Jayber Crow

By Wendell Berry,

Book cover of Jayber Crow

Book description

“This is a book about Heaven,” says Jayber Crow, “but I must say too that . . . I have wondered sometimes if it would not finally turn out to be a book about Hell.” It is 1932 and he has returned to his native Port William to become the…

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Why read it?

3 authors picked Jayber Crow as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

The story of a seemingly unremarkable man who sees the eternal in the temporal, and who has the breadth and depth of language to communicate his insight to us.

This book is a counterweight to the frenetic age in which we live currently. The book illustrates what it means to live simply and authentically, instead of measuring ourselves against others and allowing external forces to control us.

Wendell Berry depicts the decline of rural America before the forces of greed. 

His narrator, a small-town barber named Jayber Crow, sees his friends and neighbors trying to hold on to meaning and dignity in the face of their impending economic obsolescence.  Every character is vividly human; every situation is particular and yet universal.

I love this book on its own terms, and I treasure it as a sympathetic perspective on the themes in my poetry.

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