Book Review: Wendell Berry and the Given Life

For someone like me, who has read snippets of essays and poems by Wendell Berry over the years and who has known – somewhere deep – that I ought to be reading him more, Ragan Sutterfield’s “Wendell Berry and the Given Life” (Franciscan Media, 2017) is the perfect introduction to the life, thought and work of this 20th and 21st-century icon. The slender volume (150 pages) is a lovingly compiled synthesis of this Kentucky farmer-philosopher’s writing, drawing amply from his poetry, essays and fiction and illustrating Berry’s vision and hope for a more fully moral, ethical and spiritual life.  

Organized around 11 separate but integrated themes (Givenness, Humility, Love, Economics, Work, Sabbath, Stability, Membership, The Body and the Earth, Language, Peaceableness), Sutterfield gently guides the reader through these essential and recurring themes in Berry’s work, ending with the author’s own argument that Berry should, indeed, by considered a prophet in the line of John the Baptist, St. Francis of Assisi, Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King, Jr. Berry’s work certainly falls into this prophetic mode, although the reader is left with no doubt that Berry would eschew such a moniker. But no argument here, and to the list I would add Henry David Thoreau, as Berry seems a natural extension of that naturalist and philosopher. 

In a wonderful but all-too-short afterword, Berry answers a few questions sent to him by Sutterfield via mail (his preferred mode of communication as he does not own a computer), and I was particularly drawn to the penultimate exchange, where Sutterfield poses a question I had been contemplating during the whole of the book. In short, how do we city dwellers reclaim our lives as “creatures” and become more connected to the themes of the book such as the land, community, the idea of a true Sabbath rest, etc.? Berry responds:

“I’m perfectly willing to recommend that people should try to understand their present circumstances and their personal economies, even that they should measure their circumstances and conduct by the standard of good health. But it is impossible to be entirely confident in advising even people you know well about their personal choices. I assume that there are some people in downtown Chicago who ought to stay in downtown Chicago.” So, we are to bloom where we are planted. 

In the end, I was left with a couple of overarching thoughts about this book. The first is that we so desperately need his voice today. The second is that I am way behind on reading Berry, and I am thankful to Sutterfield for the introduction. 

Steve Givens is associate vice chancellor at Washington University in St. Louis and a writer, composer, and spiritual director.