Blog Watch: Reading "Jayber Crow"

Jayber Crow could hardly be called the story of Jayber Crow, or a story at all for that matter. Though it appears to be an auto-biographical reflection of Jayber Crow, it is a more of a literary documentary of Port William, Kentucky. If it is true that Tolkien was a philologist who created The Lord of the Rings just to give a stage to let his languages perform, Jayber Crow was created for Berry’s love of Port William.  It should come as no surprise that Wendell Berry does not live in Williamsburg, ride a fixed gear bike and blog about the pros/cons of the new iPhone OS. Wendell Berry is a tobacco farmer living in rural Kentucky who happens to write quite a bit. Having read a sampling of his non-fiction, I could not help but get a little uncomfortable with just how much Wendell Berry resembles Jayber Crow. My initial reaction to this similarity was to label this novel with the unforgivable sin of “preachy, pedantic or even mawkish”.

via revjohnames.blogspot.com