Pig Earth: Book One of the Into Their Labours Trilogy

Amongst the considerable virtues of Berger's,'Pig Earth', is his first transcendant fiction to emerge from his experience of the alpine village in peasant France. This is,'The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol', which has, this year, been reformatted as a stage piece for British Theatre as part of the celebrations for its author's work, in his 78th year. Berger's prose throughout the peasant trilogy('Into Their Labour') is characteristically taut, blunt and weighted with what seems like peasant wisdom. Contrivance, theatricality, are put to one side. Cabrol, a dwarf nicnamed, the Cocadrille, is an eccentric in a community which is forced, against its will to accomodate her. If cruel judgement is mete upon her, she is, by temperament and ingenuity, capable of exacting just revenge. Berger explains that his relocation from the London art world of the 70s, to the rural life, far from slumming with the poor, was to be close to and absorb the other subject of his life's passion, the underclass: ie. to speak with a more authentic voice. Cabrol possesses total dimension. Berger has a tendency, in some stories of this trilogy, to proseletyze in his anxiety to place before us the plight of the disappearing peasant communities. His preface and endpiece, in this sense, are possibly redundant these days.His work has been out there for some time. In the Cabrol piece he speaks from within, with deep compassion, humour, and immediacy. Her third life is one of the most poignant and imaginative pieces in the Berger canon. There was a tele-doc. on the author about the time,'King' was published, which reviewed his public life. Picture Berger ca 1960, back on the B & W BBC box in a white turtle neck, sparring before an old masterpiece with the grey-suited High Priest of the British art establishment, Lord Kenneth Clark. Even then Berger possessed the crouched shoulder, the flurry of gestures, the idefatigable energy to burrow into the cherished notions of the elite. He refused to assume received wisdom. I admire his tenacity, tact, and honesty. His questing keeps him forever young.

"Pig Earth", by John Berger is the first of 3 books written over a fifteen-year period that taken together form the trilogy, "Into Their Labours". The setting for the first volume is a small village in the French Alps containing a collection of stories about the traditional life of peasants in their village. The books taken together offer a sweeping view of what has happened to this group of people, and as the Author notes, with small changes in detail these stories could be of peasants and their economy anywhere in the world.The, "economy", of the peasant is the keystone not only of their monetary well being, it also is the foundation that supports their culture, their way of life. It is the means by which they are able to stay away from the cities and there industrialization, the village maintains the individual, the city destroys him or her. This first book shows the life of the Alpine Village intact even as it foreshadows its demise.There are great ranges of stories that cover daily life, the 24-hour a day commitment that their lives require, and in the end a three-part story that illustrates what will be the downfall of the village. This three-part story is particularly fascinating for the Village disciplines one of its own that they have labeled with a superstitious moniker. When they carry out her isolation from the Village, she adapts, embraces ways different from those who have scorned her, and in the end the destruction of the Alpine Village and its way of life is gone, and those who live there do not yet realize it.This book is an interesting hybrid that includes poetry interspersed among the traditional prose of a novel. I am not a reader of poetry so the only compliment I can pay this portion of Mr. Berger's work, is that I enjoyed it. He placed and wrote the poems in such a manner that they read without breaking the cadence of the larger work.This work contains an element that the Author notes is a relic of the Nineteenth Century, even as he mourns the passing of the practice. In a section named, "Historical Afterword", the Author explains his book. What he says about his book I will leave to those who choose to read this man's work. However his Philosophy on what books have become is interesting and very accurate in my estimation as well. Many I know will find what he says offensive as they read that of which he speaks. He talks of how it is assumed that literature has elevated itself into pure art, however he believes it has degenerated into pure entertainment. Of one example he gives, is his feeling that Authors who believe their work of imagination to be all that a reader needs. He finds this attitude insulting to the, "dignity of the reader, the experience communicated, and the writer". He follows this with an essay on his book, which is brilliant, demonstrates the talent of this man not only as a writer but also as a pure thinker. If he had a bookstore I believe I would like it. Of course it would be small and would contain on

I approached this book, knowing that John Berger was a Marxist, with the fear that I would be treated to pages of dogma about how the realities of modern capitolism were destroying the pre-industrial arcadia of provincial France. Luckily, he is much more subtle than this. He doesn't rant about the value of the peasant world; he simply gets it across exactly the way it is. I never for a second felt that he was romanticizing the lives of the residents. And while the prose is beautiful, Berger never poeticizes the reality of peasant life - slaughtering animals, finding water pipes, getting goats to breed (notice the decidedly un-romanticized title); he allows us, however, to see why these tasks have their own beauty, their own value.It is ironic that a book so anchored in realism should have its greatest success with a work of fantasy: the stories that make up The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol are all masterpieces, and allow Pig Earth to be more than just a lovely work of journalism. The only thing I felt detracted from the coherence and overall quality of the book was the poetry. Berger is a fine poet, but not a great one; he is, however, a great writer of prose. I was generally much more impressed with the stories than the poetry, and didn't think many of the poems were of enough merit to be included.The sadness one feels at the close of this book is an earned sadness. What I mean by this is that Berger succesfully makes one feel, without saying a single word about it, that it is truly a shame that this world will probably not exist for much longer, that farming will probably done by a few people who will be pushing buttons on machines instead of living the traditional life of a peasant. Obviously, this is inevitable, but this book is a worthwhile reminder that progress comes at a cost, as well as being a wonderful read.

Over 1500m above where Vispertal meets Mattertal lies Törbel, which may once have been the second most beautiful village in the Alps. In the winter of 1988 when the alleys between the log houses, barns and stables were covered with dirty snow, farmers wearing red/white bandanas on their heads walked at dusk from stables to the milk coop with metal milk cans on their shoulders. Farming for survival had ended. Most worked daily in the chemical factories in the Rhone Valley and only farmed on the side. In December of 1996 we gave a copy the German translation of John Berger's trilogy (Pig Earth/Once in Europa/Lilac and Flag) to Bruno, the last full-time farmer in Törbel. After reading one or two stories he said, more or less, so what. That's just how it is! What the farmer sees as simple truth, John Berger has transformed into a clear and very beautiful work of art for the rest of us. Berger wrote elsewhere that "...the principal function of painting, ..., was...to make as if continually present, what soon was to be absent". His description of the death of Bauernleben is unparalleled, especially for those of us who lost the Heimat when the grandparents died. I would like to go to the village where the people gather in the Republican Lyra to drink and talk. I want to know if the Cockadrille, like Bruno (in "Lieber Alex") really lived. I expect that she did, but in the form of more than one woman. I hope someday to find and wander through that village, not entirely by accident.

Over 1500m above where Vispertal meets Mattertal lies Törbel, which may once have been the second most beautiful village in the Alps. In the winter of 1988 when the alleys between the log houses, barns and stables were covered with dirty snow, farmers wearing red/white bandanas on their heads walked at dusk from stables to the milk coop with metal milk cans on their shoulders. Farming for survival had ended. Most worked daily in the chemical factories in the Rhone Valley and only farmed on the side. In December of 1996 we gave a copy the German translation of John Berger's trilogy (Pig Earth/Once in Europa/Lilac and Flag) to Bruno, the last full-time farmer in Törbel. After reading one or two stories he said, more or less, so what. That's just how it is! What the farmer sees as simple truth, John Berger has transformed into a clear and very beautiful work of art for the rest of us. Berger wrote elsewhere that "...the principal function of painting, ..., was...to make as if continually present, what soon was to be absent". His description of the death of Bauernleben is unparalleled, especially for those of us who lost the Heimat when the grandparents died. I would like to go to the village where the people gather in the Republican Lyra to drink and talk. I want to know if the Cockadrille, like Bruno (in "Lieber Alex") really lived. I expect that she did. I hope someday to find and wander through that village, not entirely by accident.