Wendell Berry Takes His Papers and Leaves

[BridgeTheGap]

Wendell Berry is truly a man of letters: The famously computer-hating agrarian writer still pens all his essays and books by hand. So it’s got to hurt the University of Kentucky to hear that it won’t be getting his voluminous archives as it had expected. Why? Because Berry, a man of rock-hard principle, is offended that the university is naming a new dorm for basketball players the Wildcat Coal Lodge in order to please coal-friendly donors.

The Lexington Herald-Leader got its hands on the acid letter Berry sent to the university regarding the matter. “It is now obviously wrong, unjust and unfair,” he wrote, “for your space and work to be encumbered by a collection of papers that I no longer can consider donating to the University.”

The papers measure 60 cubic feet in volume and would fill about 100 boxes, the Herald-Leader reports. They remain at the school while Berry negotiates their transfer to the Kentucky Historical Society in Frankfort.

Are university officials surprised? They wouldn’t be if they looked back to this passage in a 2005 essay by Berry, which originally appeared in the book Missing Mountains: We Went to the Mountaintop But It Wasn’t There: Kentuckians Write Against Mountaintop Removal (Wind Publications):

http://www.utne.com/Wild-Green/Wendell-Berry-Takes-His-Papers-and-Leaves.aspx?utm_content=07.02.10+Great+Writing&utm_campaign=Emerging+Ideas-Every+Day&utm_source=iPost&utm_medium=email

[Angry Dragon]

1. I like Mr. Berry

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. Their loss for being so tone deaf.

Wendall Berry, who inspired Michael Pollan.

[Tumbulu]

4. and a very large group of people to become organic farmers

like me and my neighbors and so many other people.

[peacetalksforall]

3. That will make most /all? of the Berry lovers love him more,