Thursday, April 10, 2008

"You can't figure out the bag l'm in"

Rod Dreher and I had a rare exchange in the combox over here. I commented on someone else's reporting that Wendell Berry was kind of a globetrotter before he became a staunch localista. My original comment was this:

It's funny that Wendell Berry lived all over the world and writes romantically about people who live in one place their whole life. Not right, not wrong, not good, not evil, not "hypocritical" -- whatever that means... just FUNNY. I hope he makes millions of dollars selling his books and farm produce and has a very happy life. To me he's a very funny guy.

To which Rod responded:

Pauli, I don't think that's fair to Berry. He did live elsewhere as a young man, but chose to move back to his family home in rural Kentucky and take up farming and writing. He could have had a great career had he chosen to stay in New York or in some academic center -- but he had the conviction that he should return home. Why is that wrong? It's an overblown analogy, I concede, but isn't this the same logic that would damn the repentant sinner for urging people to choose to follow Christ, on the grounds that he had his fun, and has no grounds on which to deny the same experience to others?

Anyway, I'd be real surprised if Berry was getting rich off his books, or doing much more than breaking even, if that. The overwhelming majority of books published today lose money.

For what it's worth, Rod Dreher is a much better writer than Wendell Berry. But this was my response to his comment in multi-part format with his remarks in Italics:

Pauli, I don't think that's fair to Berry. He did live elsewhere as a young man, but chose to move back to his family home in rural Kentucky and take up farming and writing.

And there was nothing wrong with what he chose to do.

He could have had a great career had he chosen to stay in New York or in some academic center -- but he had the conviction that he should return home.

Well, it sounds to me like does have a great career. And insofar as he followed his own personal conviction, great.

Why is that wrong?

Re-read my post. I specifically stated that it's not wrong, whatever he did or does.

It's an overblown analogy, I concede, but isn't this the same logic that would damn the repentant sinner for urging people to choose to follow Christ, on the grounds that he had his fun, and has no grounds on which to deny the same experience to others?

It's an overblown analogy because living a bunch of places and then moving back home isn't repenting simply because you haven't sinned to begin with.

Anyway, I'd be real surprised if Berry was getting rich off his books, or doing much more than breaking even, if that. The overwhelming majority of books published today lose money.

OK — my overblown remark was talking about making millions of dollars. My bad. What I mean is that Wendell Berry should live and be well and ride horses and roll his own smokes and have a kick-ass farm. That is his choice.

Judging from what I've read, his material is chock full of over-the-top condemnation of people's lifestyle choices and a tendency to manufacture pharisaical moral dilemmas in a kind of pre-Christian cult of blood and soil. So my main point is still that it is funny to me that he went Bilbo-like off on adventures elsewhere and returned home enlightened. He should certainly suffer all others to choose the same path, or those equally licit.

I then apologized for saying "cult of blood and soil" because of the connotations. But if you want to talk about overblown analogies, the "bloom where you're planted" is a good place to start. Everyone know what it means generally, but the fact remains that people aren't plants. We are made to move around. Some people don't have a family farm to move back to and others are called to serve their fellowman elsewhere.

Well, anyway, this explains it all:

5 comments:

  1. I'm with you on Wendell Berry. I'm not so sure he would have had a great career, had he decided to remain in the big city. It seems to me that the biggest reason for his "renown", such as it is, is that he looks so good playing the gentleman farmer.

    Of course, there is also the whole problem of farming tobacco which is not only a noxious substance but a product of the most regulated (a crony system in fact) of all agriculture in the US. And that's saying something.

    I also agree that Dreher is a better writer.

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  2. My main point about Berry is that I don't care about his lifestyle, at least not the good and morally neutral aspects of it, but he cares greatly about the lifestyles of other people. He has extra rules in his moral canon.

    You and I see that farming is a business as corrupt as any other and as good as any other, but the crunchy types think of it in different terms. Farmers are kind of a noble breed beyond criticism.

    Re: Rod's writing: A smart thing he has done is to position himself alongside the 3rd way quixotic nutzoids. They make him look as clear-thinking as Jonah Goldberg by comparison.

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  3. Isn't that because he *is* a 3rd-way quixotic nutzoid?

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  4. rather than a nutzoid, how about just a malignant narcissist, diane.

    love this weekends posts about his wife being diagnosed with stress-induced illnness and her wishing out loud he would stop his blog -- and then dreher *continues blogging* over the weekend about obama and somesuch. naturally dreher blames modernity for his wife's illness instead of taking his part of the blame. if one defines modernity as having a narcissistic husband then i guess yeah, one could blame it on modernity. if he were my husband his ass would have been well and truly kicked by now.

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  5. I just got back from a trip to PA and read that Hitting the Wall post. My first thought? A fat lot of good the HIPAA privacy laws do if your spouse blogs about your health conditions.

    At some point this living out loud on blogs has got to stop. People who do it are going to regret it someday. My dad and I were just talking about how no one even knew FDR had polio. Now we've swung to the other extreme and we know every detail about some obscure blogger's life, if they are on sleeping pills, if they have diabetes, etc. merely because the blogger thinks everyone needs to know it.

    I advise everyone to use email for personal things. If you want me to pray for you, I will, but send me a private email.

    Don't blog your personal life! If you do, don't wonder why everyone is laughing at you. If you feel the need to tell the world how many hours you worked last week or the consistency of your last bowel movement, methinks you have a worse problem than constipation or diarrhea.

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