Art of the Commonplace, The: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry [Paperback]

For me the central theme of this book can be illustrated in this quote. " I don't think it is appreciated how much of an outdoor book the Bible is." Berry is a deeply religious man who lives his religion every moment in his deep, deep connections to the land, to all animals, to community,to the growing of food, and to the world as an organic entity.

As wonderful as it is to have Poet Laureates, I wish we also had Philosopher Laureates and that Wendell Berry had that forum. His thoughts are important for the national consciousness.

"The other kind of freedom is the freedom to take care of ourselves and of each other. The freedom of affluence opposes and contradicts the freedom of community life."

Berry advocates watching government closely, nationally but particularly locally. When it comes time to protest, he calls for facts and good arguments, not just slogans and buttons.
"I would rather go before the governement with two people who have a competent understanding of an issue, and who therefore deserve a hearing, than with two thousand who are vaguely dissatisfied."

These essays span several decades but the ideas are more relevant today than when they were written. The trends and programs, such as GATT and the loss of topsoil and the rise of megafarms, are as bad as he feared but time has proven them even more destructive.

"Restraint - for us, now - above all:the ability to accept and live within limits; to resist changes that are merely novel or fashionable; to resist greed and pride; to resist the temptation to 'solve' problems by ignoring them, accepting them as 'tradeoffs', or bequesthing them to posterity. A good solution, then, must be in harmony with good character, cultural value, and moral law."

Sometimes, during and after reading a particular book, I feel as though I could not have read anything more appropriate at that time.

The book blows me away with its depth, its insight, or the amazing questions it raises.

The Art of the Commonplace is one of those books, and it may be the best introduction to Wendell Berry a reader can ask for. As a collection of essays over more than twenty years, it covers a wide range of social issues-such as agriculture and the environment, family and marriage, consumerism, and globalism-which is amazing given that all of them relate to agrarian topics.

Berry poses questions that most of us never consider, and I believe that is the main reason Berry is one of the most desperately needed Christian writers in today's America.

If I had to recommend one single book to inform the solutions to the problems of the 21st century, it would be The Art of the Commonplace by Wendell Berry.

Among the many great manifestos and other eye-opening books I have read, from The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals to Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should Be Good, Clean, And Fair to Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman to Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy to The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World (Vintage), I find all of them enriched by Berry's fundamental insights into the essence what what being human means, including the bits that, in the late 20th century/early 21st century, our modern society has attempted to ignore, diminish, or outright suppress. Berry's own unique experiences, and his poetic as well as prophetic ways of speaking bring us back to the garden, in both a literal and a religious sense. It is a return long overdue.

Michael Pollan was the first person to recommend Wendell Berry's writings to me, and my only regret is that I waited four years to actually act on his recommendation. Not to take anything away from Pollan, but the most astonishing aspects I read in The Omnivore's Dilemma were all perfectly predicted--in detail--by essays contained in this book written back in 1977. (And to his credit, Pollan gives the credit to Berry.) But Berry does far more than to expose the health risks of industrial agriculture, or its destruction of our environment, or its ruin of the rural economy; he speaks about community and, when there is no other way around it, communion. His honesty is as surprising as it is refreshing.

The human race will be greatly challenged by the consequences of global warming, population growth, and the exhaustion of natural resources we have depended upon as if they were infinite and ours to control. Berry argues, and he has convinced me, that until we understand and fulfill our obligations to each other, we are doomed to destroy our selves. His alternative vision to monotonic (and hence obviously unsustainable) growth is timely, compelling, and most importantly, sensible.

A word about the title: when I first saw it, I figured it was a kind of how-to guide on understanding and maintaining communities and the commons. But it is a lot more than that. As I finished it, I realized that Berry was speaking as well to the art that springs *from* the commonplace. It is the generative power of a field well tended that creates such art that it is called human. This book made me realize, as Ulysses once did, that we are not only creators but also extraordinary creations, and we must honor that which creates us--the commons.