Tuesday, April 15, 2008

fantastic book


just finished reading Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry. You have got to read this guy. His writing is amazing, beautiful, powerful, full of meaning and life. I hear that Berry is a Christian; and this comes through in his work, not forcefully--but with subtlety and beauty.

In my limited experience, most of the "Christian" fiction out there is not very good--very little of it is true literature; usually just a cleaned up form of bestselling mystery, adventure, horror, or romance.

Sadly, I've never seen Berry's work in a Christian bookstore or heard it discussed in Christian circles (until recently, with radical, weird Christians like Josh :-))

Jayber Crow is a novel told as an autobiography. The title character is an orphan; later a man who thinks he is called to preach, then realizes he's not, becomes a barber, and settles down in the small town where he grew up. The bulk of the story is about the lives of the people in this town, and how Jayber relates to them, and the lessons he learns along the way.

Hard to explain, just a beautiful picture of life, death, love, community, and connection with God's creation.

There have been few books that moved me like Jayber Crow--I highly recommend it! Rather than try to review it, I'm going to post some excerpts over the next few days.

3 comments:

Rev. April said...

were you there when nina read us the berry poem? his poetry is awesome too. although nuc just gave up on reading his essays, saying "this guy just likes to rant about stuff i already agree with!"

so- can't please everyone... :)

Moff said...

I think I've said thanks for turning me on to Wendell Berry, but just thought I'd say it again. Thanks. :^)

(and all my criticism about Jayber not living out his love for Mattie is just because I care about Jayber. Even though he's not real. :^D)

Todd said...

Isn't it amazing how we come to care for fictitious characters? That's often a sign of really great literature for me...