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A review by tangowhiskyman
The Memory of Old Jack by Wendell Berry
5.0
Until recently I had never heard of Wendell Berry. I started reading The Memory of Old Jack at the same time as my wife started reading Jayber Crow. Our house was silent for days.
I immediately became immersed in the final day of Jack Beechum, reflecting upon his life, for better or worse. Critics may argue that there is little plot in this book, but that’s missing the point. This is tapestry weaving and what makes it so sublime is the language, which elevates it to dizzy heights.
A couple of the narratives stuck in my mind, one of them was Jack’s memory of being a young boy and watching his two elder siblings ride off to fight the Yankees
‘’This is not simply the knowledge of retrospect; because the vision of their departure met the knowledge of their deaths in the anachronistic mind of a child, the two have fused, so that it seems to him, in his vision, that he watches them depart with the clear foreknowledge that they will not return. They did not.’’
Or when Jack stands by the grave of the lover he took to escape his loveless marriage
‘’And always near him was the thought of the dead woman who had loved him as he was, and of the living one who could not.’’
This is just a beautiful book. Wendell Berry is a masterful story teller, in a class by himself.
I immediately became immersed in the final day of Jack Beechum, reflecting upon his life, for better or worse. Critics may argue that there is little plot in this book, but that’s missing the point. This is tapestry weaving and what makes it so sublime is the language, which elevates it to dizzy heights.
A couple of the narratives stuck in my mind, one of them was Jack’s memory of being a young boy and watching his two elder siblings ride off to fight the Yankees
‘’This is not simply the knowledge of retrospect; because the vision of their departure met the knowledge of their deaths in the anachronistic mind of a child, the two have fused, so that it seems to him, in his vision, that he watches them depart with the clear foreknowledge that they will not return. They did not.’’
Or when Jack stands by the grave of the lover he took to escape his loveless marriage
‘’And always near him was the thought of the dead woman who had loved him as he was, and of the living one who could not.’’
This is just a beautiful book. Wendell Berry is a masterful story teller, in a class by himself.