The Memory of Old Jack

This is a short, melancholy, and moving book about a man very near the end of his life. Jack Beechum was born and raised in Wendell Berry’s fictional farming community of Port William, Kentucky. It’s 1952, and Jack, now in his 90s, is the last of his generation. It’s been years since he was able to farm his land, but he is still connected to the seasonal rhythms through friends and relatives.

These days, Jack spends most of his time sitting quietly in the town barbershop, a hub for conversation. Jack is lost in his memories, and through these memories the reader learns the story of Jack’s life: farming, relationships, successes, failures, love, loss. Every once in a while something pulls Jack back to the present, where he offers show more a cordial greeting or answers a polite question, and then he retreats once more into the past. Jack’s life was far from ideal, but most of his suffering was due to his own mistakes. And yet he was well loved and cared for by the community, who respectfully helped him to live independently for as long as possible.

Wendell Berry used this book as a platform to question whether “modern progress” has really lived up to its promise, which leaves the reader with much to think about. Berry’s portrayal of an infirm, elderly man locked up in his own thoughts was also quite moving, and left me a bit teary-eyed. show less

Summary: Old Jack Beechum, the oldest of the Port William membership, spends a September day remembering his life.

This book resonated powerfully with me. It brought to mind my father’s last years after my mother passed. His short term memory was failing even as he grew more frail. Mostly he spent his days remembering what he could, the earlier days of his life, summing up in a sense what his life had meant. From our conversations, these were grace-filled memories, and there was about him a profound sense of thanksgiving. He was already at peace about his life well before we laid him to rest.

As the title of this work suggests, this is also an account of remembering and summing up a life. On one hand, it is a narrative of a single sunny show more day in September. It is also a day of remembering the most significant events in his life. Early morning, old Jack Beechum stands on the hotel porch where he now lives, listening to the sounds of the men going about their chores and a day of tobacco harvesting. He hears Mat Feltner, a man in his sixties, an anchor of the community, and recalls him as a boy with his father Ben as he hitches up his new mule team. He recalls Ben Feltner, the loan Ben had fronted him, and the mentor he had been in the care of his land when he was bereft of his own parents and starting out.

His wife Ruth occupies many of his memories. Her beauty which led him to pursue her. Her ambitions, which led him both into debt, and a falling out with the tenant of an adjacent farm he bought, Will Wells. Ruth wanted him to be a prosperous landowner with many others working for him. He wanted to care for and lovingly restore the land he had, that his father had so neglected.

He remembers the crucible through which he went. Selling the adjacent farm at a loss, Ruth’s increasing estrangement, and the fire in his barn and more loss and debt, and the years of extra work to own his land free and clear. He goes through a kind of death returning from a fruitless errand for Ruth to get caught in a flood, barely surviving with his team, cutting loose his wagon.

After Ruth’s daughter Clara was born, Ruth insisted they sleep apart. What followed was an affair with the doctor’s widow, Rose McInnis, each meeting the hunger in the other. There came the day when a question from Ruth revealed she knew and he knew “the wound he had given her.” Shortly after, Jack returns from a trip to learn Rose had perished in a fire. All he has left is his land, on which at 48, he had paid off the mortgage–and a renewed sense of his own life:

“That his life was renewed, that he had been driven down to the bedrock of his own place in the world, and his own truth and had stood again, that a profound peace and trust had come to him out of his suffering and his solitude, and that this peace would abide with him to the end of his days–all this he knew in the quiet of his heart and kept to himself.“

He had come through his own valley of the shadow of death. Eventually there is one with whom he shares what he has learned–Mat Feltner, now what he once was to Mat’s father Ben. Pointing to Mat’s land, he says, “That’s all you’ve got, Mat. It’s your only choice. It’s all you can have; whatever you try to gain somewhere else, you’ll lose here.”

Sadly, his own daughter will not understand what Mat and the circle around him–Nathan and Hannah Coulter, Burley Coulter, and the tenant who cares for his farm, Elton Penn–understand. Clara followed her mother’s ways, marrying a banker, who refused an opportunity to buy an adjacent farm, that one day could be joined to Jack’s own. Clara even took dying Ruth, whose last words to Jack are “Bless you, Jack, good-by.” Jack continues as long as he can alone until he moves into the hotel.

Just before dinner on that September day, young Andy Catlett stops by to say good-bye. Andy is headed off to college, yet loves the land as he does. There is a fitting closure here, of love and fealty on Andy’s part, of blessing of the young man. It seems each knows they will not see the other again.

There is exquisite writing throughout here, and none more than in the chapter “Return.” Everything Berry writes reflects love of land, of place, of animals well-cared for, and a community that shares these values. In this work, these become the source of renewal for Old Jack, a kind of “pearl of great price.” The theme of mentors, from one generation to the next, runs through this work. There is a company of men who not only work alongside and impart wisdom, but who affirm one another’s worth and dignity. It is striking how Mat honors Old Jack when he is long past being any “use” even as Jack had honored him. Finally there is the forging of character in Jack, from the proud young man who marries a kind of “trophy” wife only to discover that he cannot live up to her expectations, to the humbled man, reckoning with all his errors, doing what he can to make amends, even with Ruth, and in the process not only becomes himself, but a model to others.

Berry reminds us that unless death comes suddenly, there will come the time of summing up, of remembering. What will we remember, and will we have found the peace that abides to the end of our days? He reminds me that it is never too soon to address oneself to these questions. show less

Until recently I had never heard of Wendell Berry. I started reading The Memory of Old Jack at the same time as my wife started reading Jayber Crow. Our house was silent for days.
I immediately became immersed in the final day of Jack Beechum, reflecting upon his life, for better or worse. Critics may argue that there is little plot in this book, but that’s missing the point. This is tapestry weaving and what makes it so sublime is the language, which elevates it to dizzy heights.
A couple of the narratives stuck in my mind, one of them was Jack’s memory of being a young boy and watching his two elder siblings ride off to fight the Yankees
‘’This is not simply the knowledge of retrospect; because the vision of their departure met show more the knowledge of their deaths in the anachronistic mind of a child, the two have fused, so that it seems to him, in his vision, that he watches them depart with the clear foreknowledge that they will not return. They did not.’’
Or when Jack stands by the grave of the lover he took to escape his loveless marriage
‘’And always near him was the thought of the dead woman who had loved him as he was, and of the living one who could not.’’

This is just a beautiful book. Wendell Berry is a masterful story teller, in a class by himself. show less

Jack Beechum is old now. He is unable to help when the men gather the crops, he is a fixture when old men gather at the local store, he has had to give up his farm to a tenant and reside in the Port William hotel, where he is one of several permanent roomers. But, Jack has had a full life, was once a strapping man who sat a horse like a king, has known love and failure and heartache, and his memories are richer than his current life would allow. Most importantly, he has friends and family who love him, respect him, and value him still.

I’ve seen a lot of Old Jack as I have made my way through Wendell Berry’s novels about Port William, mostly as he is seen through the eyes of other members of his family and friends. This was his own show more voice, his own retrospective of his life and it left me with a much more complete and personal picture of who Jack Beechum is. I can relate so easily to all Berry’s characters, because they have life in their world and in mine. Jack could easily be my great-uncle Naman. My strongest memories of him are of a man working at the end of a hoe in a vegetable garden, bent slightly, but still strong and capable--a no-nonsense man when it came to work and a generous man of laughter when the work was done.

Old Jack’s hand, which she continues to hold, is a fixed and final shape, bent and worn, curiously inert. The stiffened fingers no longer move with an idle life of their own. They lie still until he has a use of them and then they move by deliberate will, like rude tools. His hands remind Hannah of old gnarls of root such as she has found washed up on the rockbars of the river, still holding the shape of their place in the earth though that place is changed by their departure. She holds the old, clumsy hand in hers, gently, for its own sake. But for the sake of more than that, for she is thinking, “We will come to this, my Nathan.”

I read this passage and was reminded of my own father’s hands, how they changed as he aged and how I loved to feel the paper-thin skin of them against my own. Then I realized those are the kind of hands my husband now bears, as his age slips upon him year by year.

Berry also captures the exact feeling of loss that we have when we know a whole generation of men and women are lost to us. When we see the last of them beginning to go, and we know that we are now the “older generation” ourselves.

Mat felt the change upon himself. Now he was the oldest, and the longest memory was his. Now between him and the grave stood no other man. From here on he would find the way for himself.

I have often said that the moment I became a complete adult was the moment I lost my mother. Age had nothing to do with it, it was born of the loss of the heart and mind that had always guided my footsteps and could guide them no more.

Have I mentioned that I love Wendell Berry? I love him with the fullness of a soul that you recognize in yourself. He gives me a gift that is inexplicable every time I open one of his books. He gives me my past, myself, and a little bit of himself--what more could anyone want from an author? show less

Wendell Berry is a wonderful teller of stories. He is particularly masterful at recounting the whole of a person's life in the midst of a few pages while never leaving his reader feel as though they have missed any of the substance that makes up that life. Even here when he sets the life of Jack Beechum against the backdrop of a single day, not a single word is wasted and one feels as though not a single word is missed. From sunrise to sunset on Old Jack's last day, we get to know him as he was and as he would like to be remembered. Indeed, we get to know him as he remembers himself.

We all, if we are lucky enough, know or have known an Old Jack. Maybe ours doesn't share the character of the one found in these pages but he or she show more certainly meets the criteria. In particular, he may have left behind a people who feels as though "a landmark that they all had depended on had fallen". Some of our Old Jacks are still standing but barely. Others have long been fallen. Regardless, we all feel as though we could benefit from one more shared conversation on a porch or in a parlor. For those who have that opportunity, I hope it's taken. For the rest of us, there's this book. show less

Better books might exist in the world, but I sure haven’t found them.

Wendell Berry’s Port William rivals Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, but only Berry’s characters will teach you how to live and die with an honor that no other fictional author has broached.

Wow, this one is kind of hard for me to review. I have tried to read so many things by Wendell Berry, probably for about the past ten years, and I've never managed more than a short essay or a dozen pages of a novel before giving up. I've always felt guilty for this. A farmer from Kentucky who writes about the evils of modern agriculture, the joys of engaging in meaningful work, and the importance of being connected to nature and place, it is all right up my alley, why couldn't I get into it? Maybe I just haven't been patient enough.

The pace of this novel is really, really slow. It follows the reflections of "Old Jack," a retired Kentucky farmer. As an old man, he looks back on his life, recalling joys and sorrows, accomplishments and show more regrets. It's not a book I was ever really eager to pick up, but once I started, I got sucked in. Not in a way that I couldn't put the book down, but I just felt like I was right there with Old Jack, seeing what he was seeing, feeling what he was feeling. I think my eyes were brimming with tears almost the entire time I was reading this. It captured so many of my feelings towards farming and the world in general. I'm not going to be able to say it eloquently, but I was so moved by Old Jack's contentment in the solitude of his work, yet also the pleasure of falling into rhythm when working with others. I related to the joys of working with one's hands and the feelings of both utter exhaustion and delight following a day of work in the fields. His reflections on the simultaneous significance and insignificance of life and being able to really surrender to that idea were really striking. I could go on and on, but I'll stop there.

This book is definitely not for everyone, but I'm glad I finally was able to stick with a Wendell Berry novel. show less