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Wendell Berry’s Yoknapatawpha
That Distant Land:
The Collected Stories
by Wendell Berry
Shoemaker & Hoard, 2004. 440 pages.
I was listening to All Things Considered one afternoon in 1983 -- half listening, half napping, really -- when a writer was introduced and began reading from a novel he had written. The scene was a bedroom in a farmhouse in rural Port William, Kentucky. An old man from the community is visiting a young woman who is recovering from giving birth, and he sits near her holding a small sack of candies he has brought as a gift -- a gift, the more he thinks about it, he fears is thoroughly inappropriate. But his real gift is simply his presence. It is a gift the young woman perceives and appreciates. The old man’s generosity is not lost on her. The writer was Wendell Berry, and the book his revision of his novel A Place on Earth, originally published in 1967. A few hours after hearing Berry I was back home from a trip to the bookstore, novel in hand, reading Berry’s words. I have not stopped reading him yet.
Port William has been called Wendell Berry’s Yoknapatawpha. It is a place rich in character and characters, people with whom the reader laughs and grieves and loves. It is a place well worth visiting, and Berry has given readers ample opportunity; Port William is the locale of twenty-three short stories and six novels written and published since 1960. Most of the stories have previously appeared in small collections, some in obscure limited editions. The present volume brings all of these tales together in one place for the first time. Placed side-by-side with the novels, That Distant Land offers Berry’s comprehensive vision of rural America in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This is a collected works that cannot be ignored by anyone seeking a complete understanding of contemporary American literature.
In That Distant Land Berry arranges the stories in chronological order of their occurrence in the life of Port William, rather than in order of writing and publication. The book’s endpapers provide both a map of the region and family trees of the key families featured in the novels and stories, making this publication an even more essential resource for Berry enthusiasts. The table of contents includes, for additional chronological reference, the Port William novels -- and it will please readers to see listed a novel entitled Hannah Coulter, covering the years 1922-2000, which, I hope, we can expect to lay our hands upon sometime in the next few years.
I have found that reading Wendell Berry is habit-forming; the feel of the people and places he describes effortlessly embed themselves in one’s consciousness. As evocations of a “bygone time,” Berry’s stories transcend nostalgia by virtue of the sheer ferocity with which his characters encounter one another and the land that supports them, and with which they attempt to be a responsible community despite the sorts of foibles, flaws, violence, and other imperfections that mark every family and community that has ever claimed the name.
While That Distant Land is arranged according to the chronology of Port William, I will offer here, in order of publication, a listing with short summaries of all of Berry’s fiction to this point. Readers new to Berry’s world can feel confident starting just about anywhere, but That Distant Land provides a framework for the entire body of work. Titles preceded by an asterisk (*) contain stories that are collected in That Distant Land.
Nathan Coulter (1960; revised 1985). Port William is introduced through the eyes of Nathan Coulter, who tells the story of his boyhood, family, and making his own start as a farmer.
A Place on Earth (1967; revised 1983). The community of Port William suffers losses and gains in the latter days of the Second World War. A Place on Earth is populated by a long list of memorable characters -- Mat and Margaret Feltner, Burley Coulter, Jayber Crow, Jack Beechum -- but it is Virgil Feltner, missing in action in Europe, around whom so much of this beautiful novel revolves.
“The Bringer of Water,” in Farming: A Hand Book (1970). This short play in verse, included in a collection of Berry’s poetry, is a sort of coda to A Place on Earth, resolving loose strands caused by the death of Virgil Feltner. “The Bringer of Water” is emotionally moving and engaging while at the same time articulating Berry’s agricultural and communal visions. Like much of Berry’s work, it lends itself to being read aloud. Although this piece is not of the story genre, inclusion in That Distant Land would have made the Port William chronology a tad more complete. It is in “The Bringer of Water” that Virgil’s young widow, Hannah, agrees to marry Nathan Coulter, joining two of Port William’s key families. One can hope that this part of the story will be carried through in Berry’s forthcoming Hannah Coulter.
The Memory of Old Jack (1974; revised 1999). At the age of ninety-two, Jack Beechum looks back at is life. A farmer who has lived respectfully on his land, a good neighbor, a man who has loved without shirking love’s consequences, Jack’s reminiscence offers a full slice of American life from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century.
*The Wild Birds: Six Stories of the Port William Membership (1986). The stories in The Wild Birds introduce a few new characters and offer new looks at the lives of several we already know. We see Elton Penn begin to come into his own as the new owner of the late Jack Beechum’s farm; Mat Feltner approaches death with serenity; and the never-married Burley Coulter legally acknowledges his son, setting things right that must be set right.
Remembering (1988). This short novel takes on the need for faith in one’s place and the power of remembering in the project of redemption. In San Francisco, Andy Catlett, physically damaged as the result of a farm accident back home in Port William, struggles to regain his connections to his place and his origins.
*The Discovery of Kentucky (1991; limited edition, out of print). Narrated by Jayber Crow, this comic gem relates the tale of a group of Port William’s own rude mechanicals who stage the discovery of Kentucky on a float in the governor’s inaugural parade. Liquor and cantankerous personalities are among the factors that make the Port William contingent a surprise, and surprised, hit of the parade.
*Fidelity: Five Stories (1992). Violent family history, the welcoming of new members to the community, and life-prolonging medical technologies are among the issues and themes of this collection. The key question in two of these stories is “Are you all right?” -- in one case spoken softly to a woman who has been taken ill, in the other shouted across floodwaters to stranded neighbors -- making clear the powerful vision of community that pervades Wendell Berry’s work.
*Watch with Me And Six Other Stories of the Yet-Remembered Ptolemy Proudfoot and His Wife, Miss Minnie, Née Quinch (1994). Berry introduces Tol Proudfoot, a passionate farmer in whose life pleasure and exuberance are plentiful. “Watch with Me,” nearly a novella in length, is a rich odyssey of neighborliness among the eccentrics who populate Tol’s corner of the world.
A World Lost (1996). The murder of Andy Catlett’s uncle, when Andy was nine years old, raises questions that Andy carries into his adult years. His investigation into his uncle’s life and death many years later becomes an exploration of the nature of fact and truth and the meanings of memory and grief.
*Two More Stories of the Port William Membership (1997). The first of these stories, “A Friend of Mine,” is a moving elegy to Elton Penn, first introduced by Berry as a young farmer in A Place on Earth. On a comic note, elderly Wheeler Catlett takes Danny Branch for a wild ride on a Kentucky interstate in “The Inheritors,” giving Danny a view of life as only Wheeler can.
Jayber Crow: The Life Story of Jayber Crow, Barber, of the Port William Membership, as Written by Himself (2000). Port William’s bachelor barber tells the story of his life, which, while ordinary enough on its surface, is remarkable at its depth. Read a review of Jayber Crow by clicking here.
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