If 2008 was a year of anything bookwise for me, Wendell Berry would be near the top, not because I’ve read much of his writing, but because seemingly everyone who is someone I trust is talking about him.

Trey first recommended his “The Mad Farmer Liberation Front,” which rings of a similar tune to Kipling’s “God’s of the Copybook Headings.” Intrigued by this author’s skepticism of a world done away with mystery, I listened as others recommended his writing. Jayber Crow was where I started.

Subtitled “The life story of Jayber Crow, Barber, of the Port William Membership, as written by himself,” Jayber Crow tells the meandering story of a man who experiences the fullness of life by living, rather than by trying to live a full life. It’s difficult to tell whether Berry, in writing this story, was writing more about himself than a fictional barber, but his gentle distrust of the big, the fast and the certain have a strong appeal to me. I would recommend this to anyone willing to reconsider the meaning of life.

You would need to draw a very big map of the world in order to make Port William visible upon it. In the actual scale of a highway map, Port William would be smaller than the dot that locates it. In the eyes of the powers that be, we Port Williamites live and move and have our being within a black period about the size of the one that ends a sentence. It would be a considerable overstatement to say that before making their decisions the leaders of the world do not consult the citizens of Port Williams. Thousands of leaders of our state and nation, entire administrations, corporate board meetings, university sessions, synods and councils of the church have come and gone without hearing or pronouncing the name of Port Williams. And how many such invisible, nameless, powerless little places are there in the world? All the world, as a matter of fact, is a mosaic of little places invisible to the powers that be. And in the eyes of the powers that be all these invisible places do not add up to a visible place. They add up to words and numbers.
Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow, p 139 (2000).