time could have been better spent!
TakeTwo wrote: ↑Tue Aug 24, 2021 3:24 pm
Also, if you are still looking to add to your long reading list, I'd like to suggest Wendell Berry's
The Unsettling of America. It's a well reasoned philosophical rant that I think you would appreciate.
I'm definitely a fan of Berry and of
The Unsettling of America in particular; his Library of America set of essays in one of my most cherished items in my library. Like the Bible and the Catechism, it's one of those rare books on my bookshelf that I can just randomly flip open and find some real nugget of truth and wisdom.
TakeTwo wrote: ↑Tue Aug 24, 2021 3:24 pm
Although, part way through, when I flipped back to check the copyright, I was a little depressed to see that it was written in 1977. So long and we've learned nothing.
I hear you, but I wonder if his ideas aren't starting to really catch on in certain influential circles. Granted, I tend to limit what I read, see, and hear to folks who are likely to be Berry-esque in their worldview and their criticisms of modern life, at least in some ways. But, I'm reading and hearing a lot more about the importance of "place" now than I used to (and in many unexpected places), as a rejection of the narrative that "success" means abandoning home and family to go work for BigCorp, etc. So perhaps there is hope that Berry will eventually be more fully embraced as a prophet, warning us all of the evils of modern life while offering himself up as a sort of model for an alternative way of living.