LiteratureTestimony

Jayber Crow’s Way of Mistakes and Surprises

An enchanting novel all the way around, Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow is one of the […]

Ethan Richardson / 8.23.13

An enchanting novel all the way around, Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow is one of the Port William series, based fictionally on Mr. Berry’s own home, Port Royal, Kentucky. Jayber Crow is a barber-priest, a seminarian who left seminary to cut hair. He says this about the life that’s been given him:

If you could do it, I suppose, it would be a good idea to live your life in a straight line–starting, say, in the Dark Wood of Error, and proceeding by logical steps through Hell and Purgatory and into Heaven. Or you could take the King’s Highway past appropriately named dangers, toils, and snares, and finally cross the River of Death and enter the Celestial City. But that is not the way I have done it, so far. I am a pilgrim, but my pilgrimage has been wandering and unmarked. Often what has looked like a straight line to me has been a circle or a doubling back. I have been in the Dark Wood of Error any number of times. I have known something of Hell, Purgatory, Heaven, but not always in that order. The names of many snares and dangers have been made known to me, but I have seen them only in looking back. Often I have received better than I have deserved. Often my fairest hopes have rested on bad mistakes. I am an ignorant pilgrim, crossing a dark valley. And yet for a long time, looking back, I have been unable to shake off the feeling that I have been led–make of that what you will.

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