What Are People For?
Essays
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Ranging from America’s insatiable consumerism and household economies to literary subjects and America’s attitude toward waste, here Berry gracefully navigates from one topic to the next. He speaks candidly about the ills plaguing America and the growing gap between people and the land. Despite the somber nature of these essays, Berry’s voice and prose provide an underlying sense of faith and hope. He frames his reflections with poetic responsibility, standing up as a firm believer in the power of the human race not only to fix its past mistakes but to build a future that will provide a better life for all.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Poet, novelist and critic Berry ( Remembering ) identifies himself as ``a farmer of sorts and an artist of sorts,'' thereby indicating the scope of these 22 prodding, opinionated pieces. He touches on literary subjects as well as agrarianism, environmentalism and other political issues, his splendid writing infusing each topic with his sense of its urgency. Wallace Stegner is esteemed as a regionalist who protects the integrity of his literary terrain, unlike the many who write ``exploitively, condescendingly, and contemptuously'' of their milieus; and Edward Abbey is praised because he ``does not simply submit to our criticism, as does any author who publishes; he virtually demands it.'' Shifting from art to farming in ``Economy and Pleasure,'' Berry notes that, ``More and more, we take for granted that work must be destitute of pleasure.'' In ``Waste,'' he calls our attitude toward garbage the ``symbiosis of an unlimited greed at the top and a lazy . . . consumptiveness at the bottom.'' And in the title essay, he wryly observes that agricultural economists say there are too many farmers--but not too many agricultural economists.
