Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
In these newly reissued stories, Wendell Berry transports readers to Port William, Kentucky, the fictional community he's lovingly created across multiple novels, stories, and poems Never has Berry seemingly had so much fun as he does in spinning the tall tales of Ptolemy Proudfoot, "a member of a large clan of large people." Tol Proudfoot is a farmer, a longtime bachelor at war with his clothes. The challenge of arriving in presentable fashion at the harvest festival in order to court Miss Minnie, Port William's schoolmarm, is an epic battle. But Miss Minnie is delighted to have "Mr. Proudfoot" bid on her cake at the bake auction for a princely sum, and pleased to have him see her home. The stories in Part One sensitively capture their long marriage from 1908 through the Second World War. Part Two consists of the single, startlingly beautiful story "Watch with Me," which explores the depth of affection and tolerance for eccentricity, borne by these neighbors toward one of their own.
Rich in humor and wisdom, each of these stories highlights the comic and poignant ways in which Port William's denizens cope with the intrusions of the 20th century into their idyllic, agrarian world.
Synopsis
"Wendell Berry writes with a good husbandman's care and economy . . . His stories are filled with gentle humor." --The New York Times Book Review Never has Wendell Berry seemingly had so much fun as he does in spinning the tall tales of Ptolemy Proudfoot, "a member of a large clan of large people." Tol Proudfoot is a farmer, a longtime bachelor at war with his clothes. The challenge of arriving in presentable fashion at the harvest festival in order to court Miss Minnie, Port William's schoolmarm, is an epic battle. But Miss Minnie is delighted to have "Mr. Proudfoot" bid on her cake at the bake auction for a princely sum, and pleased to have him see her home.
Rich in humor and wisdom, each of these stories highlights the comic and poignant ways in which Port William's denizens cope with the intrusions of the twentieth century into their idyllic, agrarian world.
Synopsis
This volume of six linked stories and the novella from which the book derives its title is set in Port William from 1908 to the Second World War. Here Wendell Berry introduces two of his more indelible and poignant characters, Ptolemy Proudfoot and his wife Miss Minnie, remarkable for the comic and affectionate range that--with the mastery of this consummate storyteller working at the height of his powers--here approaches the Shakespearean.
Tol Proudfoot is huge, outsized, in the tradition of the mythic. The three-hundred-pound farmer, personally imposing and unkempt, is also the most graceful of presences, reserved and gallant toward his tiny wife, the ninety-pound schoolteacher.
Their contrasts are humorous, of course, and recall the tall tales of rural Americana. In the novella Watch with Me, we are given a story of such depth, breadth, and importance it earns being listed as one of the most important short stories written in the American language during the twentieth century.
"Wendell Berry writes with a good husbandman's care and economy . . . His stories are filled with gentle humor." ―
The New York Times Book Review "Berry is the master of earthy country living seen through the eyes of laconic farmers . . . He makes his stories shine with meaning and warmth." ―The Christian Science Monitor
"A small treasure of a book . . . part of a long line that descends from Chaucer to Katherine Mansfield to William Trevor." ―Chicago Tribune