The Memory of Old Jack--Wendell Berry

This may be a peculiar novel to have as my first entry in this blog, but it is what I've been reading. Therefore, it's what you get.
Wendell Berry has become one of my favorite contemporary writers in recent weeks, as I've dipped into his essays, poems, and now this novel. Berry, a one-time English professor at the University of Kentucky, is distinguished by his embrace of a mindful agricultural life. What sort of a person abandons the cushy world of academic life, especially at a fairly prestigious university, to farm the Kentucky hill country with a team of horses?
My understanding of Berry's novels is that they all revolve around the same fictitious Kentucky town, Port Royal, and the same interlocking cluster of characters. Having seen some of the other titles, Jayber Crow and Hannah Coulter, and having been introduced to these characters in the pages of the current novel, I have a sense of Berry's approach.
Although Wendell Berry's Christianity is vital to his identity and to his thought, this novel would not fit onto the shelves of many Christian bookstores, which is one of the things I feel recommends it as a worthy read. In this book, Berry presents a very appealing portrait of rural life without romanticizing that life. Old Jack's life is hard, but he wouldn't trade that life for anything. Similarly, Berry presents married life as a virtue while detailing Old Jack's largely disappointing marriage. You could not say that the love between Jack and Ruth Beechum did not die because it really never lived. Nevertheless, they remained married and largely loyal to each other until her death. Berry describes Jack's adultery with a local widow in a way that allows us to understand it without condoning it. I would contrast this portrayal with Kate Chopin's rather bloodless portrayal of a dissolving marriage and adultery in The Awakening. In Chopin's novel, there is no reason for Edna Pontellier to abandon her husband. In Old Jack, there is every reason for Jack to abandon Ruth (and from Ruth's point of view, every reason for her to abandon him), yet Jack and Ruth remain together functionally if not emotionally, riding out their disappointment and making the best of things. Jack possesses far more reason for his straying than does Edna, and he seems to consider the matter much more fully.
This book's title has at least two meanings. In one sense, the title reflects the organizational plan that Berry employs. Old Jack, in his 90s, is the senior sage of Port Royal. The book tracks through the last two days of Jack's life, peppered with lengthy flashbacks that convey the steps and missteps that brought this man to this point. As admirable a character as Jack seems in the minds of his neighbors, his life is hardly a steady march to triumph. In fact, Jack's life contains failings in romance, fidelity, business, and friendship. In short, Jack is a sinful man. He's no paragon of virtue, unless that virtue is hard work. Yet he stands, in the minds of the people of Port Royal, as an exemplar of human life. Human life, you see, regardless of what anybody says to the contrary, involves muddling through, making mistakes, and not always having everything turn out all right. Had Jannete Oke written Old Jack's story, she would have had Ruth eventually come around to recognize Jack's good qualities. She'd have had Jack take great pains to become the man Ruth wanted him to be. Neither of these things happened, because that's not how real people generally behave, and in the end, only a warm handclasp showed that Ruth still held some genuine love for Jack. There's no deathbed proclamation of regret or desire.
In Berry's eyes, life is beautiful and worthwhile not when all the plot elements line up to create a satisfying climax. It's worthwhile when people struggle on through it, regardless of the bad things that come along.
Berry spends a good bit of time in this novel--and perhaps comes closest to damaging the artistic product--preaching his view of two kinds of life: city vs. country, mercantile vs. agricultural, consumption vs. production. Ruth does not fall on Berry's side of those dichotomies, believing that "no place may be sufficient to itself, but must lead to another place, and that all places must finally lead to money; that a man's work must lead not to the health of his family and the respect of his neighbors but to the market place" (65). Those who subscribe to such thinking, cannot wait to get out of Port Royal and on to bigger things. For them, forty acres must yield to eighty acres and beyond. This reminds me of Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres. The memory of Old Jack is ultimately then the memory of his dedication to his land and the people on the land around his. Toward the novel's close, Jack speaks to his protege, the son of his mentor Ben, about the value of the land: "That's all you've got, Mat. It's your only choice. It's all you can have; whatever you try to gain somewhere else, you'll lose here. . . . And it's enough. It's more than another."
Whenever I read Berry, I find myself thinking of Matthew 6:33: "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you." Of course, I tend to come back to that verse in just about anything I read. Jack Beechum does not lead a charmed life. His gal doesn't come around to his way of thinking in the end. He doesn't come around to hers. His only child, a daughter, winds up living a life of affluence and respectability that Jack cannot respect. He experiences financial setbacks that leave him far less materially successful than he might have been. He experiences the same moral failing that largely undid King David. Yet Jack, to some degree, seeks the kingdom of God--not within the walls of the church but within his own heart--and finds that like the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, he has all that he needs.