| Title | : | The Memory of Old Jack |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1582430438 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781582430430 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 170 |
| Publication | : | First published February 1, 1974 |
"Few novelists treat both their characters and their readers with the kind of respect that Wendell Berry displays in this deeply moving account . . . The Memory of Old Jack is a slab of rich Americana." —The New York Times Book Review
The Memory of Old Jack Reviews
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I wanted to read a book that would take me to a place of quiet and beauty and good people . Anyone who has read and loved Wendell Berry knows that the place is Port William, his fictional Kentucky town. For those readers nothing more needs to be said; you already know . For those who haven’t read Berry, I want to tell you of the meaningful beauty of the land, the reverence with which that farm land is worked, of the depth of friendships that soothe the soul, and the gorgeous writing that you will find here. With life anywhere or anytime, there is loss and sorrow with the living of it, yet there is contentment and peace and caring about each other here and for most a knowledge and acceptance of who they are and their place on this earth, that land .
Jack Beechum at 92, loses track of the present moments, but not his precious memories of his fully lived life. There is sadness as he recalls that life, but he found solace in the land, in his work, in the people around him. His flaws reflect our reality, that we are imperfect human beings striving, sometimes mired in pride on the way. In spite of the sorrow, it was still so good to be back to Port William and be a part of Jack Beechum’s life because that’s exactly what Berry allows his readers to do, be a part of this place and these people and I’m all the better for it. Sometimes, though, the pride in being who you are, pride in your toil and pride in those around you , more like love of those around you is as beautiful as it gets. This novel is as introspective and intimate as
Jayber Crow and
Hannah Coulter, the other two Berry novels I’ve read . I’m glad that I have so much more by Berry to look forward to. -
A beautifully written and intimate portrayal of A farming man at the end of his days in rural Kentucky in 1952. As Jack reminisces about his life on the land, the town and his memories of bygone days we see the importance of community, family and the land and the struggles he endures with all of these.
While this was set in rural Kentucky America, I could identify with Jack and his love and struggles with the land. I loved how the author drew us into this community and made us care about the characters. I loved going back in time with Jack and his memories and at times I felt Jack was telling his story just to me.
Wonderful sense of time and place and and a time where community and values were different and I for one loved reliving them with Jack.
This is not a plot driven novel but a quiet telling of what an old man remembers at the end of his days and while its not edge of your seat reading, it has a quiet honesty and realness about it that makes you sit up and take notice, the sort of book that makes you think about and value the important things in life.
I listened to this one on audible and it is beautifully narrated by Paul Michael. I had previously read
Stand By Me
a short story by this author I really wanted to try one of his novels and I clearly wasn’t disappointed by this one. -
Wendell Berry has inspired many, including writers, Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver, and Bill Mckibben. I can’t tell you how many farmers, home gardeners, or aficionados of the local food movement have been influenced by his writing, but I’m sure they are many. Even though this is the first book of Berry’s that I’ve read, I’m familiar with him because of his far-flung influence, his quotes that I’ve come across in other books. I’m glad I finally got down to reading one of his books. I didn’t realize there was an order to his Port Williams books when I began reading, but in no way did I feel handicapped by reading this one out of order. It is a complete and sparkling jewel, all on its own.
My first impression of Jack Beechum is that of a man who is fully present in his life. As his nephew, Mat, meets the cows coming in from the pasture, Jack feels Mat’s stiffness and pain, both emotional and physical. Jack knows Mat’s movements because he is familiar with the rhythms of a life that moves with the seasons and the daily work of caring for a farm and its creatures. He is, however, less present than I at first thought, for Jack is now an old man, living more in the past than the palpable world around him. But what a vivid and alive memory! Jack’s mind takes flight, going back to an idyllic day when he rides out over the farm with his brother-in-law Ben, and Mat, then five years old, to show them his stock. Everything about the day settles in upon Jack, a memory just as vibrant as the day it occurred.
Two of Jack’s brothers die in the Civil War when Jack is four years old. Within a year, his mother is dead as well. Jack is raised by his older sister, Nancy, who cares for him and their father. Even more than that, however, he is raised by the fields and the woods that surround his home. With all the sorrow the house has seen, Jack is more comfortable outside, where mother nature nourishes and teaches him, answers his curiosity and gives him purpose. Later when he marries Ruth Lightwood and their marriage is not as he’d hoped, he again finds assuagement under the great open sky and the fields that open to him with possibility.
The community of friends and kin are as important as the landscape in this novel. Berry writes of them so distinctively, Ben Feltner’s good eyes, how he sits astride his horse, at ease; of Ruth Lightwood, “The look of her reminds him of a young girl on a horse, simply trusting herself to a power she has not measured and does not know,” of Sims McGrother, a neighboring farmer with whom he will find himself at odds “His hand would, with equal indifference, ruin a horse’s mouth or a hillside.” In a few words, he describes a core personality, a person that I can see and know. This is a world where the farmer's code places a high value on physical labor. Men who look for a way to avoid work are known and not valued as much as the man who lives by his sweat. My parents and grandparents were gardeners and I have to go back to a great-grandfather to find a farmer, but physical labor was valued in my family as well. In my family, there began to be a move away from the land toward town, furniture work, and later, a push toward higher education. I see a push-pull. The land is a hard taskmaster; we began to think that an education made life easier. Berry makes you think about these things and what we’ve lost as we moved away from nature and the land. The way Berry writes about nature and farming feels spiritual. Jack’s physical nature was embedded in and with the spirit of nature. Although Jack’s life is hard physical work, he also knows how to be still and reflective. Even though his mind has mostly left the present, he was the kind of man who lived a life of engagement with mind and body alert and aware. This seems a rare person, to be fully present in daily life. Most of us have to meditate to achieve that, but Jack lived everyday life as if it were a meditation, a working life as holy as any monk's. -
"Though he stands leaning on his cane on the porch of the hotel in Port William, looking out into the first cool morning of September, 1952, he is not there. He is four miles and sixty-four years away, in the time when he had music in him and he was light."
Old Jack Beechum's mind wanders back to his younger days. At ninety-two years old it's not surprising he is a little confused and dreamy. He thinks back to how his family was devastated when his two older brothers died in the Civil War. Jack was raised by his sister, and her later husband who was a role model as a man and a farmer in rural Kentucky.
Jack was strong, stubborn, and a hard worker on the farm he inherited. He had an unfortunate marriage to Ruth who wanted him to be ambitious and rich, but Jack was content with his life as a farmer. Neither Jack nor Ruth could be what the other needed in a partner. Like many farmers, he had problems with debt but his hard work paid it off.
There was a strong bond between the neighbors in Port William that was formed from years of helping each other when the crops came in, and meeting at the general store or the barber shop. His family and friends shared a lifetime of memories with Jack who appreciated the kindness of a home-cooked meal. Although the book revolves around Jack, it also spends time with other Port William characters that seem like beloved real people.
Over Jack's lifetime there was a change in the way of life as people moved from farms to the cities. The children wanted to attend college, and find other occupations. It was hard to make a living on small family farms using horses and a plow. Farming was becoming more mechanized, and run by big businesses.
Wendell Berry is a poetic writer who has a great love of the land. His books are gems that show us an old-fashioned agrarian way of life that has been disappearing in America. -
Jack Beechum is old now. He is unable to help when the men gather the crops, he is a fixture when old men gather at the local store, he has had to give up his farm to a tenant and reside in the Port William hotel, where he is one of several permanent roomers. But, Jack has had a full life, was once a strapping man who sat a horse like a king, has known love and failure and heartache, and his memories are richer than his current life would allow. Most importantly, he has friends and family who love him, respect him, and value him still.
I’ve seen a lot of Old Jack as I have made my way through Wendell Berry’s novels about Port William, mostly as he is seen through the eyes of other members of his family and friends. This was his own voice, his own retrospective of his life and it left me with a much more complete and personal picture of who Jack Beechum is. I can relate so easily to all Berry’s characters, because they have life in their world and in mine. Jack could easily be my great-uncle Naman. My strongest memories of him are of a man working at the end of a hoe in a vegetable garden, bent slightly, but still strong and capable--a no-nonsense man when it came to work and a generous man of laughter when the work was done.
Old Jack’s hand, which she continues to hold, is a fixed and final shape, bent and worn, curiously inert. The stiffened fingers no longer move with an idle life of their own. They lie still until he has a use of them and then they move by deliberate will, like rude tools. His hands remind Hannah of old gnarls of root such as she has found washed up on the rockbars of the river, still holding the shape of their place in the earth though that place is changed by their departure. She holds the old, clumsy hand in hers, gently, for its own sake. But for the sake of more than that, for she is thinking, “We will come to this, my Nathan.”
I read this passage and was reminded of my own father’s hands, how they changed as he aged and how I loved to feel the paper-thin skin of them against my own. Then I realized those are the kind of hands my husband now bears, as his age slips upon him year by year.
Berry also captures the exact feeling of loss that we have when we know a whole generation of men and women are lost to us. When we see the last of them beginning to go, and we know that we are now the “older generation” ourselves.
Mat felt the change upon himself. Now he was the oldest, and the longest memory was his. Now between him and the grave stood no other man. From here on he would find the way for himself.
I have often said that the moment I became a complete adult was the moment I lost my mother. Age had nothing to do with it, it was born of the loss of the heart and mind that had always guided my footsteps and could guide them no more.
Have I mentioned that I love Wendell Berry? I love him with the fullness of a soul that you recognize in yourself. He gives me a gift that is inexplicable every time I open one of his books. He gives me my past, myself, and a little bit of himself--what more could anyone want from an author? -
"He has no fear of death. It is coming, there is nothing to be done about it, and so he does not think about it much. It is the unknown, and he has come to the unknown before. Sometimes it has been very satisfying, the unknown. Sometimes not. Anyhow, what would a man his age propose to do instead of die? He has been around long enough to know that death is the only perfect cure for what ails mortals. After you have stood enough you die, and that is all right."
This is Jack's last day. He doesn't know that yet, but it's okay, he's ninety-two, and he's ready. We relive Jack's time through his memories of a sometimes sad and difficult life. There was the wife whose goals didn't match his own, a daughter who was distant and unknowable, problems with the farm and debt, difficulties with his own nature and the times in which he lived. But there was also the joy of owning his farm, of improving the land entrusted to him, of doing an honest days work and feeling good about it. And, because this is Port William, the friends and neighbors ready to help when they can.
In addition to Jack's memories, we see him through other's eyes as well, specifically Hannah Coulter, Andy Catlett and Mat Feltner. Our community is made closer by all these shared things, as happens when we are part of a world created by Wendell Berry, but inhabited by those of us who enter the pages of his books. This was unbearably sad in some parts, but Jack's life was not unusual in that, and made all the richer for the good it contained. -
Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. Reading this book is like dreaming coherently--it just unfolds in front of you like liquid, with images so clear and so simple that you're instantly standing in the bodies of the characters--treading the dirt they walk on, breathing through their mouths... It is a patient book, and you must be patient with it and trust its pace. Wendell Berry is incredible in many ways, and this book is beautiful. It is a journey through Old Jack's life, but the imagery and ideas and questions and observations extend far past the narrative structure's simplicity. I will reread this book--I already cherish my relationship with it and the conversations it created with myself.
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A lovely book and it has such gorgeous writing. I dare you to read this and not tear up.
I have come to read several of Wendell Berry’s books set in the fictional Kentucky town of Port William. They focus on the families of the town, related by birth and their ties to the land. All are as kin, they rely on each other, know everything about one another and share common joys and sorrows. There is a shared understanding of each one’s weaknesses and strengths. The land on which they live and the tight sense of community are the essence of these novels. The characters become individuals you care for; they come to feel as your own friends.
Readers meet the Beechum, Feltner, Coulter, and Catlett families. And others, such as Jayber Crow.
There is a sense of peace and continuity that pervades the tales. This is due to the writing. There is wisdom beautifully expressed--about human behavior and the inherent beauty, importance and value of land. After one’s own death the land remains. It passes from one generation to the next. One can draw a sense of peace and tranquility from this knowledge.
In this story one learns about Jack Beechum. It is 1952, and he is an old man of ninety-two. He reminisces. We follow his thoughts through the years. We learn about what has occurred in the town. We learn about its inhabitants, and we learn about him. I found his thoughts about his own life revealing. The central focus of the book is looking back at one’s life when it is almost over. What is important and what isn’t? It is about the appreciation of good memories and the acceptance of mistakes made.
I found this to be a wise and beautiful book.
Paul Michaels narrates this audiobook as he has narrated the others about Port William. His narration is absolutely perfect. This is how books should be narrated. Each character is given their own intonation and each one wonderfully captures that character’s personality. The speed is perfect, and every word can be easily heard. I have given both the narration and the written book itself five stars.
Even if this is my favorite book so far, I don’t think you should start here. It is better if you already know who the people in Port William are. I suggest reading the short story
Stand By Me first. There is a free online link to it in my review. If the writing style appeals to you, then I would suggest continuing in the following order:
Stand By Me 4 stars
Jayber Crow 4 stars
A Place on Earth 4 stars
The Memory of Old Jack 5 stars
Hannah Coulter 2 stars
Nathan Coulter 2 stars
Andy Catlett: Early Travels TBR
Maybe this is wrong. I have not yet read all the books, but have I read the best? -
The Memory of Old Jack (Port William Series #3) by Wendell Berry. Published by HBJ, 1974.
Wendell Berry: Wendell Berry, (born August 5, 1934, Port Royal, Kentucky, U.S.), American author whose nature poetry, novels of America’s rural past, and essays on ecological responsibility grew from his experiences as a farmer. Berry was educated at the University of Kentucky, Lexington (B.A., 1956; M.A., 1957). He later taught at Stanford and NYU. In 1964 he returned to the University of Kentucky to teach and settled on a farm near his birthplace. He left the university in 1977 to concentrate on writing and farming. Berry is also the recipient of many literary awards and honors.
Summary: This third novel of Port William begins with Jack Beechum as a very old man in 1952 and continues back into his youth and maturity to uncover his life and work as a dedicated farmer, conflicted husband, and living link to past generations. The story ranges from the Civil War to just past World War II and is set in fictional Port William, Kentucky.
The year is 1952 and Jack, a 92 year old hardscrabble farmer spends this day in a simple routine wherein the people he interacts with and the things he sees take him back to near the Civil War era and all the subsequent decades to the present. It's these memories of his that bring meaning to the title of this book. Jack's simple memories are cultivated into a bountiful literary harvest by the gift of Berry's creative writing. He seamlessly weaves together the past and the present into an extraordinary literary masterpiece.
For example - Jack thinks of the Sunday church service when, as the sermon drones on, he first sees the girl who would become his wife of 63 years. (page 46) 'His sight drifts and gazes upon the heads ranged in front of him, picking out, recognizing, the heads of the girls and young women. His consciousness hovers and moves now over the congregation, like a bee over a patch of flowers, in search of nectar, alert to what is bright and sweet and open.' Although this titillating experience eventually led to Jack and Ruth's marriage, it was not a happy one, you could even say it was tragically unhappy for each of them.
Listen folks - this is true rural American poetical prose. If you have any past or present connection with the agrarian life, this is a must read. Although this is the only book that I have read by Berry I am confident that this series does not require an in-order reading. Highly recommended!
My new word (page 137 - 'When they pass the blackened remains of the little house, the sprangle of the ruined elm stiff against the last light, they do not stop.') is 'sprangle' : spread out in different directions : branch out -
The Memory of Old Jack took me back to Port William, Kentucky, a fictional town that is home to a farming community that I have grown to love. This is my fifth book by Wendell Berry; it is also by far the saddest and most deeply affecting. Leave taking always is. In this story set in 1952, Port William bids farewell to one of their oldest kinsmen, Jack Beechum who is 92.
In the opening pages, Berry paints a tender portrait of Old Jack standing on a hotel porch, leaning on a cane, in the early hours of a fall morning. He is cold and contemplates where he can go to seek the warmth of a stove. We learn soon enough why in more ways than one ‘he is a man wrapped in shade.’ For the last eight years, Jack has taken up residence at Mrs. Hendrick’s hotel, a place the town barber, Jayber Crow, calls the local airport ‘where are gathered those about to depart into the heavens.’ Rather than live with his daughter and her banker husband in the city, Jack has chosen to board in this hotel in order to belong among people he loves and knows well.
As his health begins to fail, Old Jack increasingly takes leave of the present and retreats to memories of his past. We are told that ‘he is four miles and sixty-four years away in the time when he had music in him and he was light.’ Jack’s nephew, Mat Feltner and his wife, and the Port William folks, register this change with concern: ‘Old Jack has become a worry to them. In the last weeks his mind seems to have begun to fail... They have all found him at the various stations of his rounds, just standing, as poignantly vacant as an empty house. And they have watched him, those who care about him, because they feel that he is going away from them, going into the past that now holds nearly all of him. And they yearn toward him, knowing that they will be changed when he is gone.’
The story of Old Jack’s life is built up gradually from his own reminiscence of times past as well as from the memories of various individuals in Port William who have labored side by side with him in the fields. Readers familiar with Wendell Berry’s writing will be pleased to meet again Ben Feltner, the Coulter brothers (Burley and Jarrat), Nathan and Hannah Coulter, Elton and Mary Penn, Wheeler Catlett, and his sons (Andy and Henry). These memories speak of Jack’s commitment to hard and honest labor, working off debts twice in his life, unhappy marriage, loneliness, and firm friendship with the men of Port William. We see Jack from the perspective of Andy Catlett (his great grand-nephew), Wheeler Catlett (his grand-nephew and lawyer), Mat Feltner (his nephew). Writing this, I become aware of how three generations of men have looked upon Jack as the salt-of-the-earth role model.
An astute reviewer pointed out that The Memory of Old Jack is a communal memory. It is a beautiful collective memory of how one generation gives to another. In his younger days Jack Beechum has looked up to Ben Feltner, his brother-in-law, a man of few words who keeps his judgment to himself. Berry tells us, ’Ben was the man Jack watched and listened to and checked his judgement against.’ In turn, Mat Feltner (age 69) has always depended on Old Jack for help when it is needed. ‘All his life Mat has had Jack before him, as standard and example, teacher and taskmaster and companion, friend and comforter. When Jack is gone, then Mat will be the oldest of that fellowship of friends and kin of which Old Jack has been for so long the center.’ The youngest of them all, Andy Catlett is torn between leaving for college and continuing the work of his predecessors who have given their lives to the land. The blessedness of the fellowship in Port William finds its expression best in Andy’s contemplation: 'Since the beginning of his consciousness he has felt over and around him the regard of that fellowship of kinsmen and friends, watching him, warning him, correcting him, teasing him, instructing him, not so much because of any ambition they have for him as because in him they see, come back again, traits and features of dead men and women they loved.'
The hardest chapter to read is the one titled ‘Return’ when Old Jack finally draws his last breath. By then, I can hardly hold back my tears. Now I know why one reviewer said, ‘I dare you to read this and not tear up.’
In case you think this is a sentimental book, it explores the struggles of life with clarity and wisdom. There is an abundance of goodwill, love, and care in Port William that spills beyond these pages to touch the reader, too. This may not be a book for everyone; its appeal may depend on one's season in life. It is elegiac in tone. Yet, like Old Jack, the reader will not fail to locate a warm stove between the lines to thaw the chill. Sadness is assuaged by the acceptance and love anchored in a community of faithful men and women. Lovely book! -
Jack is the last of his generation of Port William and he knows that his time is near. Born in 1860, he lives physically in the present of 1952, but his mind wanders this day in September back in time to events in his life that he may or may not wish to recall. Jack has lived a hard life like many of this period who farmed the land and understood how to cultivate and care for the soil. His sole purpose in life was his desire to bring life to his inheritance and be free of his debts. He knows that he is not long for this world and that's just fine with him.
He has been around long enough to know that death is the only perfect cure for what ails mortals. After you have stood enough you die, and that is all right.
Much of what Jack has learned in his life has been out of sorrow. His earliest remembrance takes him to his childhood and the beginning of his understanding of this to the house he grew up in. The house bears the deaths of his mother and brothers. He begins to see where his future will be - in the land.
By his sixth year Jack's mind had already learned what would be one of its characteristic motions, turning away from the house, from the losses and failures and confinements of his history, to the land, the woods and fields of the old farm, in which he already sensed an endlessly abounding and unfolding promise.
Jack's memories take him back to times of great remorse and struggle in which he contemplates what part he played in each experience and how he could have done differently to make them better. He thinks about his ambition for more land and how the problems in his marriage only worsened as a result. His hardest struggles were with his marriage and family. He and Ruth wanted from the other what couldn't be given. Yes, there was love, but not the kind that is demonstrated unconditionally.
He was misled not by Ruth but by his own desire, so strong for her that it saw possibilities that did not exist, and believed in what it saw. And Ruth - an old tenderness wells in him like a flooding stream choked with wreckage and debris - Ruth too was misled, by him, by his foolish willingness to win her by indulging her misconceptions.
Through Jack's memories, we see the great cost that he bore with the destruction of his marriage, his financial hardship, the estrangement of his daughter. He endured much and contemplated what if? His life inside his house may have had a different outcome had his faith been there with his family. Jack, however, finally realized his faith was with and in his land. He sees himself in the psalmist who walks through the valley of the shadow of death as one who has seen his despair and come out of it worthy of what he has accomplished on his land.
He saw that he would be distinguished not by what he was or anything that he might become but by what he served....And when he knows that he lives by a bounty not his own, though his ruin lies behind him and again ahead of him, he will be at peace, for he has seen what is worthy.
We also see Jack's story through the eyes of some of Port William's beloved characters which was such a delight to me. Hannah Coulter, Andy Catlett and of course Mat Feltner provide their voice to Jack's story. While Jack's life was not an easy one, I am happy knowing that Berry felt it important to inform his reader, who loves this community, of the future of Jack's place. I was heartened knowing how it would turn out after he was gone, that Jack thought beyond the grave to his heart and love of the land ensuring its continuance. -
Until recently I had never heard of Wendell Berry. I started reading The Memory of Old Jack at the same time as my wife started reading Jayber Crow. Our house was silent for days.
I immediately became immersed in the final day of Jack Beechum, reflecting upon his life, for better or worse. Critics may argue that there is little plot in this book, but that’s missing the point. This is tapestry weaving and what makes it so sublime is the language, which elevates it to dizzy heights.
A couple of the narratives stuck in my mind, one of them was Jack’s memory of being a young boy and watching his two elder siblings ride off to fight the Yankees
‘’This is not simply the knowledge of retrospect; because the vision of their departure met the knowledge of their deaths in the anachronistic mind of a child, the two have fused, so that it seems to him, in his vision, that he watches them depart with the clear foreknowledge that they will not return. They did not.’’
Or when Jack stands by the grave of the lover he took to escape his loveless marriage
‘’And always near him was the thought of the dead woman who had loved him as he was, and of the living one who could not.’’
This is just a beautiful book. Wendell Berry is a masterful story teller, in a class by himself. -
For the past few months, I've been working through Wendell Berry's fiction, which overall is just marvelous. His novels and stories are consistently fine, but The Memory of Old Jack is just flat out the best Berry that I've read (I still have a few of his books to go). The Memory of Old Jack has all the virtues of Berry's other work (wise, deeply felt, environmentally and ethically challenging), but it has a level of emotional and sexual intensity that carries Berry's fiction to new heights, sort of the way I feel that Ron Rash's Serena towers above the rest of Rash's work. Here's another way to think about it: When Wendell Berry discovered Jack Beechum, he discovered his richest character, his richest vision, and his richest art.
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What stood out to me in this reading of Old Jack were the narrator's words on ambition, in conjunction with the well established sense of place present in all of Berry's fiction. Through his narrator, Berry offers a critique of unconsidered ambition, or ambition that adheres thoughtlessly to the ladder of success offered by the surrounding culture. This emerges first in the character of Andy Catlett, who wrestles with the knowledge that he has a powerful and able mind and wants to make something of himself in the world's terms, in conjunction with the legacy of his community and the men from which he is descended and from whom he has learned. The narrator speaks of the "bearing of history toward such places as Port William...that achievement, success, all worthy hope lay elsewhere, in cities, in places of economic growth and power; it was assumed that a man must put away his origin as a childish thing" (109). The narrator rejects the notion that success necessarily entails departure from that which precedes success, or that "hope" is always somewhere other than where the hope is originated. Rather, for Andy Catlett, there is great value in the place from which he comes, and success could very well mean an eventual return to that place and continuance of that legacy.
The narrator's stance on ambition is expanded in Jack’s words of advice to Mat Feltner, relaying what he has learned through his misplaced ambition, in which he sought success and validation through expansion: "Fearing that Mat would look away from what he had undertaken or attempt in too much pride to go beyond it, Jack would gesture with his hand to the ridges and hollows...and he would say: 'That's all you've got, Mat. It's your only choice. It's all you can have; whatever you try to gain somewhere else, you'll lose here.' And then taking hold of Mat's shoulder, letting him see in his eyes with what fear and joy he meant it, he would say: 'And it's enough. It's more than enough'" (124). And again, on the following page, "[Jack's] thoughts no longer ranged the distances of possibility but were contained inside the boundaries of his farm...He still worked and went ahead as before, but now his work was healing; it restored the health of his place and his own satisfaction" (125). The critique here is in that phrase, "distances of possibility." Berry's narrator would criticize the notion that because something is possible, it should be done. According to the narrator, that is not the best way to live; being fixated on the "distances of possibility" removes from the realities in front of you.
The narrator offers a final critique through Jack's subtle shot at his son-in-law, Glad Pettit: "Had he not heard Glad already talking about what he might do when he retired? Retirement seemed to him a rather objectionable ambition--but then that was not his business" (137). Berry’s narrator critiques a culture of ambition that strives for mindless advancement with the end goal of leisure.
The philosophy built through the discussion of ambition in this novel refuses to accept success in the world’s terms without qualifications: if success makes you reject the place of your origins and the people in that place, if success makes you blind to the realities of your present, and if success sets up as ideal a final escape from that at which you are successful into a retirement of leisure, the ambition that leads to that sort of success is worth rejecting.
[Review from June 8, 2015]
A beautifully written book. Tragic in a lot of ways, but beautiful in that it depicts the life of a man completely present in the life he lives and the work to be done. One thing I find so compelling about this novel and much of the rest of the work of Berry is that he depicts men and women who are not disconnected from their work. It is not a means to an end, it is not something to be put up with or endured; rather, it defines the man and emerges from the reality of who the man is. There's a lot of beauty in that.
One section of the book that I love comes from the time when Old Jack finally escapes his years of debt, describing the realization he comes to afterwards: "He knew that his origin was in nothing that he or any man had done, and that he could do nothing sufficient to his needs. And he looked finally beyond those limits and saw the world still there, potent and abounding, as it would be whether he lived or died, worthy of his life and work and faith. He saw that he would be distinguished not by what he was or anything that he might become but by what he served. Beyond him was the peace and rest and joy that he desired." -
Wow, this one is kind of hard for me to review. I have tried to read so many things by Wendell Berry, probably for about the past ten years, and I've never managed more than a short essay or a dozen pages of a novel before giving up. I've always felt guilty for this. A farmer from Kentucky who writes about the evils of modern agriculture, the joys of engaging in meaningful work, and the importance of being connected to nature and place, it is all right up my alley, why couldn't I get into it? Maybe I just haven't been patient enough.
The pace of this novel is really, really slow. It follows the reflections of "Old Jack," a retired Kentucky farmer. As an old man, he looks back on his life, recalling joys and sorrows, accomplishments and regrets. It's not a book I was ever really eager to pick up, but once I started, I got sucked in. Not in a way that I couldn't put the book down, but I just felt like I was right there with Old Jack, seeing what he was seeing, feeling what he was feeling. I think my eyes were brimming with tears almost the entire time I was reading this. It captured so many of my feelings towards farming and the world in general. I'm not going to be able to say it eloquently, but I was so moved by Old Jack's contentment in the solitude of his work, yet also the pleasure of falling into rhythm when working with others. I related to the joys of working with one's hands and the feelings of both utter exhaustion and delight following a day of work in the fields. His reflections on the simultaneous significance and insignificance of life and being able to really surrender to that idea were really striking. I could go on and on, but I'll stop there.
This book is definitely not for everyone, but I'm glad I finally was able to stick with a Wendell Berry novel. -
The saddest and loneliest book of Berry’s that I have read. Berry writes beautifully. No two characters are created equal.
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Hold on. Trying to reattach my heartstrings here.
.....
Ok. Now I can start. With many readers, reflective/poetical/memoir-type fiction can, depending on the readers' experiences and dispositions, cause either eye-dabbing or eyebrow raising; the eye-dabbers over-empathizing with the pregnant emotional themes of memoir types and the eyebrowers perhaps unable to empathize with too much sentiment. Wendell Berry's fiction is impossible to see this way. When his writing risks sentimentalism it plants the emotion in genuine and mountainous truths such that one cannot divorce the emotion from the characters and places to which it belongs; one cannot hate it for cheap sentiment, for there is none.
I say this to defend myself, for I (and other men I've spoken to) find Berry's work moving in the way only a farmer's writing can be. How can books about such weepy things as family, love, death, dying, birth, and home-cooked meals bring words of praise to the lips of so many cynical men (for example, the
manly mustachioed Nick Offerman, otherwise known as Ron Swanson)?
Well... because it's so damned good.
The Memory of Old Jack is the putative life story of one Jack Beechum, told by his own deathbed (more like deathbench, actually) rememberings. The 92 year-old farmer relives his past, his loves and mostly his abundant failures. The title is a sober pun; for while the book is about Old Jack's memories, it is also about the memory of him that lives on in the next generations. Through this double meaning Berry explores the impact of a life on a community, and profoundly shows us a humanity that is seen only in the passing of a century, and in the death and birth of its people.
Old Jack is a prideful and foolish person in some ways. But aren't we all? Insofar as Jack keeps faith with the land and those he loves, he does it well. It's hard to tell if Jack's life is one of beauty laced with pain or the other way around, but that it is a life of complexity, truth, and honesty can't be contested. The earth of Port William again yields a crop of wisdom, truth, and story. Berry really has captured something of American history that few other writers did. If I wasn't a Berrylyte before this book, I sure am now. -
I believe this to be one of Wendell Berry's finest. In it, he recounts the memories of an old man at the end of a long and eventful life. A man who spanned a good bit of the history of the fictional community of Port William, Kentucky. As he remembers or greets different characters, he remembers some story about that character and each one comes alive for those few, brief pages it takes to recount the tale. I cried at the end, but they were tears of recognition of a life well-lived.
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'Old Jack' Beechum cannot remember what he had for breakfast. Nor can he remember the names of most of the people who are continuously dropping by to check on him. At age 92, he remembers almost nothing of the world around him.
The past, though, is a different story. He may have been able too young to recall events that occurred during the Civil War, but the years afterwards are old friends. People talk about how life flashes in front of them but with Jack, life is more a slow-moving river that flows by while he sits and watches from the sunny bank. His life wasn't easy, and often wasn't all that pleasant, but it was clearly a life that suited him. This is a sentimental tale that tells the story of a life seen in the rear-view mirror.
Jack is just one of the characters that readers meet if they spend time reading the many books set in
Wendell Berry's fictional town of Port William, Kentucky. Berry's books tend to share a common theme, that of rural life and those whose strength and joy comes from the soil beneath their feet. People are always leaving Port William but one gets the sense that the lives that they find in the city are not as fulfilling as they would be had they just stayed home and worked the land. It's a place where anyone would be lucky to call it home. These are comforting books to read during the turbulent times we live in.
My thanks to Lawyer and all the folks at the
On the Southern Literary Trail group for giving me the opportunity to read and discuss this and many other fine books. -
Full of himself, confident and cocky as a young man, Jack belongs to a farming community where families and neighbors work side by side to plant the fields, raise a barn or harvest the annual tobacco crop. Confusing lust with love, Jack plucks from a distant town a wife, Ruth, taking her into a marriage doomed by misunderstanding to leave both lonely and alone for all the years they share the farm house. You can't help but sympathize with both of them even as their walls grow thicker by the day, until they no longer share a bedroom or even meals. Publicly they're a couple, privately they're strangers. We are introduced to Jack as a very old man who spends his days lost in memories of days on the farm, his marriage to Ruth and his times of both glory and suffering. Wendell Berry's slowly but surely paints a tender portrait of a very fallible human being. Even when you want to strangle him for his arrogance you can't help but forgive him for his humanity.
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Yes, yes, yes. Each sentence is a jewel from this farmer/poet/novelist. Read it carefully and within a few days' time. Don't miss it if you value land, relationships, reflection, drama.
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It’s the early fall of 1952, tobacco harvesting season in northern Kentucky. Old Jack is 92 yrs old (born in 1860) and is standing/leaning on the front porch of his boarding house watching the opening of a new morning and thinking back on his life. Thus begins the story of Jack’s mind fading in and out with recollections of his long life as a farmer in Port William, KY. Wendell Berry does a great job of catching the unsteadiness of the mind of an old man. Jack has lived and worked in the same KY county his entire life. He vaguely recalls two older brothers riding off the family farm and joining the Confederates in the War between the States. Both brothers were killed. His mother died shortly thereafter and as a young boy it was just Jack & his father. His father was good to him but Jack recalls his father treating him somewhat like a pet. Jack grows to be a steady and stout young man (a hard worker) and soon acquires some land. He is mentored by a good man named Ben Feltner. Berry’s stories are filled with good country people, mostly yeoman farmers. They scratch out a living off the land. It’s a tough life but some of the men are able to couple their visions of a profitable farm with the hard work required. Good farmers steadily improve their land year by year, it’s a process. There is a great scene where several of the ladies get together and prepare a hearty dinner (lunch) for all the men harvesting tobacco. It’s tempting to linger but the men have to get back to work.
Jack works hard but he also has a good time on Saturday nights. He’s a dancer, drinker, wincher and fighter. In his late 20s he spots Ruth (his future wife) in church and is smitten. However, this marriage between Jack and Ruth is “the great disaster of both of their lives.” An unfulfilling & passionless marriage soon develops and sets in. Sad but these things are not uncommon.
Old Jack did not have a surviving son to take over his farm. He reached a point in his later life where he simply stopped trying to please his daughter, her husband and others. It simply wasn’t worth the effort. Heck, he was the elder member of the Port William Membership. He had a huge family and they all looked after him and tried not to let Jack notice. He was old but not forgotten, a very lucky man. -
I was realizing as I read this book how few novels slow my thoughts down and make me reflect. Most either speed it up or don't affect it at all. And yet the ones that slow me down have stayed with me in a way that others haven't. Why do so few authors try this approach? I could use a lot more pauses for thought. I could use a lot more sit-with-it thinking.
And what a strange book this is. The memories of an old man. A man who failed in so many ways. Going over what was good in his life and in the people around him, thinking it through and coming to more questions and only one or two certainties, and making peace with all these.
Berry is one of those writers bearing witness the end of a way of life. I don't know of any death as poignant as that of the small family farm. Old Jack's love of the land, his dedication to caring for it as it cares for him, his brotherhood of neighbouring farmers who alone understand his deep feeling for the relationship between man and nature, the patience and long planning that it takes to succeed. His dislike for the speed of life in the towns, the instancy of it, the lack of roots and insight the people (even his daughter) show. He is almost bitter about this.
As for why anyone should be interested in a book of an old farmer's memories, I'd say because Jack is so clearly asking us to evaluate our lives according to the long view, to put our effort into something that gives back - to work with hope, as he says, and yet not define ourselves by what we do or who we imagine we are, but by what we serve. To look at his failure to connect with his family and learn from him not to allow disappointed expectations and pride (and work) to get in the way of love. This is a thoughtful book - I'd put it right up alongside Marilynne Robinson's "Gilead" for resonance and depth. -
An absolutely glorious read!
I enjoyed this book and look forward to reading the whole series. This is the first Wendell Berry book I have read. I love all the characters and the painting of words to illustrate their lifestyles. Stories within stories in the life of Old Jack and his family and friends. Heartbreakingly beautifully written. -
Imperfetto, ombroso, fallibile... Wendell Berry ha generato un'altra Grande Anima
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Summary: Old Jack Beechum, the oldest of the Port William membership, spends a September day remembering his life.
This book resonated powerfully with me. It brought to mind my father’s last years after my mother passed. His short term memory was failing even as he grew more frail. Mostly he spent his days remembering what he could, the earlier days of his life, summing up in a sense what his life had meant. From our conversations, these were grace-filled memories, and there was about him a profound sense of thanksgiving. He was already at peace about his life well before we laid him to rest.
As the title of this work suggests, this is also an account of remembering and summing up a life. On one hand, it is a narrative of a single sunny day in September. It is also a day of remembering the most significant events in his life. Early morning, old Jack Beechum stands on the hotel porch where he now lives, listening to the sounds of the men going about their chores and a day of tobacco harvesting. He hears Mat Feltner, a man in his sixties, an anchor of the community, and recalls him as a boy with his father Ben as he hitches up his new mule team. He recalls Ben Feltner, the loan Ben had fronted him, and the mentor he had been in the care of his land when he was bereft of his own parents and starting out.
His wife Ruth occupies many of his memories. Her beauty which led him to pursue her. Her ambitions, which led him both into debt, and a falling out with the tenant of an adjacent farm he bought, Will Wells. Ruth wanted him to be a prosperous landowner with many others working for him. He wanted to care for and lovingly restore the land he had, that his father had so neglected.
He remembers the crucible through which he went. Selling the adjacent farm at a loss, Ruth’s increasing estrangement, and the fire in his barn and more loss and debt, and the years of extra work to own his land free and clear. He goes through a kind of death returning from a fruitless errand for Ruth to get caught in a flood, barely surviving with his team, cutting loose his wagon.
After Ruth’s daughter Clara was born, Ruth insisted they sleep apart. What followed was an affair with the doctor’s widow, Rose McInnis, each meeting the hunger in the other. There came the day when a question from Ruth revealed she knew and he knew “the wound he had given her.” Shortly after, Jack returns from a trip to learn Rose had perished in a fire. All he has left is his land, on which at 48, he had paid off the mortgage–and a renewed sense of his own life:
“That his life was renewed, that he had been driven down to the bedrock of his own place in the world, and his own truth and had stood again, that a profound peace and trust had come to him out of his suffering and his solitude, and that this peace would abide with him to the end of his days–all this he knew in the quiet of his heart and kept to himself.“
He had come through his own valley of the shadow of death. Eventually there is one with whom he shares what he has learned–Mat Feltner, now what he once was to Mat’s father Ben. Pointing to Mat’s land, he says, “That’s all you’ve got, Mat. It’s your only choice. It’s all you can have; whatever you try to gain somewhere else, you’ll lose here.”
Sadly, his own daughter will not understand what Mat and the circle around him–Nathan and Hannah Coulter, Burley Coulter, and the tenant who cares for his farm, Elton Penn–understand. Clara followed her mother’s ways, marrying a banker, who refused an opportunity to buy an adjacent farm, that one day could be joined to Jack’s own. Clara even took dying Ruth, whose last words to Jack are “Bless you, Jack, good-by.” Jack continues as long as he can alone until he moves into the hotel.
Just before dinner on that September day, young Andy Catlett stops by to say good-bye. Andy is headed off to college, yet loves the land as he does. There is a fitting closure here, of love and fealty on Andy’s part, of blessing of the young man. It seems each knows they will not see the other again.
There is exquisite writing throughout here, and none more than in the chapter “Return.” Everything Berry writes reflects love of land, of place, of animals well-cared for, and a community that shares these values. In this work, these become the source of renewal for Old Jack, a kind of “pearl of great price.” The theme of mentors, from one generation to the next, runs through this work. There is a company of men who not only work alongside and impart wisdom, but who affirm one another’s worth and dignity. It is striking how Mat honors Old Jack when he is long past being any “use” even as Jack had honored him. Finally there is the forging of character in Jack, from the proud young man who marries a kind of “trophy” wife only to discover that he cannot live up to her expectations, to the humbled man, reckoning with all his errors, doing what he can to make amends, even with Ruth, and in the process not only becomes himself, but a model to others.
Berry reminds us that unless death comes suddenly, there will come the time of summing up, of remembering. What will we remember, and will we have found the peace that abides to the end of our days? He reminds me that it is never too soon to address oneself to these questions. -
This book is the story of Jack Beechum's last day on earth, and the story of his whole life. Over the course of his last day, 92-year-old Jack drifts back and forth between keen observation of the present and even keener memories of the key events of his long life. His first memory is of watching his much-older brothers leave to fight in the American Civil War. They will not return. And that is only the first of the heartbreaks that Jack will endure.
But overall Jack is fortunate. He is strong and handsome, with natural grace. And he is a born farmer. Jack exemplifies the term "husbandry" in the sense that he is devoted to his land and cares for it tenderly, and causes it to bear fruit. His marriage and his only child disappoint him. His work is hard, and he makes one serious judgment error that jeopardizes everything that he has worked for. But his fierce independence and self-reliance, and his love of his land, sustain him, and he grows in wisdom as he ages.
Wendell Berry is generally a leftist writer, but I found this book to be profoundly conservative in the old-fashioned sense of the term. It portrays a way of life based on self-reliance and community spirit. The government is nowhere to be found. If help is needed, a man looks to himself or to his close neighbors. Communities are stable. Values are shared, and men know each other well enough to judge each other based on moral character, not on superficialities.
That world, of course, is long gone. Not everyone is born to be a farmer. Not everyone wants to live in one small community all his life. Small farms have given way to corporate agriculture. The beauty of this book made me sad about that.
Like my reviews? Check out my blog at
http://www.kathrynbashaar.com/blog/ -
Wendell Berry is a Master Storyteller!!
A good story transports us to another place and time. I love the folks of Port William, Kentucky. I relate to each character ... I can feel their joys and at times deep despair. I want to stay there in my thoughts where people worked hard, family and friendships were treasured and devotion to the land was at the heart of their labor.
Forever remember, Old Jack -
4.5 stars. Wendell Berry's writing is so beautiful and elegiac, it makes my heart hurt. In a good way.
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“...he carefully takes the old poster loose from the wall. He intends, as he removes the nails, to make a keepsake of it. But once he has taken it down and is holding it in his hands, its meaning seems already to have diminished. In a kind of guilt, in the sort of haste with which one would stop the bleeding of a living thing, he nails it back where it was.
“‘No,’ he thinks, ‘we’ll take no trophies, no souvenirs. Let it fall like a leaf.’”
This is one of several incredible passages in this story. I truly do not know how Wendell Berry does it, how he makes me feel like I’m standing there with these characters both in body and soul.
