Better Off

I'm not sure how this book is so split between excellent reviews and poor ones.

The negative reviews often describe the author as arrogant and narcissistic; he's certainly introspective, as is appropriate in a memoir (I wonder what these same reviewers would say about Thoreau), but I don't see the arrogance. The author doesn't shy away from negative depictions of himself. Compared to his new Amish-style neighbors, he's weak, ignorant, and incompetent in his new lifestyle, but he seems to realize this.

He doesn't say explicitly, "I was an idiot", or "I'm full of regret about that." One wonders whether the other reviewers are products of a laugh-track culture that can't figure out for themselves what's supposed to be funny or self-deprecating. For example, one tongue-in-cheek remark occurred when the author and his wife were having their first child and they went to a local store to buy baby supplies. The cash register rang up over $100, a large sum in their circumstances. He says, "Mary [his wife] looked at me. I looked at Mary. Didn't she know that the baby items were the mother's responsibility? 'Can't you use your credit card?' I asked." Do these reviewers actually think that he made his wife put it on their credit card, because it's the "mother's responsibility"? If that were really the case, he wouldn't think it was worth talking about. It's a joke, people, about them not having money. Perhaps a poor joke, but I'd hate to live in a world where every joke has to be explained in great detail, lest it offend.

That said, I would have liked to hear more of Mary's perspective, of what it like being a woman in Amish country. The author does seem oddly incurious about this, as well as silent on what had originally attracted him to Mary. I can't help but compare this book to another experimental memoir which I really enjoyed, [b: The Dirty Life|7841677|The Dirty Life On Farming, Food, and Love|Kristin Kimball|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1277929135s/7841677.jpg|10935145], in which a journalist from New York City marries a relatively new farmer and they start a CSA farm together from scratch. There, the romance between the two and their joint efforts on the farm get much more emotional attention, and poetic nature of that book seems more fitting.

Still, there were some really interesting points made about the roles of men and women. Brende said at one point, "The word house-husband is redundant. Of course! This startling thought came to me as I reached for the hand pump. The 'hus-' from 'husband' is simply the Old English form of the word 'house,' while 'band' means 'bound.' The man who stays at home to work is returning to a long-forgotten calling preserved in the language like a fossil. There is no linguistic need to add the extra 'house.' "

All in all, it's definitely worth reading, but I would suggest reading [b: The Dirty Life|7841677|The Dirty Life On Farming, Food, and Love|Kristin Kimball|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1277929135s/7841677.jpg|10935145] and [b: The Unsettling of America|146191|The Unsettling of America Culture and Agriculture|Wendell Berry|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1363657372s/146191.jpg|1984458] before this one.