Imagination in Place

“Berrys latest collection of essays is the reminiscence of a literary life. It is a book that acknowledges a lifetime of intellectual influences, and in doing so, positions Berry more squarely as a cornerstone of American literature . . . A necessary book. Here, Berrys place as the grandfather of slow food or the prophet of rural living is not questioned. This book ensures we understand the depth and breadth of Berrys art.” —San Francisco Chronicle

A writer who can imagine the “community belonging to its place” is one who has applied his knowledge and citizenship to achieve the goal to which Wendell Berry has always aspired—to be a native to his own local culture. And for Berry, what is “local, fully imagined, becomes universal,” and the “local” is to know ones place and allow the imagination to inspire and instill “a practical respect for what is there besides ourselves."

In Imagination in Place, we travel to the local cultures of several writers important to Berrys life and work, from Wallace Stegners great West and Ernest Gaines Louisiana plantation life to Donald Halls New England, and on to the Western frontier as seen through the Far East lens of Gary Snyder. Berry laments todays dispossessed and displaced, those writers and people with no home and no citizenship, but he argues that there is hope for the establishment of new local cultures in both the practical and literary sense.

Rich with Berrys personal experience of life as a Kentucky agrarian, the collection includes portraits of a few of Americas most imaginative writers, including James Still, Hayden Carruth, Jane Kenyon, John Haines, and several others.

“[A] stellar collection . . . Foodies, architects, transportation engineers, and other writers are adopting and adapting [Berry’s] concepts, perhaps leading to what he envisions will one day be an authentic settlement of our country.“ —The Oregonian