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Book Review
| Wendell Berry and the Agrarian Tradition: A Common Grace. By Kimberly A. Smith. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press. 2003. x + 270 pp. Notes, bibliography, index. Cloth $34.95.
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| The farmer and poet Wendell Berry has published more than thirty books of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. He is one of our most influential and eloquent advocates for both the environment and subsistence agriculture and the family farm. Still, despite his importance, until Kimberly A. Smith's book, only one book-length study of Berry's work had appeared—Andrew Angyal's Wendell Berry (Twayne, 1995), a basic introduction to Berry's life and writing. Smith's book then is the first substantial critical analysis of Berry's thought to be published. Significantly, though, Smith aims her analysis at understanding the social and political relevance of Berry's ideas rather than coming to terms with his artistry and eloquence, considering Berry's novels and stories not principally as literature but as "elaborations of his social and moral theories" (p. 5). She describes her study as both "an attempt to introduce Wendell Berry's work to students of agriculture, social theory, moral philosophy, and political thought" and "an exploration of the problem of living a meaningful life in a world filled with both deadly perils and unimagined possibilities" (p. ix). Smith's goals are clearly ambitious, and she is generally successful in realizing them. |
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Her first two chapters attempt to place Berry within the intellectual traditions of agrarianism and environmentalism, respectively. Here her methodology is to place Berry by comparison. His agrarianism is defined by comparing it to the ideas of Thomas Jefferson, Harry Caudill, and Harlan Hubbard, and the twelve Southern intellectuals who authored I'll Take My Stand (Harper, 1930). His environmentalism is clarified through comparisons with the ideas of Thoreau, Muir, and Gifford Pinchot, Aldo Leopold, and Edward Abbey. Berry's melding of ideas from these two generally disparate traditions is dubbed by Smith "ecological agrarianism," a philosophy born out of Berry's exploration of "the interconnections between the status of small farmers and the care of the earth" (p. 58). Chapters 3 and 4 explain Berry's social theory as an argument for a vital rural community of small farmers as the key to uniting environmental and agrarian concerns in "a culture of stewardship" (p. 9). In Chapter 5 Smith considers and argues against the charge that Berry's social theory is "mere utopianism, born of romantic nostalgia" (p. 9). Smith believes that Berry's depiction of the fictional world of the community of Port William is not offered as a utopian escape from modern life but as a realistic alternative to it, preferable because it offers a life that is "more sustainable, more fulfilling, and more fully human" (p. 116). In identifying Berry's social theory as "virtue ethics"—which "asks not only which actions are justified but what sort of persons we should strive to be" (p. 117)—Smith also uses her fifth chapter to transition to the primary concern of the second half of her study—Berry's moral philosophy. |
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The sixth and seventh chapters focus more intensively on that moral theory. Smith believes that Berry's moral philosophy seeks to replace the emphasis on individualism important to the traditions of both agrarianism and environmentalism with the concept of grace. Smith explains that Berry's negative view of individualism is the product of his recognition of it as "dangerous, both morally and ecologically" because it is a hubristic quest for individual freedom and power (p. 135). Instead of such hubris, Smith believes, Berry offers the classical virtue of sophrosyne—a sort of restraint and humility based on knowing one's proper place in the cosmic order. Although Smith acknowledges that Berry never actually uses the word "sophrosyne," she explains that the concept is a key to Berry's emphasis on the dependence on community (natural and social) as our natural condition. The virtue of sophrosyne, then, is necessary to the pursuit of grace—"the good toward which an ideal human life aims" (p. 156)—a pursuit in which we engage the physical world through our labor and learn "the love that enforces care" through our art and, in turn, "our labor and our art serve to attach us to the land and the community" (p. 176). A final chapter examines the way in which Berry's moral philosophy colors his distrust of government and his arguments for decentralized government. It is a less satisfying chapter than what precedes it and seems somewhat anticlimactic. |
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In general, Smith's plan for this study is lucid, as is her prose, and her chapters on Berry's moral philosophy are particularly useful in their synthesis and explanation of Berry's complex ideas and large body of work. Smith may be a bit too quick to see others' work as "misguided" or "ill conceived." She herself needs to see Thoreau's criticism of farmers as part of his critique of materialism and not a critique of farming qua farming, and to revise her criticism of Ed Abbey as an escapist to account for his championing of what he calls "moderate extremism." She also needs to temper her insistence on Berry's anthropocentrism with a consideration of work like the poem "The Best Reward," which clearly expresses Berry's regard for self-willed and uncultivated land. Still, Smith's study is a must for anyone interested in Berry as artist and advocate, and it is a valuable addition to the growing body of ecocriticism. |
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Reviewed by Robert Burkholder, associate professor of English at Pennsylvania State University. His recent work is based on teaching literature outdoors in various formats, including through the Penn State Wilderness Literature Field Institute, which he started in 2000 to take students to wilderness preserves to read and discuss writing about wilderness. |
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