Why we read Wendell Berry

From this homestead, Berry writes brilliant poems and quiet novels and challenging essays. The place Berry describes is never romanticized but always deemed worthy of the investment it demands. His literary following may be small, but they are as ruthlessly devoted to him as he is to the hillsides and livestock in his care.

His writing happens in the margins between plowing fields, mending fences, and raking hay above the banks of the Kentucky River. But it isn’t the farm in Kentucky that appeals to his readers as much as the more general way he finds his purpose and fulfillment in that farm. He is famous for rants against industrialized farming and technological take-over.

But readers don’t read Berry to learn more about Kentucky (although more than a few have been known to take up bee keeping or plant a row of cherry tomatoes); they read Berry to learn about how to find a Kentucky of their own.

via Story Chicago