Will the Real Jaber Crow Please Stand?
Rating:
5 / 5
Jayber Crow may have sat on the back seat of his church, but there is no way the reader of Wendell Berry's book can be so detached from its characters and story. It is a warm, rich tale of human lives that affects all who venture to its pages. In addition, Mr. Berry is a master writer.
It appears that the Jaber story is written on two levels, but when I asked Mr. Berry about it, he did not seem to agree. Perhaps this is the kind of analysis he asks his college students to pursue and is better left in class. Whatever the case, as a fellow Kentuckian I can vouch for those who say he has a good handle on small town life in that State. He also has the ability to show the lives of the ordinary Port Royal citizens differ little from those of central New York City.
The book is a masterpiece
The Ideal Reader's Ideal Read
Rating:
5 / 5
Zadie Smith wrote, "The ideal reader cannot sleep when holding the writer he was meant to be with."
That has been my experience over the past several days. I'm the sort who can always sleep, but since I started into Jayber Crow I've suffered a delicious insomnia whose symptoms include a reluctance physically to set down the book and turn off the light and an inability mentally to set aside the story or extinguish the lightning flashes it generates in my mind.
Usually what sets my mind whirring is incisive nonfiction (including Berry's). But Jayber Crow is definitely fiction. It contains some theses--economic, political, theological--and these are just what a reader of Wendell Berry's essays would expect to find in a novel bearing his name. But unlike lesser works of fiction, this one requires no caveat to the reader to "read past" the theses, to keep the themes from getting in the way of the story. That's simply not a danger here. The story is that good.
Here are all the pleasures of reading fiction: an unfamiliar world brought to life, or rather, the reader brought to life within it; characters so true that one cannot avoid plunging with them into sorrow and joy; the naming of experiences we all have had in terms that seem to have been made by the experiences themselves; and a dialect so authentic one couldn't fake it in years, but which one understands intimately as it rolls over the page.
The narrator's insights on life ring true because they seem to grow not from any predetermined agenda but from lived experience, from a life consumed by the love of people and place. More importantly, to read this novel is to breathe the air of a world that few Americans born after WWII ever knew but that many of us both yearn for and mourn in its loss and lack.
This novel has weaknesses, but they are few and forgiveable. Its technical mastery and its essential goodness goodness are incomparable--at least from the perspective of one "ideal reader."
Berry at his best
Rating:
5 / 5
As a long-time fan of Berry's poetry and essays, I decided it was time to turn to his prose. And I shouldn't have been surprised to find that it was a mingling of those two - a beautifully poetic prose tinged with the instructiveness of an essay. Wendell Berry has proven himself a master storyteller and his tales are always compelling."Jayber Crow" tells the life story of Jonah Crow, a barber in the Port William Membership, who affectionately becomes known as Jayber. The novel builds slowly, dwelling on Jayber's youth and his misguided attempts to serve God through the ministry. Disillusioned with too many doubts and questions with no answers in sight, Jayber sets off on his own and eventually discovers his talent for cutting hair. He finds himself the barber of Port William for over thirty years, faithfully cutting hair and participating in the lives of those around him. Initially, Jayber may seem like a lonely man. He is a confirmed bachelor, who lives in his small apartment above the barber shop. Yet he knows the deepest, fullest extent of love and passion, as yet unrequited by Mattie Keith (Chatham). (As he says, "I was married to Mattie Chatham, but she was not married to me...) He watches Mattie as she herself experiences love, marriage, loss and misery, never once able to express his true feelings for her. Even after he retires as barber, Jayber still remains the town's barber, and becomes an owner of property - a small cottage by the river where he can fish and reflect on the glories of nature. By and by, Jayber comes to find the answers to those doubts and questions he had long ago concerning God and he proves himself to be a faithful servant and steward of God's creation. Wendell Berry creates a wonderful cast of characters whom he evokes with believability and wisdom. The town of Port William Membership becomes a real place on the Kentucky River, that watches as the land around it becomes more technological and industrial. Yet Berry maintains his focus on how this industrial progress can be just as destructive as others might deem it necessary. Berry shows this distinction in the story of the Keith family - the struggle between father and son-in-law - for the future of the family farm. Berry's telling of Jayber's life is poetic and often elegiac. As he gives up his barber shop, the reader feels like they are saying goodbye to Jayber as well. We have lived with him through the peaks and valleys, and felt the sting of his unrequited love for Mattie. As industrial progress closes in on Port William, we feel the decrepitude and downfall of the small "backwater" town. We grieve for Jayber's losses; but Berry is not one to let the story die without a hopeful conclusion. His final paragraphs, to me, rank among some of the best conclusions in literature.
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