This week I offer a few thoughts on what remembering Wendell Berry calls to mind, present a video in which I suggest nominees for a Wendell Berry Hall of Fame, and share some other tributes. Thanks for reading.

I love and respect Wendell Berry for many reasons.

I appreciate his tireless devotion to “nowhere places” and his commitment to their preservation. I respect his ability to present complicated ideas clearly and concisely— his writing on a sentence level, I mean. I am in awe of his capacity to create characters that seem at once mythical and yet deeply human. I return again and again to his poems, essays, and stories because they challenge my preconceived notions, they force me to confront my own prejudices and weaknesses, they demand that I look in the mirror and consider my complicity in things I claim to reject.

I accept his advice to, well, accept my own limitations.

And yet I revere his sheer persistence.

But what I love most, and what I have been contemplating since Monday evening when I learned of his death, is his persona, his character, his spirit. I’ve never met anyone quite like him, in person or on the page. He could be cantankerous, but he wasn’t prideful. He could be challenging, but he was never cruel. He was funny and wry, but not at the cost of others. He could be incredibly charming (he was one of those rare people who made you feel important just by his very attention) but he wasn’t deceitful. He was, in some ways, a good old country boy, but he was also mannered and gentle and careful.

He was a presence but his pursuit was never his own standing.

When I think of Wendell Berry I think of his laughter and his hospitality. I think of his lovely wife, Tanya, and their nearly-as-lovely home. Of his old truck and his humble writing shed. His two border collies and the sheep on his hillside.

When I think of Wendell Berry I think of the time he told me he needed to sit down because his knees were bothering him and how I, trying to be courteous, said “Oh, I understand” to which he replied, “Oh no, ya don’t son” and walked off, grinning waggishly.

When I think of Wendell Berry I think of the thousands of pages he bequeathed us and the ideas he wrestled with. I think of the way he accepted criticism and engaged with his detractors. Of the thousands of letters he wrote to perfect strangers who thought of him as a friend and mentor. His dirty overalls and his love for rivers and appreciation for Woodford Reserve.

I think of my son, Coulter, who was named in honor of Burley and Hannah and the rest of that Port William clan.

When I think of Wendell Berry I think of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. I think of the gospel. Of someone worth imitating.

I don’t agree with everything he argued and I don’t pretend to live according to every bit of wisdom he dispensed (if I did I am certain he’d look at me askance and tell me to do some thinking of my own). But we can be disagreeable later, if we must. For now, I simply wish to pay tribute to a man for whom “it all turns on affection.”

“Affection,” he claimed in a speech, “leads us by way of good work to authentic hope.” It reminds us that “we do not have to live as if we are alone.” That posture is a legacy worth toasting. Gaumarjos!

When I think of Wendell Berry I think of the poem we had printed on our wedding favors back in 2009.

Whatever happens,
those who have learned
to love one another
have made their way
to the lasting world
and will not leave
whatever happens

May his memory be eternal.

The Wendell Berry Hall of Fame

Here are my ten nominees for a Wendell Berry Hall of Fame. Today anyway.

Tribute Round-up

The internet is awash right now with tributes. Here are a few I like.

Here’s Poet Paul J. Pastor for Front Porch Republic.

Wendell is that American thinker who, for me, represents the true wisdom of a sacred and infuriating intersection: the crossroads where Real and Ideal meet. Both had their place for Wendell. Both were vital in the literal sense—a locus of vitality; of life. Wendell moved between worlds and ways of being, and faithfully so, at least in my limited estimation. In that moving, he helped show me how it looks to work for real goods under conditions that are less than ideal.

And here’s Jeff Bilbro, who wrote a book on Berry, in the same publication.

In the last letter that Berry wrote to me, he signed off, “Even in so bad a time we have much to be thankful for.” Indeed. May our sorrow and even despair at the loss of this wonderful writer and friend be a magnanimous despair, granting us a deeper realization of the inestimable gift that his life and work have been.

Here’s Hannah Anderson on Wendell and Dolly.

Ultimately, both Dolly and Wendell were haunted by home and the making of it. How do we find a place for ourselves and those we love in this world? How do we resist the forces that want to tear us apart? How do we live at peace with God, each other, and the earth itself?

Brett McCracken in the Gospel Coalition.

He celebrates the beauty of hard work, replenishing rest, rootedness in place, and embeddedness in community. He savors the soil in which we work and harvest and build—and die. He pushes us to be more attentive with our senses to the wonders of where we are: syncing our hearts to the seasons’ rhythms, recognizing birdsong as nature’s doxology, and gladly linking arms with the others in our place as a “membership” of lives intertwined and buttressing one another.

Martin Cothran, who once-upon-a-time taught with Berry, for Memoria College

Most admirers of Wendell Berry’s works are not fans—they are converts. One of the most common sentiments I hear from these devotees is that they didn’t like his writing at first, carried along by a story that seemed mundane, until they inevitably came across some vagrant observation or deep reflection and were suddenly stricken down as by a vision. They are never the same again.

And, of course, we chatted about Berry on Close Reads.

“I'd had the idea, once, that if I could get the chance before I died I would read all the good books there were. Now I began to see that I wasn't apt to make it. This disappointed me, for I really wanted to read them all.”

—Jayber Crow

I’m David Kern. My wife and I own Goldberry Books, an indie bookshop in Concord, NC and I’m also the host of Close Reads, an eleven-year-old literary podcast on which some friends and I discuss great literature. I’ve also started a boutique publishing company, regularly design the interiors to books, and teach English and writing. All this to say, my life is built in, on, and around books, for better or for worse.

Here’s why I’m writing this newsletter:

* * *

I hit a wall last November, sometime around the fifth birthday of our shop. Just collided with it, head-on, full-bore, unaware of what was coming.

For roughly one thousand eight hundred days I’d lived on adrenaline and passion and drive—on the entrepreneurial spirit which characterizes most people who start a business they love and believe in. Through Covid, through years of street closures due to neighborhood construction (even when you could barely get to our front door because of metal fences and when the sounds of jack hammers disturbed the peace and quiet of the shop) and through the fluctuating sales that came with both, I’d pushed on, motivated by the project and purpose of the shop. Belief can go a long way.

But in November my energy waned, began to disappear in a haze of stress-induced maladies that left me less enthusiastic about the place than ever. Some days the thought of walking through the back door, of stocking shelves, of carefully curating and sourcing titles, left me cold. The tasks I’d loved so much, the job I’d dreamed of doing since I was in college, began to feel like drudgery. I wondered how much longer I could do it when the only signs of real success were that we’d be able to survive another month, barely. It takes a toll, that sense that you can’t catch your breath, the reality that you might go months without catching a break.

My health suffered, relationships suffered, the business suffered.

Frustratingly, right after construction ended and our street re-opened and things began to look better, sales dipped yet again as customers tightened their belts amidst the economic uncertainty of the last few years. Then suddenly we learned that our rent would increase by a whopping 70%, apparently non-negotiable. Whiplash, that.

We considered our options. We could move, but we didn’t find a space that was worth the risk and the cost or was consistent with what we wanted to offer to the community. We could close, of course, but we decided we aren’t ready to give up. So, in the end, after months of thinking and praying, we decided to stick around. We’ll see what happens, but we’re in it for as long as possible now.

God only knows how long that is.

For most people today books are non-essentials, more dessert than sustenance. And, of course, there are other, sometimes cheaper (algorithmically driven), options for consumers which create further barriers to success for bookshops like ours. This isn’t news to anyone but it means that every customer has to decide how much they want an independent bookstore in their town.

I know what I think and that’s why we’ve made the conscious choice to keep on.

I haven’t recovered the adrenaline and energy of the first five years. But, on the other hand, I’m more clear-eyed now. Our future remains tenuous. I’m aware that it’s possible we won’t survive another half decade. I understand that our existence is pretty profoundly dependent on other people wanting us to be here. I’m trying to learn to be comfortable in that risk. And I have recovered my belief that what we’re doing is right, that it's a proper vocation, that the world must be booked.

As Stephen King wrote in On Writing, ”books are a uniquely portable magic.”

With the rise of Substack, the internet is awash with newsletters galore and probably doesn’t need another one. But my goal with Imprint is to present a bookish newsletter for people who agree that books are a common good worth loving, preserving, and sharing. It’s a newsletter for the incurable reader.

If this sounds interesting to you, I hope you’ll subscribe and read along. I’m sure the form of it will evolved over time, but I know it’s going to be personal, a bit esoteric, occasionally meandering, yet also written from the perspective of the amateur in the old sense. A newsletter for book lovers, by a book lover.

Happy reading.

Subscribe now

“So often, a visit to a bookshop has cheered me, and reminded me that there are good things in the world.”

—Van Gogh

The Goldberry Books podcast is produced by Goldberry Books. Please stop on by the shop to check out what we have to offer or shop online through Bookshop.org, here.

You can grab a copy of the book here.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit closereads.substack.com/subscribe

Scott Avett: Purpose at Random, is showing at the SOCO Gallery in Charlotte, NC until November 2. You can learn more about this show here. Meanwhile, Scott Avett: After the Fact is at the Greenville Museum of Art from October 7 until January 21, 2023. Click here for tickets to this show.

Recently, Scott joined the show to discuss some of his favorite books, his ongoing journey as an artist, the question of truth in art, his affection for the mystics, the role of books in his home, and much, much more.

Thanks for checking out our show—and happy reading!

The Exhibitions

Scott Avett: Purpose at Random, is showing at the SOCO Gallery in Charlotte, NC until November 2. You can learn more about this show here.

Scott Avett: After the Fact is at the Greenville Museum of Art from October 7 until January 21, 2023. Click here for tickets to this show.

Sam Sacks writes the Fiction Chronicle for the Wall Street Journal Book Review, one of the best sections in the world of book criticism. He is eloquent in his defense of good books, tactful in his criticism of bad ones, and always interesting in his taste. In this episode, he joins David to chat about several stand-out novels that have been published so far in 2022.

Of course, Ballerini is also successful television and movie actor, the son of a poet, and a parent of multiple children, so we chatted about the books that have been staples of his life over the years in each of these roles.

We hope this conversation helps you find a great book to add to your TBR list. Happy listening!

Salty is out this week from Broadleaf Books so it seemed like a good time to chat about some of the best food writing out there. So, in addition to sharing some of her favorite books, Alissa also shared her Mount Rushmore list of the best very books of food writing.

Alissa Wilkinson is a senior culture reporter and critic at Vox.com, where she writes about film, TV, and culture, often where they intersect with media, religion, and rhetoric. She is also an associate professor of English and humanities at The King's College in New York City, where since 2009 she has taught courses on criticism, cinema studies, literature, and cultural theory.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit closereads.substack.com/subscribe

This episode’s guest is Chris Beha, author of one of my favorite recent novels, The Index of Self Destructive Acts, which was nominated for the 2020 National book award and is one of the best books about people talking about ideas.

Beha is also the author of a memoir, The Whole Five Feet, and the novels Arts & Entertainments and What Happened to Sophie Wilder. Plus, he is the editor of Harper’s Magazine, one of the most consistently interesting and thoughtful periodicals available right now.

A while back he joined me to talk about the books he loves the most, including titles by Beverly Cleary, Muriel Spark, Leo Tolstoy, and others. I have been saving it for summertime because I think Index is a great book for this time of year. Thanks for tuning in.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit closereads.substack.com/subscribe

Thanks for listening!

As her website puts it, it is “a narrative of adventure and exploration, Saving Yellowstone is also a story of Indigenous resistance, the expansive reach of railroad, photographic, and publishing technologies, and the struggles of Black southerners to bring racial terrorists to justice. It reveals how the early 1870s were a turning point in the nation’s history, as white Americans ultimately abandoned the higher ideal of equality for all people, creating a much more fragile and divided United States.”

Recently Megan joined Bibliography to chat about the books she loves, the challenges of writing history, and much more. So if you love books of history, national parks, and adding to your to-be-read list be sure to tap that play button.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit closereads.substack.com/subscribe

Be sure to check out his Substack newsletter at austinkleon.substack.com. You’ll get a joyful dose of all that enthusiasm a few times a week.

And, of course, thanks for listening!

Books Mentioned in this episode:

* Lynda Barry, What It Is

* Anne Patchett, These Precious Days

* James Kochalka, The Cute Manifesto

* Lewis Hyde, The Gift

* Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics

* Journal of Henry D. Thoreau

* Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing

* Alan Jacobs, Breaking Bread with the Dead

* Peanuts comincs

* Calvin and Hobbes comics

* Tove Jansson, History of Moomins

* Jack Kirby comics

* Liana Finck, Passing for Human

* Kristin Radke, Seek You

* James Marshall, George and Martha books

* Jon Klassen’s hat books

* Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy

* Alan Taylor’s Assassin’s Cloak

Close Reads HQ is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit closereads.substack.com/subscribe

Of course, some of you might know Krueger for his recent standalone novels, This Tender Land and Ordinary Grace—books with a touch of mystery, a dose of Americana, and a healthy serving of Krueger’s customary high-octane prose.

Krueger joined the show recently to chat about the books he loves the most: the titles he loved as a kid and that inspire him as a writer today. He’s a born conversationalist and I think his love of books, stories, and his home shine through in this chat. Be prepared to add a few titles to that ever-growing TBR list you keep.

Thanks for listening (and happy reading)!

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit closereads.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit closereads.substack.com/subscribe

But of course we’re here to talk books, including his own. His first novel, Brights Passage, came out in 2011, and then earlier this autumn, his second novel was published. It’s called THE GREAT GLORIOUS GODDAMM OF IT ALL, and its both a coming-of-age novel and a memory novel set during the last age of the lumberjacks. The protagonist is ninety-nine year old Weldon Applegate, and he’s looking back at his life among larger-than-life characters that populated the Pacific Northwest around the turn of the twentieth century. 

Ritter is from Moscow, Idaho, and the novel captures that part of the world in vivid detail. He writes in poetic, playful prose that is consistent with what we have seen in his songs for more than two decades now. 

As the book’s jacket says, it’s a novel that is “Braided with haunting saloon tunes and just the right dose of magic,” and “is a novel bursting with heart, humor and an utterly transporting adventure that is sure to sweep you away into the beauty of the tall snowy mountain timber.” 

Ritter joined the show recently to discuss the books that have inspired him and the differences he sees in songwriting and fiction writing. 

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This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit closereads.substack.com/subscribe

He began his writing career in 1987 as a reporter for his hometown newspaper, The Spokesman-Review where he was a finalist for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize as part of a team covering the shootout and standoff at Ruby Ridge, in Northern Idaho. Eventually he wrote about this in his first book, Every Knee Shall Bow, in 1995. He has also worked as a screenwriter and has taught graduate creative writing at the University of Iowa, Pacific University, Eastern Washington and Pacific Lutheran.

Walter has twice won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award (for The Zero and We Live in Water), the Washington State Book Award (The Cold Millions) and was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize (The Zero) and the PEN/USA Award in both fiction (The Zero) and nonfiction (Every Knee Shall Bow). His novel Beautiful Ruins was a #1 New York Times bestseller and spent more than a year on the bestseller list. It was also Esquire's Book of the Year and NPR Fresh Air's Novel of the Year. The Financial Lives of the Poets was Time Magazine's#2 novel of the year and Walter's story collection, We Live in Water, was longlisted for the Story Prize and the Frank O'Connor Short Story Award. Walter's latest novel is the national bestseller, The Cold Millions, A BOOK OF HISTROICAL FICTION “Featuring an unforgettable cast of cops and tramps, suffragists and socialists, madams and murderers, The Cold Millions is a tour de force from a “writer who has planted himself firmly in the first rank of American authors” (Boston Globe).

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But what if you haven’t tried him? Would this new book provide a good starting place?

Even though one of Connelly’s strengths is the way in which he develops his recurring characters over the long haul (above all his signature creation, Harry Bosch), you wouldn’t feel at all lost if you started reading him here. And if you find it to your taste, there’s plenty of time to go back to his 1992 debut novel, The Black Echo, in which we first meet Bosch, a legendary and longtime LAPD homicide detective.

The Dark Hours is the fourth of Connelly’s novels to feature his most recent recurring character, Renée Ballard, who works for the LAPD. Ballard first appeared in the 2017 novel The Late Show (police slang for the night shift), and then a year later, in Dark Sacred Night, she teamed up (unofficially) with Bosch, who has parted ways with the department and is working for its tiny counterpart in San Fernando. By 2019’s The Night Fire, in which they work together once again, he is freelancing. And here in The Dark Hours they are once again investigative partners.

It was audacious of Connelly, in this time of rampant identity politics, to create a protagonist who is not only a woman but is decades younger than the author. But Connelly has long excelled in portraying women—not least, I think, because he is the sort of writer who seeks out feedback and insight from people he knows and trusts. He has repeatedly acknowledged his gratitude, in particular, to Detective Mitzi Roberts of the LAPD. I don’t know the makeup of Connelly’s vast readership, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that women at least slightly outnumber men, if not constituting a clear majority.

While the differences between Ballard and Bosch are obvious (and sometimes provide humor, as when Bosch’s relative cluelessness regarding the digital world is contrasted with Ballard’s savvy), Connelly gives more emphasis to what links them: childhood trauma, first, so that neither of them could thereafter take stability and blessed ordinariness for granted, and then (in their exceptional cases, following from that experience) a compassion for victims, not only among the living but also among the dead, and a fierce determination to achieve such justice as can be found.

In Connelly’s superb 2017 novel Two Kinds of Truth, which sets up Bosch’s stint at the San Fernando PD, there’s a passage that reveals what Bosch and Ballard have in common: “At a period of life when most men took up golf or bought a boat, Bosch felt resolutely incomplete. He was a closer.” (The same is true of Ballard, whom Connelly introduced in another novel later that year.) “When Chief Valdez [of the SFPD] reached out to Bosch and said he had an old jail cell full of cold cases and no one to work them, it was like a lifeline had been thrown to a drowning man.”

Compare that to a passage early on in the new book, The Dark Hours, which begins with an unsparing picture of the LAPD demoralized and adrift in the period following the killing of George Floyd and the massive protests against “the police” that followed. Connelly neither romanticizes the cops (he never has, as his longtime readers well know) nor paints them all (and the indispensable work they do) with the same brush. Ballard, we learn early on, has thought about quitting because “the department went from being proactive to reactive, and the change had somehow cast Ballard adrift.” That and the experience of repeatedly having people spit in her face.

That is, “until the Midnight Men came along”: a two-man team of rapists (a great rarity), who are assaulting and humiliating single women in their own beds. Their sudden appearance galvanizes her, and her resolve is strengthened by a murder on New Year’s Eve. A man has been shot, and although it looks like an accident at first (in a “celebration” gone awry), it is soon revealed to be a murder: “She knew this could be the solve she needed to save herself.” And before long, Ballard asks Bosch to join her in the investigation.

Ultimately, of course, no matter how many “solves” we achieve, we can’t save ourselves. That would come as no surprise to Michael Connelly. But perhaps some of the time, maybe even a lot of the time, even those of us who believe that “Jesus saves” are a bit too ready to shrug aside the calling to redress injustice and cruelty and contempt here and now, uncomfortable and even risky as that often may be.

In addition to its many pleasures for the reader, a book such as The Dark Hours can offer more: an uncomfortable prod to self-examination.

Don’t miss the newest episode Bibliography featuring beloved novelist James Lee Burke. Click here to listen now.

Nota Bene: All books linked in this newsletter take you to our Bookshop.org page. We appreciate your support and hope you will patronize your local bookshops.

His newest book came out this fall and its called ANOTHER KIND OF EDEN. It’s described as a captivating tale of justice, love, brutality, and mysticism set in the turbulent 1960s. And for my money, it’s well worth a read this fall. It’s rollicking and weird in exactly the right sort of ways, while also featuring the precise prose that led to one publication calling him “America’s best novelist.” 

Burke joined the show recently to discuss the books that inspire him, his favorite of his own books, the life of the writer, and much more.

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In this episode, she chatted with David about the books inspire her the most. They discuss books that take risks, lit Twitter, comedy writing, a book about a hermit, and how we are all going to die.

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This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit closereads.substack.com/subscribe