Friday, March 11, 2011
Book Talk: Fidelity By Wendell Berry
Posted by Anne Gudger: writer, mother, teacher & all around STH (super terrific human).
Wendell Berry is a master storyteller, essayist and poet. Look him up in Wikipedia and do some addition on the number of published works in all categories, including awards and fellowships (both Guggenheim and Rockefeller). The man is prolific indeed. Berry is a writer’s writer, a reader’s writer and everything in between.
I particularly love Fidelity, which is five interconnected short stories that plunk the reading into the middle of the lives of the Port William community with little preamble. You’ll feel like you’re sitting in Hannah’s kitchen listening to family stories or, more likely, following her around and helping with chores. Fidelity is a quick read and introduction. My guess is you’ll want more. And yes the title pays off. Each story touches on the thread of fidelity—a deep faithfulness between the people and land.
In one of the Fidelity stories, Danny steals Burley out of the hospital so that Burley--who’s 82 and dying—can die away from the “mechanical room, in the merciless light” with tubes running in and out of him. Danny is a do-it-yourself guy who’s guided by his heart and doing what’s right. He knows better than to waste time arguing with doctors to get Burley discharged. Instead, he goes to the hospital in the middle of the night, unhooks the comatose Burley from all the monitors, lays him on a gurney, covers him with a sheet and scoots him out the emergency entrance.
Danny takes Burley to an old barn, deep in the woods that’s been shelter for the two of them when hunting and fishing.
Burley wakes up once. Danny asks if he knows where he is and Burley tells him, “ Right here.” Danny asks Burley if he wants anything and Burley tells him, “Drink.” So Danny heads to the spring to get Burley water:
When he returned, Burley’s eyes were closed again, and he looked more deeply sunk within himself than before. It was as though his soul, like a circling hawk, had swung back into this world on a wide curve, to look once more out of his eyes at what he had always known and to speak with his voice, and then had swung out of it again, the curve widening. Danny stood still, holding the can of water. He could hear Burley’s breaths coming slower than before, tentative and unsteady. Danny listened. He picked up Burley’s wrist and held it. And then he shouldered his tools and went up into the woods and began to dig.
This death scene moved my heart and inspires me to pull nature into my own writing when I’m trying to get at those huge life and death moments. In Berry's imagery, there’s no need for elevated language or misplaced sentimentality. The hawk--watching, circling, curving--does all the work necessary.
3 Comments:
With my own mother now tries to find her way to pass on from this life in a similar setting. She is asking for an end to distraction, yet is given psych drugs and offered electro-convulsion therapy by an amibitious psychiatrist. We turned him down.
Can we no longer die in peace?
My mother loved growing up on a farm. I devoured Berry's books in my 20s--they made me consider farming as a career.
He wrote about connecting to land and community --something sorely lacking, it seems.
That scene was exquisite.
That scene was exquisite.
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