Having written favorably on Wendell Berry, and having edited a collection of essays on his work, I would like to respond to Matt Franck’s critique of Berry’s Jefferson Lecture.
I share Matt’s disappointment with the lecture. I found it to be uncharacteristically long, at times redundant, and overall unbalanced in its treatment of corporations.
Berry’s listeners heard the angry Wendell Berry, defending the things he loves that have been lost, or are in danger of being lost. But like the speech of the angry and wounded Andy Catlett to an agricultural conference in Berry’s novel Remembering, this was not Berry’s finest moment.
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