Essays From West of 98: On Jayber Crow

Reading a book that will alter your worldview forever

Have you ever had a moment in life in which you learn something that you can never unlearn? No matter how hard you try, you can never mentally return to your prior state or see the world the same way again. Depending on the particulars, this can be a bad thing or a good thing.

Toby Keith sang about the negative side in the early 1990s, in a heartbreak tale whose chorus went “wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then…” There’s a great episode of the early 2000s sitcom “How I Met Your Mother” called “Spoiler Alert” in which the characters try to avoid revealing an aggravating flaw about another character’s date, because they know he will never see her the same way again. Learning that information would be like glass shattering and he’d never be able to go back.

That’s like reading “Jayber Crow.”

“Jayber Crow” is not Wendell Berry’s first novel. It was published in 2000, a full 40 years after Berry’s fiction career began in 1960 with “Nathan Coulter.” Both novels take place in the fictional community of Port William, a thinly-disguised version of Berry’s home of Port Royal, Kentucky. Before publishing “Jayber Crow,” Berry wrote several dozen other novels and short stories in that fictional universe. In the two decades since, he has published several dozen more.

“Jayber Crow” is an autobiography of a man named Jayber Crow, who is Port William’s bachelor barber. Set in the 1980s, it is an old man’s reflection on a lifetime of change in the community from his birth during World War I. It’s a reflection about a single place but also a reflection, a critique, and a concern about rural America and agriculture at large. It is not a religious book, yet it is taught at seminaries today. Christian writer and theologian Russell Moore ranks “Jayber Crow” as one of the most important works of fiction he has ever read.

Recently, I spoke to a group of local government officials at a workshop hosted by the Texas Midwest Community Network. In my talk, I observe I am occasionally asked for book recommendations about improving a person’s local community. There are many such books of varying quality and I have read many of them: personal narratives, case studies, how-to guides, and sales pitches for subscribing to someone’s magic bullet of rural success.

If you want to improve your local community, I recommend starting with “Jayber Crow.” I consider it the single most impactful book I have ever read on the topic of improving rural America.

A single essay cannot do it justice, but it is a book that reflects on rural America before, during, and after the technologies of mechanization and industrialization that were adapted from World War II to agriculture. It reflects on the reduced need for human labor, the increased size of farms, and the push of rural populations into the cities and suburbs. This is no mere elegy for days gone by, nor is it a romantic call for an impossible return to some fanciful “good old days.” It is a very real portrait of how these changes made life easier in some ways, but how these changes also affected people and their places. It is a portrait of the importance of local community and local economies. It is a revealing look at the outcomes when local communities and local economies no longer matter in the halls of academic, corporate, and political power.

If you want to understand how my mind works on the topic of restoring our rural prosperity, I encourage you to read “Jayber Crow.” You’ll be glad you did, but I warn you: you will never view the world the same way again.

James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and podcast. Contact James and subscribe to these essays at westof98.substack.com and subscribe to West of 98 wherever podcasts are found.