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It's a little disconcerting to review a book that has this notice following the
acknowledgments page:
"Persons attempting to find a 'text' in this book will be prosecuted; persons
attempting to find a 'subtext' in it will be banished; persons attempting to explain,
interpret, explicate, analyze, deconstruct, or otherwise 'understand' it will be exiled to
a desert island in the company only of other explainers."
Somehow, though, this fit in with the little I knew of Wendell Berry. A quote of his
extolling the virtues of growing one's own food graces a shelf in our local store's
produce section. I'd read a short piece somewhat critical of him because his wife types
all his manuscripts. I knew he had published impassioned defenses of tobacco farmers. I
knew enough to be intrigued.
JAYBER CROW doesn't disappoint. In a market saturated with the sensational, with sex and
violence and the supernatural, this quiet, reflective novel seems a gift from a world gone
by. By the time you finish it, you may wish it didn't have to go.
Jayber Crow tells us his story from his birth near Port Williams, Kentucky, early in the
20th century. His natural parents taken by the flu epidemic of 1918, he was raised by an
older childless couple, who left him again orphaned at age 10. A stint in a church
orphanage soured him on rules and institutions, yet inspired him enough to attend
pre-ministerial college for a couple of doubt-ridden years. Troubled by his unanswered
questions about the Bible and drawn back to his childhood home, he makes his way after the
flood of 1937 to a barbershop in Port Williams, where he practices this trade for most of
his adult life. He also takes on grave digging and janitorial services for the local
church, most of whose female members regard him warily because he isn't above a Saturday
night "water" drinking party with the boys. "I loved to hear what that jug
had to say for itself; when it said it was 'good-good-good,' I believed it. Presently I
observed that the moon had become abashed and uncertain of its position out there in the
fathomless sky."
Jayber's troubled faith, his position as a barber, and his honorable love for an
unattainable woman all combine to provide him (and us) with valuable perspective on the
passage of time and the changes it brings. At the risk of being exiled to an island of
explainers, I couldn't help but see Mattie Chatham as a symbol for the sustainable, small
scale and conservative methods of farming that began to die out in the 1960s. The graceful
Mattie is a farmer's daughter who marries Troy, a showoff destined to sink deeper and
deeper into debt. Troy himself proves to be, for Jayber, the ideal challenge to the
Biblical injunction to "love thy neighbor."
For in the end, Jayber is a man of hard-won faith, a faith unique to himself and his life.
When the county inspector invades his barbershop and finds there is no running hot water
(he heats it in a metal urn over a coal fire), Jayber elects to close his shop and finish
out his days in a modest shack on the river. He still walks into town for church. "I
don't attend altogether for religious reasons. I feel more religious, in fact, here beside
this corrupt and holy stream."
Did I mention that Berry is a beautiful writer? This quiet and elegiac book will move you,
if you let it.
--- Reviewed by Eileen Zimmerman Nicol (ezn1@aol.com)
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