Jayber Crow

Why on earth did I wait so long to read Wendell Berry? Also: thank heavens I read this now instead of twenty years ago. This was, I think, a perfect time for me; I just feel wistful at looking back and wondering if younger me could've appreciated it; and sad that I've missed out for so long.

“Looking back”: that's this book in a nutshell, only, what nutshell could possibly do it justice? You know the outline—old man reminisces about his life spent almost entirely in one tiny Southern town—and you're reading this review, which means you don't immediately dismiss the book as impossibly dull, which means, good, you might have the wisdom to appreciate it. And oh, there's so much to appreciate: this is one long and gentle meditation on life, the choices we make (and the ones we merely think we're making); on kindness; listening; contemplating; belonging and loneliness and greed and blindness; on small things and gratitude and decency. On the ways we find meaning—or don't. On slavery, the modern kind. Loss. And, above all, love and loving; quiet love, thoughtful love.

There's a lot I could find wrong with it: a bit more romanticizing of white Southern small-town mentality than I cared for; likewise the dismissal of travel and cultural discovery. In fact it sometimes takes a Golden-Gate suspension bridge of disbelief to accept that Jayber could've grown as he did in that environment. I was irked by the social dynamic of bottling things up, behaving just so to keep appearances—then look on myself and words I keep unsaid, and I wonder who I'm irked at. Anyhow... never mind the flaws. The story was beautiful. The language... the language! Simple words, strung together so beautifully:

But there is something else. There are moments when the heart is generous, and then it knows that for better or worse our lives are woven together here, one with one another and with the place and all the living things.

But the mercy of the world is time. Time does not stop for love, but it does not stop for death and grief, either. After death and grief that (it seems) ought to have stopped the world, the world goes on. More things happen. And some of the things that happen are good.

Wendell Berry's writing is beautifully simplistic and his way of writing moves the reader passionately through the story of ordinary Jayber Crow. A wonderful story with many lessons to be learned through the life of Port William's barber, namely, the uniquely loving outlook of the world, small towns, nature, and everyday life. I recommend this book to anyone.

Jayber Crow is orphaned and institutionalized in a children's home early in life. He thinks about becoming a preacher, but instead he returns to his hometown and becomes a barber. Jayber reflects upon all the events of his life, and comes to some wise conclusions.

This book will probably be on my list of favorite books of the year. I adore Jayber Crow and his town and his friends in the town.

Some of my favorite passages:

Telling a story is like reaching into a granary full of wheat and drawing out a handful. There is always more to tell than can be told.

Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (p. 45). Catapult. Kindle Edition.

By then I wasn't just asking questions; I was being changed by them. I was being changed by my prayers, which dwindled down nearer and nearer to silence, which weren't confrontations with God but with the difficulty—in my own mind, or in the human lot—of knowing what or how to pray. Lying awake at night, I could feel myself being changed—into what, I had no idea. It was worse than wondering if I had received the call. I wasn't just a student or a going-to-be preacher anymore. I was a lost traveler wandering in the woods, needing to be on my way somewhere but not knowing where.

Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (p. 68). Catapult. Kindle Edition.

“You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out—perhaps a little at a time.”
“And how long is that going to take?”
“I don't know. As long as you live, perhaps.”
“That could be a long time.”
“I will tell you a further mystery,” he said. “It may take longer.”

Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (p. 70). Catapult. Kindle Edition.

And I knew that the Spirit that had gone forth to shape the world and make it live was still alive in it. I just had no doubt. I could see that I lived in the created world, and it was still being created. I would be part of it forever. There was no escape. The Spirit that made it was in it, shaping it and reshaping it, sometimes lying at rest, sometimes standing up and shaking itself, like a muddy horse, and letting the pieces fly. I had almost no sooner broke my leash than I had hit the wall.

Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (p. 99). Catapult. Kindle Edition.

If you could do it, I suppose, it would be a good idea to live your life in a straight line—starting, say, in the Dark Wood of Error, and proceeding by logical steps through Hell and Purgatory and into Heaven. Or you could take the King's Highway past appropriately named dangers, toils, and snares, and finally cross the River of Death and enter the Celestial City. But that is not the way I have done it, so far. I am a pilgrim, but my pilgrimage has been wandering and unmarked. Often what has looked like a straight line to me has been a circle or a doubling back. I have been in the Dark Wood of Error any number of times. I have known something of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, but not always in that order. The names of many snares and dangers have been made known to me, but I have seen them only in looking back. Often I have not known where I was going until I was already there. I have had my share of desires and goals, but my life has come to me or I have gone to it mainly by way of mistakes and surprises. Often I have received better than I have deserved. Often my fairest hopes have rested on bad mistakes. I am an ignorant pilgrim, crossing a dark valley. And yet for a long time, looking back, I have been unable to shake off the feeling that I have been led—make of that what you will.

Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (p. 149). Catapult. Kindle Edition.

They learned to have a very high opinion of God and a very low opinion of His works—although they could tell you that this world had been made by God Himself. What they didn't see was that it is beautiful, and that some of the greatest beauties are the briefest. They had imagined the church, which is an organization, but not the world, which is an order and a mystery. To them, the church did not exist in the world where people earn their living and have their being, but rather in the world where they fear death and Hell, which is not much of a world.

Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (p. 176). Catapult. Kindle Edition.

...this religion that scorned the beauty and goodness of this world was a puzzle to me. To begin with, I didn't think anybody believed it. I still don't think so. Those world-condemning sermons were preached to people who, on Sunday mornings, would be wearing their prettiest clothes. Even the old widows in their dark dresses would be pleasing to look at. By dressing up on the one day when most of them had leisure to do it, they signified their wish to present themselves to one another and to Heaven looking their best. The people who heard those sermons loved good crops, good gardens, good livestock and work animals and dogs; they loved flowers and the shade of trees, and laughter and music; some of them could make you a fair speech on the pleasures of a good drink of water or a patch of wild raspberries. While the wickedness of the flesh was preached from the pulpit, the young husbands and wives and the courting couples sat thigh to thigh, full of yearning and joy, and the old people thought of the beauty of the children. And when church was over they would go home to Heavenly dinners of fried chicken, it might be, and creamed new potatoes and creamed new peas and hot biscuits and butter and cherry pie and sweet milk and buttermilk. And the preacher and his family would always be invited to eat with somebody and they would always go, and the preacher, having just foresworn on behalf of everybody the joys of the flesh, would eat with unconsecrated relish.

Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (p. 177). Catapult. Kindle Edition.

I liked the naturally occurring silences—the one, for instance, just before the service began and the other, the briefest imaginable, just after the last amen. Occasionally a preacher would come who had a little bias toward silence, and then my attendance would become purposeful. At a certain point in the service the preacher would ask that we “observe a moment of silence.” You could hear a little rustle as the people settled down into that deliberate cessation. And then the quiet that was almost the quiet of the empty church would come over us and unite us as we were not united even in singing, and the little sounds (maybe a bird's song) from the world outside would come in to us, and we would completely hear it. But always too soon the preacher would become abashed (after all, he was being paid to talk) and start a prayer, and the beautiful moment would end. I would think again how I would like for us all just to go there from time to time and sit in silence. Maybe I am a Quaker of sorts, but I am told that the Quakers sometimes speak at their meetings. I would have preferred no talk, no noise at all.

Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (p. 180). Catapult. Kindle Edition.

My vision of the gathered church that had come to me after I became the janitor had been replaced by a vision of the gathered community. What I saw now was the community imperfect and irresolute but held together by the frayed and always fraying, incomplete and yet ever-holding bonds of the various sorts of affection. There had maybe never been anybody who had not been loved by somebody, who had been loved by somebody else, and so on and on. If you could go back into the story of Uncle Ive and Verna Shoals, you would find, certainly before and maybe after, somebody who loved them both. It was a community always disappointed in itself, disappointing its members, always trying to contain its divisions and gentle its meanness, always failing and yet always preserving a sort of will toward goodwill. I knew that, in the midst of all the ignorance and error, this was a membership; it was the membership of Port William and of no other place on earth. My vision gathered the community as it never has been and never will be gathered in this world of time, for the community must always be marred by members who are indifferent to it or against it, who are nonetheless its members and maybe nonetheless essential to it. And yet I saw them all as somehow perfected, beyond time, by one another's love, compassion, and forgiveness, as it is said we may be perfected by grace. And so there we all were on a little wave of time lifting up to eternity, and none of us ever in time would know what to make of it. How could we? It is a mystery, for we are eternal beings living in time.

Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (p. 221). Catapult. Kindle Edition.

What I had come to know (by feeling only) was that the place's true being, its presence you might say, was a sort of current, like an underground flow of water, except that the flowing was in all directions and yet did not flow away. When it rose into your heart and throat, you felt joy and sorrow at the same time, and the joining of times and lives. To come into the presence of the place was to know life and death, and to be near in all your thoughts to laughter and to tears. This would come over you and then pass away, as fragile as a moment of light.

Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (pp. 221-222). Catapult. Kindle Edition.

There are moments when the heart is generous, and then it knows that for better or worse our lives are woven together here, one with one another and with the place and all the living things.

Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (p. 226). Catapult. Kindle Edition.

But love, sooner or later, forces us out of time. It does not accept that limit. Of all that we feel and do, all the virtues and all the sins, love alone crowds us at last over the edge of the world. For love is always more than a little strange here. It is not explainable or even justifiable. It is itself the justifier. We do not make it. If it did not happen to us, we could not imagine it. It includes the world and time as a pregnant woman includes her child whose wrongs she will suffer and forgive. It is in the world but is not altogether of it. It is of eternity. It takes us there when it most holds us here.

Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (p. 265). Catapult. Kindle Edition.

I have never lived by plan. Any more than if I had been a bystander watching me live my life, I don't feel that I ever have been quite sure what was going on. Nearly everything that has happened to me has happened by surprise. All the important things have happened by surprise. And whatever has been happening usually has already happened before I have had time to expect it. The world doesn't stop because you are in love or in mourning or in need of time to think. And so when I have thought I was in my story or in charge of it, I really have been only on the edge of it, carried along.

Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (p. 338). Catapult. Kindle Edition.

This is a book about Heaven. I know it now. It floats among us like a cloud and is the realest thing we know and the least to be captured, the least to be possessed by anybody for himself. It is like a grain of mustard seed, which you cannot see among the crumbs of earth where it lies. It is like the reflection of the trees on the water.

Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (p. 367). Catapult. Kindle Edition.

Even a man of faith knows that (as Burley Coulter used to say) we've all got to go through enough to kill us.

Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow (Port William) (p. 372). Catapult. Kindle Edition.

Summary: A barber, near the end of his life, tells of life in the small town of Port William, along the Ohio River. 

I have been more interested in fiction lately, so I decided to pick up Jayber Crow, the book that most people I know suggest is the best book to start with for the Port William series. I have previously only read Hannah Coulter. A different member tells each book of the series of the community. There are eight novels and dozens of short stories.

I am reading this soon after reading Eugene Peterson's biography, A Burning in My Bones, for the second time. Eugene Peterson was born in 1932, a few years before the fictional Jayber Crow started being the barber at Port William (at 23 years old). So there were about 17 years between them. Jayber dropped out of seminary, and although he took some classes at a college, he was not really enrolled to get a degree. So when he, on a whim, quits his job and starts walking in a rainstorm, he eventually returns to the home where he lived before he went to an orphanage (his parents both died, and then his uncle and aunt died before he was 10.)

Port Wiliam is a realistic book that details the cultural changes of the 20th century. When Jayber moved to Port Wiliam, he purchased a barbershop that had been abandoned to the bank by the previous barber. Jayber lived above the one-room shop in a one-room apartment. There was no running water or bathrooms. There was electricity, but there was no reason for it other than his razors. For 30 years, Jayber has been the town's bachelor barber. There are not enough people in the town for Jayber to earn enough money to support a family. He has to become the church janitor and the town gravedigger even to support himself. The story is being told from the view of a retired Jayber in 1986.

Wendell Berry is an agrarian author. He writes nostalgically about a time when farms were fairly self-sufficient and limited by the number of animals the land could support and the number of crops the animals needed to eat to use the animal fertilizer. Even though Berry does not idealize the people, there is real tension, bad behavior, and humanity, but life is still idealized.

Eugene Peterson was a fan of Berry's fiction. And I am too. Berry can write stories that I want to read. But when I read Peterson or about Peterson, I see a real-life attempting to grapple with a world that wants to encourage us away from a human-focused world and church. Berry is trying to remind the reader of the need for humanity to live at a pace and style that supports the limits of being human. While the two authors fit together in many ways, I think the genre matters. Fiction always idealizes because it is not a real-life being discussed. The biography or memoir may only tell part of the story, but it is still attempting to tell a real story.

I enjoyed Jayber Crow. But I could never get wholly past the nostalgia. Many novels that I enjoy are about ideas and ideals. Jayber Crow is a story about what it means to be a part of a community, a real part, and how that community supports life, including a life of faith.