Tech bro sci-fi Archives

The Weekly Wrap: August 30-September 5

Remembering Wendell Berry

I wanted him to live forever. But Marce Catlett, published a year ago reminded me that Wendell Berry was a mortal, like us all. I loved all of his writing, his fiction, essays, and poetry. On Tuesday, he crossed over Jordan.

Hannah Coulter was my favorite novel. It’s the story of a woman whose husband didn’t return from war, her decision to remain on her land in Port William, and share life with a second husband. Like everything Berry wrote, it is filled with communion both with the land and one’s people.

Land and people. Wendell taught me that love and careful attention to both are central to the calling of us all. We cannot care for the world if we do not love our people and our place.

He warned us to be slow to adopt the new and only do so if it was truly better, simpler, more energy efficient, and easily repaired locally. I don’t know if he wrote about data centers but I suspect he would shake his head at the folly of sacrificing arable land at the cost of huge expenditures of energy and water to impose AI on our population while we increasingly import our food from other countries, often with questionable food safety practices.

Yet amid the folly, he took joy in the bubbling stream, the changing seasons, and conversations with other men while harvesting. Few things were so beautiful as well as useful as a good team of horses. And few things so sustaining as a midday farm meal, with family and workers gathered round.

Thankfully, he left us so much of his wisdom in his books. Meanwhile, Wendell Berry is living his final Sabbath poem.

Five Articles Worth Reading

My first article is really three of the many tributes to Wendell Berry. First, verse from Gracey Olmstead, “In Memory: Wendell Berry.” Secondly, Norman Wirzba combines personal memories of meeting Wendell Berry with reflections on Berry’ sense of people and the land in “Wendell Berry’s vision of a sacr e d world.” Finally, Barbara Kingsolver, whose father (also a Wendell) worked with Berry to preserve threatened Kentucky lands, summarizes Berry in “Wendell Berry’s Message to Readers: All We Need Is Here.”

Perhaps it is fitting we remember Berry on Labor Day Weekend. One way to do so is to take a deep dive into JSTOR’s archive of articles on labor in “Labor Day: A Celebration of Working in America.”

However, contrary to Berry’s vision, our modern day “tech bros” have pursued a very different vision. In a review of The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State by Jill Lepore, Gal Beckerman fantasizes about taking a time machine to confiscate the science fiction these men read (or misread), that inspired their vision of the world. The review is suggestively titled “We Are Living in the Fantasy World of 13-Year-Old Boys.”

She’s an Oxford John Donne scholar and the writer of the middle grade Impossible Creatures fantasy trilogy. Now, Katherine Rundell has published a book for adults: Why You Should Read Children’s Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise. Amanda Ramirez interviews the author in “Voracious Appetites: PW Talks with Katherine Rundell.”

Finally, Mark Bauerlein writes in “Saved by the Norton” how the two-volume Norton anthology transformed him. It gave a structure and coherence to his studies and view of the world. He thinks these things are lacking in contemporary literary studies.

Quote of the Week

Mary Renault, who wrote historical fiction, was born on September 4, 1905. She offered this watchword for how we ought live:

“One must live as if it would be forever, and as if one might die each moment. Always both at once.”

Miscellaneous Musings

Last week, Dolly Parton. This week, Wendell Berry. I’ve remarked that it seems that I go to more funerals than weddings these days. And it seems this is the season of the passing of many heroes. Perhaps this makes one long all the more for the great reunion!

Matthew Crawford’s The World Beyond Your Head is deliberately titled. He contends our modern world has each of us living in our own autonomous mental worlds. He argues real knowing involves getting out of our heads and into the world of things and flesh and blood people. Crawford talks, as do Michael Polanyi and Esther Lightcap Meek about knowing as personal. I think this is an important message as we are tempted to immerse ourselves ever more in digital worlds.

Recently, I reviewed T.A. Gibson’s A Wayfarer’s Poems: The Invitation. As I was working on the review, I realized he authored an earlier collection, A Wayfarer’s Poems: The Mirror and made a note to get a copy, having liked its sequel so much. Yesterday, I learned the author graciously gifted me with one and gave me permission to use poems in my weekly Bob on Poetry readings. I don’t get paid for any of this, but things like this make it worth it!