Jayber Crow Part II
In which we start to feel at home in Port William
Welcome to Reading Revisited, a place for friends to enjoy some good old-fashioned book chat while revisiting the truth, beauty, and goodness we’ve found in our favorite books.
Hello Again Readers,
I hope your week has been lovely and you’ve gotten to cosy up with a book in the beautiful Autumn weather.
We have spent another week in Port William together and I hope it has been as refreshing for you as it has been for me. To be completely honest I have found it difficult to slow myself down from the fast/hectic pace of my modern life and my possibly glutinous reading habits to the pace that Wendell Berry writes. I am sure I should slow my whole life down to this pace, but it is so hard. So while I am immensely enjoying Jayber Crow, it has felt like a stretch for me to be able to slow down enough to enjoy walking the winding path laid before me. I am hopeful that the book is doing its work on me and by the end I will be reading (and hopefully living) at a more humanizing speed. I wish the same for you!
Again (if you missed me saying this last week), this is a first read for me, so bear with me as I get my bearings and figure out what kind of story Berry is telling us through Jayber’s eyes. I am going to keep the summaries for this week much shorter since if you’re reading this you probably just read Jayber. I’ll give you a (longer) Winnie the Pooh style chapter heading to orient you into which chapter I’m talking about and then jump into the things I’m noticing.
Here is the schedule if you’d like to read along or you need to catch up on previous Jayber posts.
Alright, let’s jump into this week’s text…
Chapter by Chapter
10- A Little Worter Dranking Party
In which Jayber is welcomed into the life of Port William by the means of a “worter (cough cough, moonshine?) dranking party” and makes an enemy.
Things to Note:
I am wondering about Jayber’s perspective on Roy and Cecilia’s marriage. Should we assume that he is all knowing here or is it possible that a bachelor’s opinion on a marriage is skewed? I am sure Berry will give us more to go on as the story continues.
We have another Biblical reference comparing Julep to Lot’s wife (because he fell asleep too close to the church while drunk).
Jayber is much less lonely, but still seems to be a bit on the outside. I am wondering if he will ever be more of a member or if being a bachelor and “new” keeps him a bit on the outskirts.
11- An Invisible Web
In which we hear about Jayber’s life at the Barbershop with some meditations on class, women, children, old men, gardening, and music and Jayber reckons with the loss of his childhood at Squire’s Landing.
In my comings and goings I crossed their tracks, and my own earlier ones, many times a day, weaving an invisible web that was as real as the ground it was woven over, and as I went about I would feel my losses and my debts. (131)
Things to Note:
He has come so far from his initial desires of a wife when he thought he was called to be a preacher.
I am still feeling his loneliness with him.
I remained a sort of bystander a lot longer than I remained a stranger. (123)
Wendell Berry puts exactly the right words to ideas that make me remember them so well. For example the way he presents the confounding of living and working is great.
“…it’s hard to tell whether he’s working or living” (124)
There is no one quite like Berry to make you appreciate (and think about) the importance of memory…
They were rememberers, carrying in their living thoughts all the history that such places as Port William ever have. I listened to them with all my ears and have tried to remember what they said, though from remembering what I remember I know that much is lost. Things went to the grave with them that will never be known again. (126-127)
I love the connection he draws between belonging and loss. The joy and the pain so often go together (in real life and in Berry’s world) and he really helps you to feel this in the story.
We shouldn’t miss the symbolism of the river with life and the people that have “flowed” through Jayber’s
12- The Gay Bird’s Heel
In which we learn about Mattie Keith and Troy Chatham falling in love.
Things to Note:
We have another Dante reference (and throw in some Pilgrim’s Progress too) at the beginning of this chapter. I am wondering if Jayber’s story will be part allegory (in the true medieval/Tolkien approved sense) as well, as we saw with Jane Eyre (RR 2024).
The “make of that what you will” reminds me of Peace Like a River (RR 2022), but because these books were written around the same time I am wondering if they’re both referencing something older…or it is possible it is just a coincidence.
Berry is setting us up for something in the life of Mattie and Troy and, if I’m honest, it is making me turn the pages a little faster.
The incident of Troy making a (literal) basket seems like it might be some sort of foreshadowing.
13- A Period of Darkness
In which World War II starts and can even deeply affect a little town (barely on the map) like Port William.
Things to Note:
Starting the chapter with how small Port William is and then having Miss Gladdie Finch announce the war and how it will matter to Port William (boys will die) was excellent storytelling by Berry.
…she was a keeper and protector of the grief by which she cherished what she had lost. (141)
I love Jayber’s reflections on loving your enemies, institutions, and the difference between a place and an idea. Jayber clearly doesn’t approve of the war but Berry is good at making us feel helpless with him…having him register for the draft and get rejected helps us to feel this too I think.
The way that Berry shows us what waiting is like through vignettes about a card game is so good.
I feel the losses of Mat and Burley (along with Jayber)…I think he really belongs now because he feels the pain of the town.
I cannot get the image of Jayber coming down from his barber’s chair to comfort Mat out of my mind…
And then I could no longer sit in that tall chair. I had to come down. I came down and went over and sat beside Mat. (149)
14- For Better, for Worse
In which Jayber tells us a bit more about Cecilia and Roy Overhold’s marriage and we get some reasoning on why she hates Jayber so much.
Things to Note:
Jayber brings up class again and intimates that (at least in Cecilia’s mind) he might be the lowest class.
I am starting to wonder what Berry is doing with the Overholds. I don’t think it is simply a random chapter about a bad marriage.
Roy lived too hard up against mystery to be without religion. (152)
It was disappointment like a nail in your shoe. It wasn’t completely disabling, but it couldn’t be ignored either. It didn’t go away. It wore worse. (153)
If a soft answer turneth away wrath, maybe no answer stirreth wrath up. (154)
15- The Beautiful Shore
In which Jayber takes on some part time jobs (church janitor and grave digger) to save for retirement.
Things to Note:
The foreshadowing of Uncle Stanley Gibbs not being able to get out of the grave after he digs it.
There seems to be a significant juxtaposition of the jobs barber and grave digger.
It seems to be a call back to Jayber’s pseudo-call to be a preacher that he is now working two jobs to serve the church. But he gets to serve the church and have a place. In this chapter there is also a meditation on preachers not having a place.
I kept thinking about G.K. Chesterton’s idea that tradition is the democracy of the dead during this section.
That place of the democracy of the dead was sometimes a very social place for the living. (158)
I love that he goes back to church first because he cares about the place itself…I have a feeling that he will deal with his scruples sooner or later.
Jayber almost seems like a mythological character (the grave digger, the barber, the gatekeeper to the life of men in the town), but also a real man at the same time.
I feel a little uneasy in calling them “the dead,” for I am as mystified as anybody by the transformation known as death, and the Resurrection is more real to me than most things I have not yet seen. (157)
16- Rose of San Antone
In which Jayber gets himself a car (Zephyr) and a girlfriend (Clydie).
Things to Note:
Zephyrus (shortened to Zephyr frequently) is the Greek god of the west wind which represents fertility. So it seems fitting that Jayber gets the car in the same chapter as (and the literal vehicle for) getting a girlfriend.
Jayber’s meditations on cars in this chapter (and in the rest of this part) are so good! He calls the car Hellish at one point which, again, brings me back to Dante.
17- Forsaking All Others
In which Troy and Mattie (finally) get married to the chagrin of her parents and immediately start having family drama.
Things to Note:
I find it apt that Troy and Jayber are both excused from war for the same reason (4F…pension problem). Jayber is pitting himself against Troy in his love for Mattie, so it makes sense that Berry would be drawing us to compare and contrast them as well.
I am still on the edge of my seat waiting for the big reveal…what is going to happen with Troy and Mattie?
Telling the story of the changing times and farming methods through Athey and Troy is genius. It makes me care about it so much more than I would have reading an essay (though Berry is also an expert essayist).
“Wherever I look…I want to see more than I need, and have more than I use.” - Athey
“Never let a quarter’s worth of equity stand idle. Use it or borrow against it.” - Troy (179)
Jayber’s guilt about his car might explain some of his hatred for Troy…
Ease of going was translated without pause into a principled unwillingness to stop. Hadn’t I been there and didn’t I know it? And so, self-accused, having begun by resenting the insult to Athey, I ended by yielding Troy a little laugh and a nod of understanding, which shamed me and did not make me like him any better. (187)
18- Untold
In which Jayber falls in love with Mattie and Liddie (Mattie’s oldest daughter) gets hit by a car and dies.
Things to Note:
The effect of the news that Jayber has fallen in love with Mattie is dulled a bit because we’ve known all along. I wonder what the significance of that is. Is this an example of C.S. Lewis’ idea that redemption or damnation works its way backwards through time. Does being in love do the same thing? Or is this speaking to the allegorical nature of Jayber’s love for Mattie?
This line from Jayber reminds me of Rochester in Jane Eyre…
I was being carried away by a process of reasoning that was entirely invented by me and had nothing to do with anything in this world. (196)
Is Berry’s insistence that the car accident is not the driver’s fault an objective correlative for the industrialization of farming? It is not necessarily anyone’s fault, yet death will come?
19- A Gathering
In which Mat Feltner leads the town men in cleaning up the graveyard and Jayber finds Mattie lying on Liddie’s grave crying.
Things to Note:
The meditations on death in this chapter are beautiful.
Jayber seems to be Mattie’s guardian…I am still wondering where Berry is taking us with this relationship.
With that presence around me in the still evening, I got up and walked from the older part of the graveyard to the newer and back over the crest of the ridge away from the road. The day ending, winter coming, I walked in the spell of knowledge that I knew I could not keep intact for long. (206)
20- How It Held Together Partly
In which Jayber meditates on Cecelia’s hatred for him a little more and Athey moves into town.
Things to Note:
We have more Dante imagery and a good examination of conscience…
The problem, you see, is that Cecilia had some reason on her side; she had an argument. I don’t think she could be proved right; on the other hand, you can’t prove her wrong. Theoretically, there is always a better place for a person to live, better work to do, a better spouse to wed, better friends to have. But then this person must meet herself coming back: Theoretically, there always is a better inhabitant of this place, a better member of this community, a better worker, spouse, and friend than she is. This surely describes one of the circles of Hell, and who hasn’t traveled around it a time or two? (210)
Jayber’s comparison of Troy and Cecilia seems important. I am now thinking that Berry is meaning us to compare the two couples. They are the only marriages we have been told about in any depth.
I think that Berry might be attempting to give us an examination of conscience for our reading lives. It feels like he is saying, “slow down and let me tell you a story…”
21- Don’t Send a Boy to Do a Man’s Work
In which Jayber tells us a story that Athey had told him about his childhood in bits and chunks.
Athey was a storyteller too, as it took me some while to find out, for he never told all of any story at the same time. He told them in odd little bits and pieces, usually in unacknowledged reference to a larger story that he did not tell because (apparently) he assumed you already knew it, and he told the fragment just to remind you of the rest. Sometimes you couldn’t even assume that he assumed you were listening; he might have been telling it to himself. With Athey you were always somewhere in the middle of the story. He would just start talking wherever he started remembering. (216)
Things to Note:
Athey and Jayber seem to be telling stories in a similar way. The above quote might be the key to the rambling nature of this book.
We have another biblical reference in the keg being like the golden calf.
This is an amazing story. I am going to leave you with a few quotes, but maybe just go back and reread this chapter!
“If the Devil don’t exist…how do you explain that some people are a lot worse than they’re smart enough to be?” - Athey (224)
He was no longer a boy who thought himself a man. He was a boy trying unsurely to make up for his failure to be a man when a man was needed….Now that he was a boy no longer thinking himself as a man, the spirit of his father seemed to be telling him what a man ought to do. (227)
22- Born
In which Jayber catches Troy cheating on Mattie, leaves his girlfriend and car behind, and takes a vow to be the faithful one.
Things to Note:
At the beginning of the chapter it seems like we are supposed to be comparing Jayber and Clydie to Troy and Mattie.
We finally seem to have a New Testament biblical reference…
“Oh, I have got to change or die. Oh, I have got to give up my life or die.” (239)
Now it is clear that Jayber’s hatred for Troy does come from some judgement on himself. Troy gives Jayber the “okay” sign when he sees him cheating probably because Jayber is carrying on with Clydie. I think this is the scene where he realizes it…
What Troy Chatham was was my business—not because I chose to make it my business, but because it was. It was my business because I did not want to be what he was, and that was no sure thing….I saw that I had to try to become a man unimaginable to Troy Chatham, a man he could not imagine raising his hand to with the thumb and forefinger circled—but to do that I would have to become a man yet unimaginable to myself. (241)
During his walk back to Port William Berry seems to leave the reader open to interpreting whether this is a supernatural event or not. Is he drunk and a little crazy, or is God speaking to him? This takes me back to Jane Eyre too. I know how I would answer the question, but I appreciate the “make of it what you will” attitude. Maybe this is partially what saves the book from being sentimental.
Jayber seems to be being made into a Christ figure (though I am also thinking of God and Abraham in Genesis. God is the only one who walks through the animals because he is going to be faithful for both of them).
Questions I Am Asking
Is the three part structure of the book supposed to be Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven? There are so many allusions to Dante, it is hard to not think this could be the case.
How allegorically should we be treating this book? I am thinking this even more as we get to the end of this part and Jayber has taken a vow to be the faithful spouse to a woman he can’t be married to.
Where will the third part of this book take us? I am here for the ride, but still not completely sure where I am going.
Alright, thanks for making it all the way to the end of this post. I hope that you are enjoying Jayber Crow and that these reading guides are helpful in getting you to think a little bit deeper about such a lovely book.
Next week we will dive into Part III, finishing the book. See you then!
Until next time, keep revisiting the good books that enrich your life and nourish your soul.
In Case You Missed It:
What We’re Reading Now:
November
Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
December
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
January
Othello by William Shakespeare
A Few Reminders:
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