from "Oral History, Wendell Berry, and Memory as Membership (II)"
31 March 2012
I appreciate A World Lost because in it Wendell Berry (perhaps unintentionally) offers insights for the work being done by those of us engaged in Oral History. For a field that relies heavily on memory, always questioning its reliability or its value, there are lessons to be learned in this intricate narrative that weaves the fragmented memories of Port William together. Wendell Berry, through his narrator Andy, examines clearly the limits of coming to the complete truth about the life and death of Uncle Andrew through memory, and the act of remembering. Yet these limits are not meant to crush one’s understanding of the past, but to provide a framework for freely imagining the life, the “membership” as Berry calls it, that lives on in memory.
See Part I of Mr. Sikkema's work HERE.