Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 8444 Plough Quarterly • Winter 2017 Kentucky. His story picks up where Berry’s usually leaves off – just after the rural folk give up their farms and move to the city for other employment. The theme of loss mirrors the lament Berry sounds in his entire body of work: loss of land, loss of livelihood, and loss of a richly storied culture. There’s also the loss of thousands of residents who leave for the promise of manufacturing jobs elsewhere. For Vance’s family, that elsewhere was a Rust Belt town in neighboring Ohio. Berry’s fiction and Vance’s memoir diverge at the point of community and family relationships, and the real-world stories are not charming in the least. Drunken brawls in one generation become opiate-induced felonies in the next, all result- ing in childhood memories of shattering abuse and aching neglect. There is no hazy glow concealing the conspicuous demons in Vance’s community. Where Berry seems to place blame on external forces, Vance is all too aware of how families pass down dysfunction, no matter what state the economy is in. Because Berry has a meticulous understanding of symbiotic ecological systems, I feel like no one should understand this truth better. How can Berry see so clearly the connection between man and nature, dependent on each other, and yet appear willing to overlook the interdependence of generations? Instead, Port Williams’ characters serve as a mouthpiece for an author bemoaning every generation to come along since the Depres- sion who dared to purchase produce from a supermarket or drive their car across the river to see what was on the other side. I mourn the same losses, and still, if I could speak to Jayber Crow (a.k.a. Wendell Berry) I’d have to ask, “What about the sins of the fathers?” Since we share the same theology of free will and depravity of man, I know not to make them solely responsible. Neither should Berry make them entirely (romantically) blameless. The adage “ideals blind us” might be a good caution as we engage with economic manifestos – fictional or otherwise. Would Berry’s writing be more truthful if he applied his love of place to the subsequent generations of those displaced from it? In story terms: What happens to Maddie Keith’s children and Hannah Coulter’s great-grandchildren? In real-world terms: How can the disenfranchised working class of Vance’s generation – and of the rest of this hellbent-on-upward-mobility civilization – be redeemed? How, in the words of Wendell Berry, can we “practice resurrec- tion” now? Berry and Vance both include some im- portant trail markers from their grandparents’ generation. In his 2012 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, Berry tells the story of his grandfather – a simple tobacco farmer in rural Kentucky – who devoted his life to repairing soil he had exposed to erosion in a misguided attempt to “plow his way out of debt.” Berry sees this as one of the most honorable things he remembers about his grandfather, and I would agree. Similarly, in Vance’s memoir, he recalls one of his grandfather’s rare acts of remorse. After bailing out his drug-addicted daughter (Vance’s mother) yet one more time, “Papaw buried his head in his hands and did something Uncle Jimmy had never seen him do: He wept. ‘I’ve failed her; I’ve failed my baby girl.’” Vance transforms this story into an opportunity for generational reflection: Papaw’s rare breakdown strikes at the heart of an important question for hillbillies like me: How much of our lives, good and bad, should we credit to our personal decisions, and how much is just the inheritance of our culture, our families, and our parents who have failed their children?