On Invitation and Wendell Berry's The Memory of Old Jack

Wendell Berry opens The Memory of Old Jack like this:

Since before sunup Old Jack has been standing at the edge of the hotel porch, gazing out into the empty street of the town of Port William, and now the sun has risen and covered him from head to foot with light. But not yet warmth, and in spite of his heavy sheepskin coat he has grown cold. He pays that no mind. When he came out and stopped there at the top of the steps, mindful of the way the weight of his body is taking him, he propped it carefully with his cane and, in the way that has lately grown upon him, left it.

This is our introduction to protagonist Jack Beechum; this, our introduction to Port William, the fictional town in Kentucky where Berry sets his stories and novels. Or perhaps these aren't introductions; perhaps you've been here before with Berry, walked that empty street, considered Old Jack from a different perspective; perhaps you know Jayber Crow or Hannah Coulter. But even if Port William is as familiar to you as your favorite shirt, this opening is unwieldy. Shifting from present perfect tense to present tense to past tense to present progressive and then back to past, this paragraph is not easy to navigate. Where in time are we? What is happening or did just happen that we are supposed to notice?

And then we have that last sentence, that deliberate stacking of clauses, that obfuscating layer of phrases separated by commas, before the abrupt conclusion: left it. Left what? His cane? The porch? The hotel? This opening is anything but inviting.

Only upon careful unfolding are we able to feel somewhat confident of what Old Jack left and when. If the reader is willing to let that opening be a bit muddy, willing to see where Old Jack wants to take us, there is much in store. By the end, all will be clear. If, like me, you are reading this title for the third or fourth time, you may be surprised that the opening still has the power to trip you up. If, like me, you close the book and turn back to that opening again, you might start to understand what kind of master Wendell Berry is.

At the book's opening, it is September, 1952, and Jack Beechum -- Old Jack -- is 92 years old and has begun to worry his loved ones. He lives at the hotel turned nursing home in town, forced to give up his beloved farm when it became clear he could not manage it on his own. He still rises before the sun, spending the bulk of his day lost in his own memories. So, too, do we. The shifting tenses of that opening paragraph are not a mistake, not evidence of sloppy editing. They are part of the story; they are the story.

Though the book is relatively short, it takes its time. Not at all unlike an elderly family member navigating the journey from the living room to the bedroom, the narrative moves carefully, thoughtfully, and with no unnecessary haste. Through Jack's memory, we trace with him the changes over the years: in farm and town, culture and family. We learn of his pride and ambition and failings; we learn of his heartbreaks and passions and devotion to the land. We see him through the eyes of the loved ones in the present; we learn from his mentors in the past. And we begin to understand what Berry was doing in the opening paragraph.

When Jack stops at the top of the steps, so mindful of his body's weight, it is because it is his body that is propped on the cane, his body that he will leave. Not death, not at that moment, but a leave-taking all the same, a turning inward that will be familiar to any who have been granted the privilege of bearing witness to the final chapters of a full life. When Jack leaves his body, he travels in time, in his memory, and we go with him, seeing him as a five-year-old boy losing his brothers to war and his mother perhaps to grief; at twenty-eight, full of pride and ambition; around 40 and grappling with the loss and anger and uncertainty of middle-age. We go with Jack through and around and between time, feeling ourselves enfolded by his memory and entwined with his community. For though this is Jack's story, these are Jack's memories, the book is -- as always -- about Port William and its people. It is about what happens to a place and a people when the people invest in and depend upon the place.

The "endlessly abounding and unfolding promise" of land well-worked is a common theme in Berry's work. Jack and those sympathetic to him share in that promise; as a contrast, Berry provides characters like Lightning Berlew and his woman, farmhands and tenants on Jack's land, described with no minced words:

"Though the two of them live and work on the place, they have no connection to it, no interest in it, no hope from it. They live, and appear content to live, from hand to mouth in the world of merchandise, connected to it by daily money poorly earned."

Though there is no malice here, there is a sort of sorrowful condemnation. The fast-moving Berlews receive the bulk of it, but it is also at least a warning to the reader, who likely does not have land to work and is all-too-often content to live in the world of merchandise. Berry is prone to a bit of preaching; there are likely many who find him too harsh or determinedly out-of-touch with today's economic realities. But to those who are inclined to listen, even with a skeptical ear, he offers moments that could be described as an invitation to something better:

"For some moments yet he stands still upon the turning world, in the whirl of snow, in the falling night. Closing the doors against the cold dark, he has closed and cherished in his mind the thriving that the barn holds, the vision of that harbored life emerging in green spring. This is his devotion. He tilts his face up into the long fall of the snow."

Through Jack and Mat and Andy Catlett, through Hannah Coulter and Margaret and Jayber, we are invited to consider a life that is simultaneously bigger and smaller than the one we are so often sold. You can find this invitation in all that Berry does, but the Port William stories bring it most fully to life. If you've never visited Port William, I heartily recommend you do; and if it's been awhile, like it was for me, I humbly suggest a return may be long overdue.

--Berry dips back into Port William (including a nod to Old Jack!) in The Art of Loading Brush, a collection of essays, stories, and poems. I count it as my favorite of his works.

On Abundance and Ross Gay's The Book of Delights

One of my dogs - unabashedly a mutt - has long, golden fur. She also has a propensity to stand outside, on a patio or sidewalk, in the breeze, letting the wind toss her locks behind her like a cape. If you are picturing Jack and Rose on the bow of the Titanic, you are doing it exactly right. We have, over the years, made endless fun of this act. She is unaffected by our mockery.

I'm telling you this because recently, as I walked the dogs, the early-morning was rather blustery, and my usually tied-up, unnecessarily-long hair was loose and whipping into my face, pieces tangling and getting stuck in my mouth. I managed to wrangle dog leash and poop bag to free the hair, tossing it over my shoulder just as I rounded a corner and a different wind hit me in the face. This wind was not a blast, it was firm but gentle, a consistent stream that sent my considerable mane flowing out behind me. And with a clarity, a force undeniable, like golden letters lit up across the sky, I thought

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves

and I thought, this is why the dog likes it, and I thought, don't forget this.

You might assume, and you might be right, that I was primed for this observation because for several days I have been in the throes of Ross Gay's The Book of Delights.

Ross Gay is a poet, one I've admired for many years. He is a teacher, an editor, a nickname-bestower, an uncle, a gardener, a loafer, and a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, described on his website as "a non-profit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project." He contains multitudes is what I'm saying. And this book, a collection of essayettes chronicling the author's daily delights, puts those multitudes on brilliant display.

Over the course of a year, from birthday to birthday, Gay attempted to write "a daily essay about something delightful." About midway through, he realized he had been stockpiling ideas, "stacking delights," as he called it. In the essay of that same name (#35), he reminds himself of "the need, of my own essayettes to emerge from such dailiness, and in that way to be a practice of witnessing one's delight, of being in and with one's delight, daily, which actually requires vigilance." Put another way: Gay is reminding us - like Mary Oliver before him - to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves - and to be a witness to that love. Gay is testifying to the delights of his being, some of which will undoubtedly surprise the reader (#72) and others that might confound or convict the reader.

Almost a year ago, I read one of these delights in the Paris Review, "Loitering is Delightful," and like Gay's poetry (his poetic sensibility is infused across these pages, even as they are utterly accessible), the rhythm of this essay drives it forward until you reach the turn, and after the turn, well, you might have to pick up the pieces. Gay considers some synonyms for loitering, some more colorful than others, and concludes the phrase "taking one's time" is the most apt. His argument hits like a blunt force to the sternum, this line a conviction and a righteous celebration all at once:

"for the crime of loitering, the idea of it, is about ownership of one's time, which must be, sometimes, wrested from the assumed owners of it, who are not you, back to the rightful, who is."

There are many such moments, moments where Gay's delight is integrated with a reality that his soft animal body is also a black body, also male, also large. He delights in "unequivocally pleasant public physical interactions with strangers" even as he acknowledges that "the pleasant, the delightful, are not universal," and when he's celebrating what he calls the "negreeting," he's also acknowledging the painful past and present that make the negreeting necessary: the fact that "if you're black in this country you're presumed guilty. Or, to come back to Abdel, who's a schoolteacher and thinks a lot about children, you're not allowed to be innocent. The eyes and heart of a nation are not avoidable things. The imagination of a country is not an avoidable thing. And the negreeting, back home, where we are mostly never seen, is a way of witnessing each other's innocence -- a way of saying, 'I see your innocence.'" This and so much more, readers. So much more.

Despite the depth unmistakably present here, the insistent emotion of this book is joy - it is a reckless, effervescent love, and it is contagious. To conclude the passage about witnessing one's delight and the vigilance required, Gay writes,

"It also requires faith that delight will be with you daily, that you needn't hoard it. No scarcity of delight."

That's it. That's the takeaway. There is no scarcity of delight. Mary Oliver would agree: "Whoever you are, no matter how lonely / the world offers itself to your imagination,/ calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - / over and over announcing your place / in the family of things."

In several essays, Gay sends his probing mind to excavate the concept of joy, each time recognizing the connection between joy and despair or loss; in "'Joy is Such a Human Madness': The Duff Between Us," he uses the idea of healthy forest soil (duff) to explain:

"...joy is the mostly invisible, the underground union between us, you and me, which is, among other things, the great fact of our life and the lives of everyone and thing we love going away. If we sink a spoon into that fact, into the duff between us, we will find it teeming. It will look like all the books ever written. It will look like all the nerves in a body. We might call it sorrow, but we might call it a union, one that, once we notice it, once we bring it into the light, might become flower and food. Might be joy."

This book is joy, it is light, it is teeming with the difficult and challenging, the charming and the unexpected. Do read it. Read it now for the solace it may bring you during this season; read it again years later to see how much you've changed, to witness the abundance of your delight. And while you're at it, read Ross Gay's poetry: Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude and Bringing the Shovel Down. It will not disappoint.

[You can read Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese" here.]