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Imagination in Place: Essays
Contributor(s): Berry, Wendell (Author)
ISBN: 1582437068     ISBN-13: 9781582437064
Publisher: Counterpoint LLC
OUR PRICE:   $15.26  
Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats
Published: February 2011
Qty:
Temporarily out of stock - Will ship within 2 to 5 weeks
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Collections | Essays
- Nature | Essays
- Literary Collections | American - General
Dewey: 814.54
Physical Information: 0.6" H x 6" W x 8.9" (0.61 lbs) 208 pages
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
"Berry's 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, Berry's 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 Berry's art." --San Francisco Chronicle


"[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

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 one's 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 Berry's life and work, from Wallace Stegner's great West and Ernest Gaines' Louisiana plantation life to Donald Hall's New England, and on to the Western frontier as seen through the Far East lens of Gary Snyder. Berry laments today's 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 Berry's personal experience of life as a Kentucky agrarian, the collection includes portraits of a few of America's most imaginative writers, including James Still, Hayden Carruth, Jane Kenyon, John Haines, and several others.