Remembering: A Novel

While I found this short novel hard to get into, it was well worth the patience. After I finished reading it, I went back through with a highlighter and marked sections that I never want to forget. It was a breath of fresh air, or should I say, a reminder of "good pastures and cattle coming to the spring in the evening to drink."

This was the first WB novel I have read after reading several collections of his essays. Living in rural Tennessee, in the midst of both huge commercial farms and Amish neighbors, I easily understood the anguish of the main character in this novel.

From Publishers Weekly In the course of a single day in 1976, the span of this elegiac novel, while in San Francisco attending a conference on agricultural technology, an emotionally troubled journalist wanders through pre-dawn streets reflecting on the early days of his marriage, on his parents and their love of the land. "Berry writes with grace and eloquence of the beauty in handed-down lives," declared PW. Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Library Journal Set in the year of the U.S. bicentennial, this novel is a lament for what the country has lost in its pursuit of progress. Andy Catlett, a farmer and agricultural journalist, has lost his land, and his resulting bitterness has cut him off from family and friends. After attending a pompous conference on "The Future of the American Food System," he wanders the streets of San Francisco considering the spiritual dismemberment he sees around him. Because economic dictates have replaced principles of humanity, man's harmony with his environment has been destroyed. Andy's lyrical reveries allude to past generations of family and friends, but many of these characters are too sparsely drawn to capture the reader's interest. Albert E. Wilhelm, Tennessee Technological Univ., Cookeville Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

This short novel is the best use of the English language among contemporary authors which I've encountered in a very long time. This story of a farmer and his passions redeemed and his worldview re-oriented is not only a tribute to the best of rural life, but is a testimony to the triumph of the human spirit which seeks ever to soar above the misfortunes and tragedies which we otherwise too often accomodate in life. I'm horrified to discover on this site that it is fast out of print. This is a great loss to story tellers and lovers of stories. This is one of the finest - even if unsung - to be sure.

In American Literature courses (of the high school variety) the "American Dream" too often ends up sounding like the "American Nightmare." Jay Gatsby, Willy Loman, Roy Hobbs (The Natural) -- they all come to disastrous ends because they all follow the wrong dream. This year, I ended my 11th grade American Literature course with Wendell Berry's short novel "Remembering." I taught it along with Bill Forsythe's brilliant film comedy "Local Hero." Together, they offer an effective and credible response to the American dream-as-nightmare despair of most serious American literature. "Remembering" is a small, quiet story of Andy Catlett, who, like Dante in "The Divine Comedy" (the model for the story), is experiencing a profound mid-life crisis, triggered by the loss of a hand (a "dis-membering) in a farming accident. Through a series of reminiscences, or re-memberings (of family members and members of his rural community), Andy is reunited with his past and his present life, and recommits himself to his local community, his farm, and his family. He returns East (reversing the westward movement of Americans from the days of Lewis and Clark), literally running his car into his land and disabling it in the process. Berry is a fine writer -- among the best now working in English. He uses words with great care, and sees late 20th century America more clearly than anyone I know. And his is a comic vision -- as Dante's is. He sees a difficult hope for us -- difficult but possible. I highly recommend this novel, and hope that readers use it as a springboard to his other novels, essays, and poems.