Jayber Crow: A Novel [Paperback]

"Jayber Crow" tells the life story of Jonah Crow, a barber in the Port William Membership, who affectionately becomes known as Jayber. The novel builds slowly, dwelling on Jayber's youth and his misguided attempts to serve God through the ministry. Disillusioned with too many doubts and questions with no answers in sight, Jayber sets off on his own and eventually discovers his talent for cutting hair. He finds himself the barber of Port William for over thirty years, faithfully cutting hair and participating in the lives of those around him.

Initially, Jayber may seem like a lonely man. He is a confirmed bachelor, who lives in his small apartment above the barber shop. Yet he knows the deepest, fullest extent of love and passion, as yet unrequited by Mattie Keith (Chatham). (As he says, "I was married to Mattie Chatham, but she was not married to me...) He watches Mattie as she herself experiences love, marriage, loss and misery, never once able to express his true feelings for her. Even after he retires as barber, Jayber still remains the town's barber, and becomes an owner of property - a small cottage by the river where he can fish and reflect on the glories of nature. By and by, Jayber comes to find the answers to those doubts and questions he had long ago concerning God and he proves himself to be a faithful servant and steward of God's creation.

Wendell Berry creates a wonderful cast of characters whom he evokes with believability and wisdom. The town of Port William Membership becomes a real place on the Kentucky River, that watches as the land around it becomes more technological and industrial. Yet Berry maintains his focus on how this industrial progress can be just as destructive as others might deem it necessary. Berry shows this distinction in the story of the Keith family - the struggle between father and son-in-law - for the future of the family farm.

Berry's telling of Jayber's life is poetic and often elegiac. As he gives up his barber shop, the reader feels like they are saying goodbye to Jayber as well. We have lived with him through the peaks and valleys, and felt the sting of his unrequited love for Mattie. As industrial progress closes in on Port William, we feel the decrepitude and downfall of the small "backwater" town. We grieve for Jayber's losses; but Berry is not one to let the story die without a hopeful conclusion. His final paragraphs, to me, rank among some of the best conclusions in literature.

But Jaber Crow found more than just interesting faces in Port William. He found himself and he found his community...his place. He had carried with him his loneliness, his isolations, and his self-reliance for a long, long time. " I learned to think of myself as myself. The past was gone. I was unattached. I could put my whole life in a smallish cardboard box and carry it in my hand."
But when he got back to Port Williams and recognized some of the folks he knew and who knew him "...well, that changed me. After all those years of keeping myself aloof and alone, I began to feel tugs from the outside. I felt my life branching and forking out into the known world. ...nothing would ever be simple for me again. I never would be able to put my life in a box and carry it away."
Jayber's place in his community, his role there, his thoughts, his unattained love, and his relationship with the fields, streams and forests of the place provoke an inescapable reflection on what it means to "amount to something, to make something of oneself."