Wendell Berry RIP
By 
I have not been touched by the writings of Wendell Berry in the same way that many others have; as I have aged my horizons have become distinctly more urban. But he was a key figure in Kentucky letters and in the modern literature of rural America, and many are mourning him today. Sarah Ladd:
Kentucky writer and conservationist Wendell Berry once wrote: “Beware the machinery of longevity. When a man’s life is over the decent thing is for him to die. The forest does not withhold itself from death.”
A lover of forests, the farmer, author and former English professor died on Monday at his home in Port Royal, according to the New York Times and other media reports. He was 92.
Born in 1934 to Virginia Erdman and attorney John Marshall Berry, Wendell Berry was a prolific writer of nonfiction, poetry and fiction from Henry County, Kentucky.
In dozens of books he wrote of the need to protect — and ethically use — land, of God as a part of nature and of modernity as a force to be rebelled against.
Berry was a member of a group of Kentucky writers called the “Fab Five,” which included Bobbie Ann Mason and the late Gurney Norman, James Baker Hall and Ed McClanahan.
He leaves behind a sprawling legacy of advocacy, conservationism, literary pursuit and protest that inspired people from the hills of Kentucky to Hollywood and beyond.
His death leaves a vacancy of voice that was not always without controversy throughout his life but was decisive and steady throughout a long career.
Silas House, a bestselling Kentucky author of “A Parchment of Leaves” and many other books, shared a photo on social media Monday night with Berry and a dog named Liz.
“Wendell Berry has passed. Another great light gone out,” House, former poet laureate of Kentucky, wrote. “There are so many ways he influenced me but most of all what I keep thinking is that he was so good to me. Generous with his time and words. Complex. Brilliant. Revolutionary.”
Barbara Kingsolver, a bestselling author of “The Poisonwood Bible” and many other books, wrote on Instagram Monday night that Berry was a “prophet, good farmer, gentle literary giant, Kentuckian of the finest order and friend to all that is good.”
Berry was “the mentor who surely meant more to me than any other,” Kingsolver wrote. “All I can do with my grief tonight is go to my shelves and put my hands on his books. Our world will go on needing him, and the words will be here, even as his soul rests with the day blind stars.”
Joyce Carol Oates, bestselling American author of “Zero-Sum” and many other works, called Berry “a wonderful writer.”
“Long before it became a more familiar subject Wendell Berry was conscious of the endangered natural environment; indeed, Berry helped to raise this consciousness in the American tradition of Thoreau & Emerson in his idealism & reverence for life,” Oates wrote on social media.
Photo Credit: Wendell Berry with Nip and Jed, Lane’s Landing Farm, Henry County, KY 2012. (Photo by Guy Mendes), Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.