Cantankerous common sense.

Citizenship Papers

Wendell Berry

Shoemaker & Hoard, $24, 189 pp.

In 1977, Wendell Berry wrote a short essay in which he likened the plight of farmers and other citizens marginalized by corporations to the lives of those decimated by war. In his trademark tone of mannered hyperbole, Berry suggested that moneyed America was more powerful than any fleet of enemy warships. "Commercial conquest," he argued in "The Unsettling of America," "is far more thorough and final than military defeat."

The oppression of small farmers and "country people" was Berry's primary interest when he wrote those words, and a quarter-century later, the problems that threaten rural communities remain a near-obsession for the prolific Kentucky novelist and poet.

In his new collection of essays, Citizenship Papers, Berry advances many of his pet arguments: that American farmers are treated as "expendable" by the larger culture; that too many of us are disconnected from our natural environment; that the era's defining issues have been co-opted by corporations whose primary loyalty is to their stockholders. It is a fascinating book, for it demonstrates how a towering intellect can propel a writer to transcendent heights--and conversely, how an abiding passion can occasionally leave him frothing like an overexcited zealot.

Berry, in this volume, is at his levelheaded best when dealing not with issues of agrarian concern, but with those of broader social and political import. (A farmer himself, Berry would probably object to the notion that there are matters of greater significance than, say, soil erosion or what he describes as the "prejudice against farm people." But as we'll see shortly, his perspective is sometimes skewed by his proximity to those very issues.)

At his most compelling, Berry is a must-read on subjects of peace vs. national security and the Bush administration's move to expand presidential powers. Often, the reader is left not with answers to the questions posed at the outset of a Berry essay, but a whole new set of questions with which to attack an issue.

For example, a piece ostensibly written to understand and explain his own feelings with regard to the White House's strategy for national security soon becomes a meditation on the motives of America and other potentially warring states. "If we perceive an illegitimacy in the catastrophic weapons and ad-lib warfare of other nations," Berry asks, "how can we not perceive the same illegitimacy in our own?" This is Berry's way: questions beget more questions. As he puts it in another essay, "Maybe, if our questions lead to other questions, that is a sign we are asking the right ones."

One of the book's finest essays is titled "In Distrust of Movements," and it is nothing short of profound. He begins by offering a lovely glimpse of his home life in Henry County, Kentucky, describing himself as "a man most involved with and concerned about my family, my neighbors, and the land that is daily under my feet." Within the space of a few paragraphs, he has set about the work of upending shortsighted activists of various political stripes and scolding those who have hijacked the language of public debate.

Noting that so-called organic growing methods are no longer the sole province of small farmers, Berry writes, "Once we allow our language to mean anything that anybody wants it to mean, it becomes impossible to mean what we say. When 'homemade' ceases to mean neither more nor less than 'made at home,' then it means anything, which is to say that it means nothing."

Those who work within their own narrow definition of environmental activism also take it on the chin. "I must declare my dissatisfaction with movements to promote soil conservation or clean water or clean air or wilderness preservation or sustainable agriculture or community health or the welfare of the children," he writes. "Worthy as these and other goals may be, they cannot be achieved alone.... I am dissatisfied with such efforts because they are too specialized.... Ultimately, I think, they are insincere; they propose that the trouble is caused by other people; they would like to change policy but not behavior."

In "The Failure of War," Berry displays a deft touch when dealing with what he describes as the "fundamental inconsistency" between war and personal liberties. Often cantankerous, Berry reveals strains of idealism by invoking the names of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, but concedes that, "so far as our government is concerned, these men and their great and authenticating accomplishments might as well never have existed. To achieve peace by peaceable means is not yet our goal. We cling to the hopeless paradox of making peace by making war." Berry wrote those words in 1999, but they are perhaps even more applicable today.

"Is Life a Miracle?" an essay written in 2002, grapples with matters of spirit and science. Allowing that scientific study has a place in determining the nature of life, Berry says he is disturbed by efforts to deal with such issues using only empirical evidence. "This [approach] offends me because I believe it rests upon a falsehood," Berry writes. "It frightens me because I believe that such falsehoods--the falsehoods of radical over-simplification--damage and threaten to destroy it [life]."

Then there are the essays in which Berry is preoccupied by comparatively trivial matters. In "The Prejudice against Country People," Berry bases virtually his entire argument--that "apologists for industrialism" employ "condescension" in their dealings with rural people--on slights gleaned from the pages of the New York Review of Books and the New Republic. "And," adds Berry, without a hint of irony, "I remember a Kentucky high school basketball cheer that instructed the opposing team: Go back, go back, go back to the woods / Your coach is a farmer and your team's no good."

Not to demean the quality or influence of the New York Review and the New Republic, or the efficacy of cheerleading squads in the Bluegrass state, I ask does a man as wise as Berry honestly believe that the articles in either magazine reflect a widespread bias against people who choose not to live in cities? Berry himself seems to detect that his argument is suspect--he even offers a preemptive defense against charges of "paranoia." But what would you call a man who searches the pages of the New York Review of Books for instances of rhetorical discrimination? The fact is, most thinking people are no more prejudiced against farmers and other rural citizens than they are against those who work at car dealerships, fast-food restaurants, or literary magazines.

It's a shame that Berry allows himself to be distracted by relatively petty concerns, especially when one considers how skillful he is at unpacking complex social issues. For instance, even those who disagree with Berry would likely concede that his take on abortion is sensible and understated. "The attempt to make a categorical distinction between a baby living in the womb and a baby living in the world is as tenuous as would be an attempt to make such a distinction between a living child and a living adult," writes Berry. "No living creature is 'viable' independently of an enveloping life-support system."

If Berry's passion for rural living and agriculture sometimes waylays him, he can be forgiven because of his astute insights on a host of other topics. He is occasionally too strident, and almost always cranky. On matters of the greatest substance, however, Berry is an indispensable voice of reason.

Kevin Canfield is a New York writer.