Jayber Crow review

I can't figure a way to put a second review into Goodreads, so this is just a stand alone, new review.

I read it back in 2013, first, and now again in March 2020.

I just finished reading this out loud to my wife, over the last several months.  I read the last bit to the whole family.

This book was all the rage a few years ago, and Wendell Berry has something of a cult following, especially in the south, I think.  In a word, his view is agrarian.

I had read Jayber myself maybe 5 years ago, but reading it out loud this time, it really fell flat.  Berry has a very moralistic message.  If you agree with it, you’re a fan; if not, it’s a turn-off.  He’s very ideological, though it’s all couched in a romantically wistful, comic, and personable style. 

Berry absolutely rejects the modernization of our world.  (At times he’ll try to qualify this, but in more sincere moments, his absolutism comes out.)  Nature is his ideal, his paradise.  A geographical place should shape a person, more than the person shapes the place, in his view.  There is something to this, and it raises a real question.  Does the dominion mandate call for us to radically restructure the natural landscape to allow for highways, railways, etc., or is it a call for each individual to till his own soil, under his own vine and fig tree?

Berry’s view calls to mind yard signs I’ve seen, driving through small towns, that scream, “NO to the pipeline,” “NO to the freeway.”

At the end of the book, the main character lies in paradise and awakens with a spiderweb attached to him.  He speaks to it reverently.  His main female interest, meanwhile, lies in a hospital dying, with needles and IV’s attached to her.  He describes it disdainfully.  The contrast is clear.

So my wife and I found ourselves turned off by the overt message.  As moderns living in a modern world, we may find ourselves wishing for a less artificial world, but we don’t realize all that entails. 

I remain unsure which way to go, in his diatribe against debt, and the business model behind it.  Should we use debt to leverage assets otherwise unused?  When is debt misused?  It seems to me there is a tipping point, like when an acceptable interest rate becomes price gouging usury.  If you mortgage the whole family farm, it’s usurious, but a modest use of debt for business enterprise may be advantageous to all.

You may enjoy the fictional biography and comedy.  But think through his earnest message before adopting it, whole hog.