Essays: Wendell Berry's The Way of Ignorance

The Way of Ignorance
By Wendell Berry
Shoemaker & Howard, Reprint edition, 2006
(192 pages, $15.00, paperback)

reviewed by Chris Grataski

It is well known that in Wendell Berry’s fiction the main character is a place. In his non-fiction also we see the idea of place used creatively, not only as subject matter but almost as premise in remonstrance. Berry has developed a way of arguing that locates his essays in the genre of creative non-fiction, making him one of the few legitimate philosophers to develop his arguments in such a way. But rather than merely following standard rhetorical patterns and placing them within the literary elements of place, scene, setting, and storyline, Berry actually writes place into the rhetorical structure, by taking us with him into the deepest convictions of his heart, which is a heart shaped by a land, a community, and a faith. In The Way of Ignorance, Wendell Berry writes from the farm about agriculture, about American letters as an aged poet, about marriage as a covenantally shaped husband and seasoned father, and about the Scriptures as one who is faithful, unconfident, and hungry for truth.

His love of good sense and decency and his firm handle on both bring an indictment to the hubris and impropriety of big America. Readers of Berry’s previous work will not be surprised by his concerns and subject matter: sustainability, propriety of scale, beauty, fidelity to the given world, and appropriate technology. It’s always a delight to hear a great writer talk about those to whom he feels indebted regarding literary style and the contours of his worldview, even more when that writer has previously been quite silent. In the essay “Imagination in Place,” seasoned Berry readers will be pleased to find three such lists, as well as an interesting discussion of the role of the Southern Agrarians. Here, Berry wraps a criticism in an authentic compliment. While acknowledging his indebtedness to them he points out the problem of Agrarianism without agriculture, and more pointedly, the problem of writing about Agrarianism while living in the city, his ultimate concern being the over-specialization and compartmentalization of knowledge into the academy.

Berry has made it part of his life’s work to fight off false and unnecessary dualisms, the great chasms that often appear between university and commonplace, science and imagination, faith and knowledge. This task is picked up again in the title essay as Berry articulates working taxonomies of both knowledge and ignorance. His epistemological musings are a breath of fresh air when viewed against the backdrop of either the enlightenment or postmodernism, and most pointedly as part of his critique of the industrialism of our culture. Berry highlights the misbeliefs and lies of corporate America, pointing out the absurdity of solutions that by their very nature create more problems. He is angry and emboldened and creatively hopeful.

Though his work is often praised for its lucidity and grace and is often regarded as enjoyably nostalgic and romantic, many feel that these very qualities make his ideas too idealistic and unattainable. This recent publication will undoubtedly receive the same criticism. His diagnosis of the problem is excellent, but people will have their doubts about his proposed solutions. Rather than solve big problems with big and sweeping solutions, Berry proposes small, incremental steps. He issues a call to humility, in order to recover community. He issues a call to consider scale, in order to recover democracy. And he asks us to walk instead of run, so we may listen to our past and pay attention to each other now. He believes that what we need is here and that if we can gain a clear enough vision of the destruction that we are doing to ourselves and to our planet, we might begin to detach ourselves from the corporate program and consumerism that violate our freedom and humanity. Change, he says, will come one person, one farm, one town at a time. If there are archetypes of beauty, and the Judeo-Christian redemptive pattern is one such form, with its quiet and peaceful but ultimately consuming revolution, as the great classic poets and storytellers have known, could the proposed solutions of this book, obviously not commencing with Wendell Berry, be considered for their aesthetic value? If we answer in the affirmative, we must consider that though beauty is to some extent subjective, whatever is true is also beautiful in some regard. Corporate answers to corporate problems have rarely been beautiful, and never in a lasting sort of way.

Wendell Berry never claims to have all the answers, but he most assuredly has a moral logic and an imaginative obedience that give us the intimation that he has glimpsed something beautiful and useful. This book has an ability to introduce the proud to humility, as it did for myself, and by so doing, open our darkened minds to beautiful knowledge often dismissed merely by our hurry.

Chris Grataski is a student at Liberty University