NYT Reviews Wendell Berry's Complete Essays

Dwight Garner appraises Library of America's recently published two-volume set containing Wendell Berry's essays published between 1969 and 2017. "Together the books weigh in at a forest-pulping 1,674 pages," writes Garner. "It’s a lot of Wendell Berry." 

It’s vastly too much Wendell Berry, a determined reader soon discovers. Counterpoint Press delivered a saltier introduction to this writer’s work last year with “The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry.” It’s one-fifth the size and, in paperback, about one-fifth the price.

The numbing length of these two new collections do Berry no favors. From the start, he bangs the same themes so relentlessly — the perils of industrial agriculture, the decimation of rural life, America’s blind faith in technology — that one’s eyes begin to cross.

It’s not that Berry isn’t correct to be desperately concerned about these issues, and about the loss of old ways and fine workmanship in general. You can be right there alongside him, at least on the big points, while still being driven to madness by repetition. It’s as if someone has put a bag over your head.

Read on at the New York Times.