Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry: A Review

G.C. Meyers From a Distance

Reading Hannah Coulter, by Wendell Berry, is like coming back to the home place where you once lived.

Berry's writing is filled with clarity, nostalgia, wisdom, and longing.

His novel continues the saga of Port William, the mythical Kentucky of his youth, where he has lived his entire life.

Modern-day attempts to paint the picture of a time past often fail, because they are fueled by sarcasm or over-sentimentality, or ignorance, Berry's version is crystal clear and rings true.

Here is his description of Christmas dinner:

"There were sixteen of us around the long table in the dining room. The table was so beautiful when we came in that it seemed almost a shame not to just stand and look at it. Mrs. Feltner had put on her best tablecloth and her good dishes and silverware that she never used except for company. And on the table at last, after our long preparations, were our ham, our turkey and dressing, and our scalloped oysters under their brown crust. There was a cut glass bowl of cranberry sauce. There were mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans and butter beans, corn pudding, and hot rolls. On the sideboard were our lovely cakes on cake stands and a big pitcher of custard that would be served with whipped cream."

Early on in Hannah Coulter, Hannah loses her husband, Virgil, to World War I. Hannah finds herself comparing her loss of a husband to Mr. and Mrs. Feltner's loss of a son (Virgil): "The difference between me and Mr. and Mrs. Feltner, as I had to see and feel even in my own grief, was that they were old and I was young. I was filled with life, with my life and Virgil's life, with the life of our baby, and with other lives that might, in time, come to me. But the Feltner's had begun to be old. Life had quit coming to them, and was going away. I was young enough for life to be generous with me. The husband I lost in the war, as it turned out, was not to be my only husband."

Hannah's other husband was to be Nathan Coulter. 

It is at this point that Berry reveals the theme of Hannah Coulter, and goes on to write some f the most beautiful words I've ever come across.

"I began to know my story then," Hannah tells us. "Like everybody's, it was going to be the story of living in the absence of the dead. What is the thread that holds it all together? Grief, I thought for a while. And grief is there sure enough, just about all the way through. From the time I was a girl I have never been far from it. But grief is not a force and has no power to hold. You only bear it. Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery. 

G.C. Myers 

"Sometimes too I could see that love is a great room with a lot of doors, where we are invited to knock and come in. Though it contains all the world, the sun, moon, and stars, it is so small as to be also in our hearts. It is in the hearts of those who choose to come in. Some do not come in. Some may stay out forever. Some come in together and leave separately. Some come in and stay, until they die, and after. I was in it a long time with Nathan. I am still in it with him."

There is a beauty to the melancholy that Berry weaves.

"Sometimes I imagine another young couple, strong and full of desire, coming quietly into this old house that will be empty again of all that is of any use, and will be stale and silent and dingy with dust, and they will see it shining before them as Nathan and I saw it fifty-two years ago. And I say, 'Welcome! Love each other. Love this place and use it well. Bless your hearts.'"

Berry is saddened by our obsession with progress for progress' sake. Hannah describes Nathan's decision, after seeing other worlds during WWII. "Most people are looking for 'a better place,' which means that a lot of them will end up in a worse one. I think this is what Nathan learned from his time in the army and the war. He saw a lot of places, and he came home. I think he gave up the idea that there is a better place somewhere else. There is no 'better place' than this, not in this world. And it is by the place we've got, and our love for it and our keeping of it, that this world is joined to Heaven."

Berry writes of the land from a deeply spiritual connectedness. Of the difference between being 'employed' and being a farmer, rooted in your home place. "One of the attractions of moving away into the life of employment, I think, is being disconnected and free, unbothered by membership. It is a life of beginnings without memories, but it is a life too that ends without being remembered. The life of membership [among neighbors] with all its cumbers is traded away for the life of employment that makes itself free by forgetting you clean as a whistle when you are not of any more use."

G.C. Myers

And as a consequence, the land suffers. 

Hannah laments "...the people who rent houses in Port William now are commuters who come here to live because they can't find 'a better place.' They usually don't intend to stay long, and usually they don't. And so the house suffers not only the wear of use, but also the wear of indifference."

Whatever happened to the concept of being a good steward?

Maybe I need to remember one of the lessons life taught Hannah Coulter. "Living without expectations is hard, but, when you can do it, good. Living without hope is harder, and that is bad. You have got to hope, and you mustn't shirk it. Love, after all, 'hopeth all things.' But maybe you must learn, and it is a hard learning, not to hope out loud, especially for other people. You must not let your hope turn into expectation."

Berry writes with eloquence about a former way of rural, small-town life, that has all but disappeared. "There was a time when Port William drew its members into itself every Saturday night to shop, talk, trade, court, play, argue, loaf, or whatever else they had to be together in order to do. Now Port William, or what is left of it, is most likely to assemble, not in Port William at all, but in the Tacker Funeral Home in Hargrave... We feel the old fabric torn, pulling apart, and we know how much we have loved each other."

Despite the changes in Port William and in the world around them, Hannah Coulter and Berry remain profoundly rooted and grounded. And it is this strength that lies at the heart of Hannah Coulter.