Author and activist Wendell Berry left a lasting legacy in the world of literature, releasing numerous novels, short stories, poems and essays. His immense body of work – and his life of activism – has become a benchmark for other writers.
Berry, 92, died Aug. 31 at his family farm in Henry County.
Acclaimed author Barbara Kingsolver, who grew up in Carlisle, saw fellow Berry as a mentor. She’s known for her own novels, including “The Poisonwood Bible” and “Demon Copperhead,” the latter of which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2023.
Last week, she spoke to WEKU’s Shepherd Snyder about what Berry meant to her as a writer and personal friend.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Snyder: I'd like to call attention to a statement you posted on Instagram a couple of days ago, where you called Wendell Berry, “the mentor who meant more to you than any other,” and I was wondering if you could elaborate on that sentiment for me a little bit?
Kingsolver: He inspired me as a novelist with the way he could take a handful of people in a small place, Port William, his imaginary world there, and show us the unlimited possibilities, all the ways that a small place is really the whole world. The way he could tell a story quietly and still leave you feeling that something has exploded inside of you (in a way) that you really need to think about.
His poetry inspired me, both as a writer of poetry, also as a reader of poetry, and just as a person. I will say that in these last two days since he died, which I think took a whole lot of us — I mean, we know he was 92. We know, you know, we're in touch with him. I've been in touch with him. I knew that he had been ailing. But also, there is a way in which I expected Wendell to live forever.
Snyder: Wendell Berry feels like a writer who you really got to know personally through his writing. I guess, to that note, how well do you feel like you knew Wendell Berry? Did you have a personal relationship with him at all?
Kingsolver: Well, I did. And in fact, my family did. My father was also named Wendell, Wendell Kingsolver. And those two Wendells worked together. I remember, when I was a teenager, I guess, they were working together on preserving some of the beautiful, natural places in Kentucky that are threatened, notably the Red River Gorge. I remember my mamaw talking about him in these funny terms, ‘that fella that doesn't like a tractor.’ And I remember thinking, ‘Well, you know, horses are cool!’
So I knew him both in this this very, kind of comfortable family way, I knew him as a person that was really important to my family, to my father, and I knew him as, later on, as a mentor to my writing, and also just a kind, kind man who always answered letters with handwritten notes and was always offering an open invitation to come to Lanes Landing.
But, I will tell you, I think the way that he was most important to me is that I followed the same path that so many small town kids do, where I felt like I had to kick the little town dust off my heels and get out of this very small town I grew up, and go see the world. And I imagined that I couldn't have anything important to say in the world until I had experienced the world. And I tried to do that. I did do that. I left Kentucky. I was lucky enough to go to college.
People tried to make me ashamed of my Kentucky roots, because that's what we all experience when we go out of Kentucky. People laugh at our accent, and they make fun of our hillbilly nature or what they perceive, that they imagine. And we all, to some extent, I think, internalize that shame. And so I tried for years to be a different Barbara who was not from Kentucky. And that Barbara was a terrible writer. She had absolutely nothing to say. And I didn't realize until later on that Wendell Berry had done the same thing.
He went to Stanford and then he was on the faculty at New York University, and he got quite a lot of attention and acclaim as a young writer. And I learned that he felt like he was losing something important, an important part of himself, by being away from home, and decided to move back. And I can well imagine what his New York colleagues told him. They told him, ‘You are crazy to leave New York and go back to Kentucky. What do you think you can be? What do you think you can say? Who will listen to a farmer from Kentucky?’
Well, by the time I was reading his work, I knew what he could say and who would listen to a farmer from Kentucky. And that was galvanizing to me.
Snyder: For people who are unfamiliar with Wendell Berry or who haven't read any of his works, how would you describe his writing for someone diving in for the first time? How do you even start with someone who's left behind such a massive body of work in the first place?
Kingsolver: The thing is, he was so prolific and he wrote in every form. I've mentioned his novels. I think I've talked a good deal about his poetry, but he was also very well-known, maybe best known as an essayist, as a nonfiction writer. He left us these amazing collections of essays, starting with his first, “The Long-Legged House,” which was really an exploration of that idea that, if we try to leave behind the people and places who made us, we're losing ourselves, we're betraying ourselves. That's really the beautiful thesis of his first collection of essays, is that whole notion of belonging.
And that was really important to me as a young reader and young writer, because I think the overriding mythology of our country, of the United States, is about individualism, individuality. And our heroes are, you know, the Superman, who acts alone. The solo flyer, the lone cowboy, whatever. All these icons are people who raise themselves up with their bootstraps, and, you know, the self-made person.
Well, that's baloney. Nobody is self-made. Everybody came from a mother who probably fed them. And if she didn't, then somebody did, and it was probably a mother-type person, a relative, a family member. Nobody is self-made, and that mythology is so destructive in so many ways to our psyches, because part of that myth is, ‘If I can't make it on my own, somehow I'm a failure. I haven't worked hard enough or I'm not smart enough,’ or something.
It becomes like an ingrown toenail, this pain of, ‘I can't make it alone.’
Well, it was so validating to me to read this work from Wendell Berry that really values and validates the women in the kitchen, the farmers tilling the soil, the people who are growing the food we eat, the fact that eating is an agricultural act. That we are all dependent on, not just our own families, but the family, and the neighborhood and the community of the world that's supporting our lives. And I would say that is the central theme of his non-fiction and his fiction. The idea that what we need is right here.
Snyder: While I've got you, is there anything else you'd like to add that I missed, anything else about Berry you think is worth mentioning, or is there any news of your own you have?
Kingsolver: I just want to say that, we're talking about Wendell Berry and how he will be here forever, how artists do get to live forever, but I'm thinking right now about Tanya, his wife and partner, who was absolutely an essential part of everything that Wendell wrote and published.
It was a cottage industry. It was a partnership. And his family, the Berry family, my heart is with them right now.
And there is a way in which we miss a mentor and a literary light in the abstract, but this is also a personal loss, and I don't want to fail to distinguish between those losses. He was also a very dear, beloved father, husband, friend.
