In 1969 Gary Snyder returned from a long residence in Japan to
northern California, to a homestead in the Sierra foothills where
he intended to build a house and settle on the land with his wife
and young sons. He had just published his first book of essays,
Earth House Hold. A few years before, after a long absence, Wendell
Berry left New York City to return to land near his grandfather's
farm in Port Royal, Kentucky, where he built a small studio and
lived there with his wife as they restored an old house on their
newly acquired homestead. In 1969 Berry had just published
Long-Legged House. These two founding members of the counterculture
and of the new environmental movement had yet to meet, but they
knew each other's work, and soon they began a correspondence.
Neither man could have imagined the impact their work would have on
American political and literary culture, nor could they have
appreciated the impact they would have on one another.Snyder had
thrown over all vestiges of Christianity in favor of becoming a
devoted Buddhist and Zen practitioner, and had lived in Japan for a
prolonged period to develop this practice. Berry's discomfort with
the Christianity of his native land caused him to become something
of a renegade Christian, troubled by the church and organized
religion, but grounded in its vocabulary and its narrative.
Religion and spirituality seemed like a natural topic for the two
men to discuss, and discuss they did.They exchanged more than 240
letters from 1973 to 2013, remarkable letters of insight and
argument. The two bring out the best in each other, as they grapple
with issues of faith and reason, discuss ideas of home and family,
worry over the disintegration of community and commonwealth, and
share the details of the lives they've chosen to live with their
wives and children. Contemporary American culture is the landscape
they reside on. Environmentalism, sustainability, global politics
and American involvement, literature, poetry and progressive
ideals, these two public intellectuals address issues as broad as
are found in any exchange in literature.No one 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.
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