Distant Neighbors

Hardcover, 352 pages

English language

Published Dec. 20, 2014 by Counterpoint.

ISBN:: 978-1-61902-305-5
OCLC Number:: 860756270

(1 review)

In 1969 Gary Snyder returned from a long residence in Japan to the Sierra foothills, where he intended to build a house and settle with his wife and sons. He had just published his first book of essays, Earth House Hold. A few years before, Wendell Berry left New York City for farmland in Port Royal, Kentucky, where he built a small studio and lived with his wife. Berry had just published Long-Legged House. These two founding members of the counterculture had yet to meet, but they knew each other’s work and soon began a correspondence. Neither man could have imagined the impact their work would have on American political and literary culture, nor the impact they would have on one another.

They exchanged more than 240 letters from 1973 to 2013, bringing out the best in each other as they grappled with faith and reason, discussed home and family, …

In 1969 Gary Snyder returned from a long residence in Japan to the Sierra foothills, where he intended to build a house and settle with his wife and sons. He had just published his first book of essays, Earth House Hold. A few years before, Wendell Berry left New York City for farmland in Port Royal, Kentucky, where he built a small studio and lived with his wife. Berry had just published Long-Legged House. These two founding members of the counterculture had yet to meet, but they knew each other’s work and soon began a correspondence. Neither man could have imagined the impact their work would have on American political and literary culture, nor the impact they would have on one another.

They exchanged more than 240 letters from 1973 to 2013, bringing out the best in each other as they grappled with faith and reason, discussed home and family, worried over the disintegration of community and commonwealth, and shared the details of the lives they’d chosen with their wives and children. None can be unaffected by the complexity of their relationship, the subtlety of their arguments, and the grace of their friendship. This is a book for the ages.

1 edition

Nic Dafis reviewed Distant Neighbors by Wendell Berry

Review of 'Distant Neighbors' on 'Storygraph'

5 stars

I've been reading Gary Snyder since the late 1980s and Wendell Berry for nearly as long, so it was a lovely surprise to come across this volume of their letters. Although I knew of their friendship (both have written poems to, and about, the other), I hadn't realised how close they have been, and for how long.

This is the third volume of Snyder's letters to be published (as far as I know), after the Allen Ginsberg collection and the more recent book of interviews and correspondence with Julia Martin. Snyder and Berry are now both in their 80s; is this the last literary generation that we will get to know through their letters? Would even this rich collection have been thinner if Berry hadn't famously resisted buying a computer? The Snyder/Martin correspondence has a 5 year gap for a period of deleted and lost emails. No such lacunae here, …

I've been reading Gary Snyder since the late 1980s and Wendell Berry for nearly as long, so it was a lovely surprise to come across this volume of their letters. Although I knew of their friendship (both have written poems to, and about, the other), I hadn't realised how close they have been, and for how long.

This is the third volume of Snyder's letters to be published (as far as I know), after the Allen Ginsberg collection and the more recent book of interviews and correspondence with Julia Martin. Snyder and Berry are now both in their 80s; is this the last literary generation that we will get to know through their letters? Would even this rich collection have been thinner if Berry hadn't famously resisted buying a computer? The Snyder/Martin correspondence has a 5 year gap for a period of deleted and lost emails. No such lacunae here, diolch byth.

Bonus points to Wendell Berry, for encouraging Snyder to explore the work of David Jones, and for specifically recommending "The Tutelar of the Place", my favourite Jones poem.