The Memory of Old Jack by Wendell Berry

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Let's Talk About It!Jack Beechum is the focus of this third-person narrative. The novel, one of the "Port William membership stories," is set in Port William, Kentucky, in 1952 when Jack is 92 years old. The narrative takes place over the chronological period of but a day; however, the present tense narrative is punctuated by Jack's reminiscences of the major events in his life. As Jack's life unfolds throughout these flashbacks, his character and his impact on the history of the town and its people reveal Berry's final message. This is at once a story of Jack and his life and times, but also the effect one man's life has on those around him.

In an interview with Jordan Fisher-Smith, Berry comments on the power of our histories.

Well, if you didn't know any of the past, you literally wouldn't know anything. You'd have no language, no history, and so the first result would be a kind of personal incompleteness... But practicalities are involved also. If you had a settled, a really settled, thriving, locally adapted community, which we don't have anywhere, you wouldn't just be remembering the dead. You'd remember what they did and whether it worked or not. And so you'd have a kind of lexicon of possibilities that would tell you what you could do, what you could get away with, and what penalty to expect from what you couldn't get away with... So the memory that a community has of its dead, and of the pasts of the living would be a precious sort of manual—a kind of handbook, a kind of operator's manual for the use of the immediate place. That's the only kind of operator's manual for the world that we're going to have... It would be extremely local and extremely particular at its best, because it would consist of information about the history of various fields and patches of forest and that sort of thing. It would be too local to need to be preserved for any but the local posterity.

Concerning intergenerational connections and responsibilities, Berry (himself a grandfather) says,

The obligation is very great and moves two ways. The old have an obligation to be exemplary, if they can—and since nobody can be completely exemplary, they also have an obligation to be intelligent about their failings. They're going to be remembered in one way or another, so they have an obligation to see that they're remembered not as a liability or a great burden, but as a help. And of course the young, the inheritors, have an obligation to remember these people and live up to them—be worthy of them. So it's an obligation that goes both ways, and it's inescapable. Once you become involved in this sequence of lives, there is no way to escape the responsibility. You inherit, and in turn you bequeath an inheritance of some kind.

Jack Beechum spends all his days in the same place, never once venturing outside the area of Port William. The value of place has great meaning to him. Berry notes,

And if you stay in a place and make connections, make relationships, you experience losses that are difficult to bear... What we're really talking about is faith, the faith being that if you make a commitment, and hang on until death, there are rewards. The rewards come. Nobody has ever said that this was easy to do, but I think that everybody who has done it has done it out of this faith that there are rewards. My experience suggests very powerfully to me that there are rewards. (Qtd. in Fisher-Smith interview, http://www.envirolink.org/enviroarts/interviews_and_conversations/WendellBerry.html)

Biography of Wendell Berry

Contemporary author Wendell Berry has written over thirty-two books including novels, collections of poetry, and occasional essays. He is also a teacher (formerly a professor of English at Kentucky State University), a preserver of local lore, an environmentalist, and a futurist in the sense that he understands the critical needs of communities (rural and by extension urban) as the platform for the future. Since 1965 he has farmed in rural Kentucky. He has received many awards and recognitions, including the 1999 Thomas Merton Award, fellowships in both the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, an award from the National Institute and Academy of Arts and Letters (1971) and the T.S. Eliot Award.

Discussion questions for The Memory of Old Jack

  1. The novel takes place mostly in Jack's head, remembrances of his life leading up to the present. Comment on some important people and events that he recalls and their effect on him. You might consider Ruth, Will Wells, Rose, Ben, Clara, Andy, his "triumph" over McGrother (in acquiring the neighboring property), and the barn burning.
     
  2. Discuss how Jack, even in his current situation, deeply impacts those around him. How do Mat and Jack's friends take his death? His daughter Clara?
     
  3. Chapter Seven deals in large part with Jack's great-nephew Andy Catlett (106-127, Counterpoint edition). Discuss Andy's place in the story.
     
  4. Reviewers of this book have noted that Jack is the last of his kind, and that his passing is a metaphor for the death of a way of life. Comment on this concept.
     
  5. Berry provides a keen insight into the nature of reminiscence and aging. Read pages 24-25 (Chapter Three) and comment on these ideas.
     
  6. On page 12, Berry draws a scene in which Mat and his family visit former employees who now live in the city. Review page 12 and comment on Berry's view of uprooting and leaving "home."

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