A Place on Earth: A Novel
by Wendell Berry
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Book Summary Information
Author: Wendell BerryEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-06
ISBN: 1582431248
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Counterpoint
Book Reviews of A Place on Earth: A Novel
Book Review: The swiftest traveler is he who travels a foot
Summary: 5 Stars
With these words Thoreau demonstrated that if one has to spend a day's wages to purchase the fare for a journey that takes a day by one's own effort, the hiker has earned a good deal more than the worker. It's a lesson that we have yet to incorporate into our modern life. In addition to handing over a day's wages to avoid a day's walk, we hire out the care of our children, gardens, homes, and pets as well as the production and preparation of our food, often to people we barely know, all because our jobs do not allow us the time to do these things for ourselves. Many of us spend more waking hours in our cars than we do in our homes. We "connect" with people online and therefore conclude that we are part of "a community." We are surrounded by plants we can't name and live in houses with rooms we rarely enter.
It from this milieu that Wendell Berry's novel "A Place on Earth" almost functions as escapism, and certainly a delight. Berry transports us to the geographically fictional but undeniably real town of Port William, Kentucky at the close of the Second World War, a community removed in time and mood from much of our current experience. It's a place where farmers work their fields with horses, dinner is the noonday meal, and men call their grandsons "honey." A place of the quiet dignity of good work and skills honed by the knowledge of and connection to the land. A place of tragedy that befalls the land and its people when these skills and connections are neglected. A place of renewal and strength despite devastating loss.
Berry's writing is a celebration of language and his subject. As an essayist he cogently illustrates the state of agriculture, politics, and consumerism in our society. Working with a gentler, but equally passionate touch as a novelist he has produced a moving tale honoring people, place, and work.
Summary of A Place on Earth: A Novel
Part ribald farce, part lyrical contemplation, Wendell Berry's novel is the story of a place-Port William, Kentucky-the farm lands and forests that surround it, and the river that runs nearby. The rhythms of this novel are the rhythms of the land. A Place on Earth resonates with variations played on themes of change; looping transitions from war into peace, winter into spring, browning flood destruction into greening fields, absence into presence, lost into found. This brings the revised 1983 edition back into print, the next book in our program to put all of Wendell Berry's fiction into print in revised and corrected uniform editions.Literature & Fiction Books
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