Why Wendell Berry Didn’t Worry About the Future

Wendell Berry was not an easy man to reach.

When I wanted to interview him for this magazine in the spring of 2015, his publicist warned me that a press request would take some doing.

Berry didn’t have a cellphone.

He didn’t use email.

He didn’t even have a computer.

He wrote most of his drafts by hand during the day, without electric light.

And he definitely didn’t make himself available to any old reporter who wanted to talk.

I knew this already, of course.

Berry, who died on Monday at the age of 92, lived a life defined by acts of radical abstention.

He said no emphatically and often; principled refusal was a central theme of his writing and the lore that surrounded him.

The publicist spent the better part of a week trying to reach Berry on my behalf.

This involved multiple phone calls to his farmhouse, in Henry County, Kentucky, where Berry and his wife, Tanya, had lived since the mid-1960s.

Wendell spent most of his time outdoors, the publicist explained, so he often simply wasn’t around to hear the landline ring.

After a while, though, she told me that she and Berry had managed to connect, and that he would consider my request.