Thursday, January 1, 2009

Wendell Berry on Facebook

A couple of my friends recently added themselves as fans of Wendell Berry on their Facebook profiles. I found this amusing (as I'm sure they did as well), since Berry seems about as far from Facebook as you can get.

So I went to check out the Wendell Berry page, and this is what I found (click on it to see it larger):

Screen snapshot of Wendell Berry's Facebook page
As I suspected, fans of Wendell Berry all seem to be pretty aware of the paradox involved in joining a Facebook group devoted to him. My favorite part of the profile, though, is the little line of text under Wendell Berry's mini-feed: "Wendell Berry has no recent activity." (Ha!)

In looking through the other Berry-related Facebook pages, I found one called Wendell Berry for President and another for the Wendell Berry Society, which linked to an interesting site I will have look into in more depth, called Mr. Wendell Berry of Kentucky.

On the Wendell Berry Society page, Facebook's random ad generator blessed me with this wonderful juxtaposition:

Facebook page with Wendel Berry's black and white photo next to a color photo of Hugh Laurie as Gregory House, who appears to be looking skeptically at Wendell Berry
I can almost imagine what Gregory House would have to say about Wendell Berry.

3 comments:

brtom said...

HI. I'm glad you found the strange FB group and that it led you to that other spot.

So what would House have to say about WB? Aside from them both being somewhat curmudgeonly ... I'm guessing Mr. B. would bring out the best in H.

(funny, the word "unmed" is my verification term)

"Fidelity" is a good WB med tale. And I notice you've read The Wild Birds ... that was my introduction to Port William ... good stuff.

All the best,
Tom

elena said...

I really enjoyed this, DN3,and I too did "fan" WB, that old curmudgeon!

Daughter Number Three said...

Tom,

I've only put my toe in the deep waters of Wendell Berry, and intend to read more. Unfortunately, I know more about Gregory House than Wendell Berry at this point, and I think House might not have a lot of patience with Berry's antitechnological bent. And I wonder how House's mantra, "everybody lies," would fit in, too.

I often wish I could overhear conversations between WB and other sharp thinkers of contrary opinion, though. But since that's not going to happen, I need to read more of his essays, particularly, to learn more about how he thinks.