Nathan Coulter: A Novel (Port William)

Port William, Kentucky is to Wendell Berry's fiction what Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi is to William Faulkner's. First published in 1960, NATHAN COULTER was the first of Berry's Port Williams novels. It was revised and reissued in its present form in 1985. (I do not know how extensive the re-working was. If anyone does know, I would appreciate hearing about it.)The time of NATHAN COULTER is the mid-1930's. Nathan Coulter, then around thirteen years old, recounts the major events of about two years of his life on the family farm, outside Port William. He and his older brother Tom get into mischief, blowing up a boy's pet crow with a dynamite cap poked up the crow's bunghole; their mother dies and they go to live with their grandparents and uncle on the next farm over; they take in the attractions of a Fourth of July carnival, including a tent featuring "Bubbles: Bewitching Enchantress of the Far East"; their dad's barn burns down; Nathan and Uncle Burley go fishing and catch the biggest catfish seen in that area in living memory; all the males join together in cutting tobacco, in the course of which Tom gets into a fight with his father and leaves to go off on his own; raccoon hunting in winter; cutting hay the next summer. It is the seasonal ebb and flow of agricultural life, punctuated by a few deaths and one birth, a few minor tragedies and a few shooting stars of excitement.In essence, NATHAN COULTER is the story of one boy over a narrow slice of time amidst the larger story of the land and the cycle of generations that live off of it. If the reader focuses solely on the boy's story, the novel might seem dull and flat. If you look to the bigger picture, the story has more depth and potentially more meaning, but it still is not reassuring or uplifting. The comfort of the "Port William membership" is not yet evident. At this early stage of Berry's fictional universe, the prevailing message is expressed by Nathan's Daddy, who during a break in a day of back-breaking tobacco-cutting, says, "Well, you work on this damned old dirt and sweat over it and worry about it, and then one day they'll shovel it in your face, and that'll be the end of it."

Wendell Berry introduces us to a young man I understand to be a mainstay of his fiction, Nathan Coulter, with the word 'dark':'Dark. The light went out the door when she pulled it to. And then everything came in close around me, the way it was in the daylight, only all close. Because in the dark, I could remember and not see. The sun was first, going over the hill behind our barn. Then the river was covered with the shadows of the hills. Then the hills went behind their shadows, and just the house and the barn and the other buildings were left, standing black against the sky where it was still white in the west.'I hedge my description with the words '(as) I understand', because NATHAN COULTER: A NOVEL is my own rather carefully chosen introduction to Wendell Berry the writer, Wendell Berry the novelist, and Coulter and his kin. That first paragraph sets some of Berry's major literary artifacts in their place, what with its mention of darkness and light, house and barn, sun, hills, river, and shadows. Always shadows.As I'd been warned, the pace of Berry's fiction-writing pen is a slow one, perhaps as befits the pace of the rural Kentucky life he describes. Yet slow never need mean shallow, in fact just the opposite.Already, a newbie to Berry and Berrian fiction, this reader can see that things in Berry's world—in Nathan Coulter's world—are rarely as they appear to be, seldom as an outsider might presume them to be on first evidence. The holy are not necessarily so, the profane more insightful and even merciful than expected, the shadows sometimes full of light as well as darkness.I can hardly wait for whatever happens next.

Loved the book so much. One gets into the people's lives. Have read Hannah Coulter too. One can reflect for hours after finishing a book. Hope to read all in the series.

these stories draw me right into the book

I wonder how young people raised in a city or suburb would relate to this book. For me, many of the references to the land had some slight resonance because of my childhood experiences, but how many urbanites and even suburbanites get that opportunity now?

Wendell Berry writes in a very personal and conversational style. Much like Chaim Potok, he calls his characters forth in an intimate fashion as he tells the simple stories of their lives and interactions. By writing on such an uncluttered way he allows the humanity of his characters to live.

Great story about a rural family, hard work, having fun, coming of age, aging, and a love of the land. I’m not sure how to feel about the ending, though. Still thinking about it the next morning after finishing. Maybe that’s a good thing...

This series was recommended to me by my brother, who had recently finished Jayber Crow. Of course, I wanted to start at the beginning. It was enjoyable to read about a different time in the world. A time when things were different. For example, one character moves to the other side of the county and is completely out of touch with the rest of the family for months at a time. This is a very short novel, but I would suggest that you not hurry through it. There are no big twists or large plot developments to race towards. There is only the story about a family, their farm, and their struggles. I will certainly continue in this series.

I have been evangelical about Wendell Berry’s writing for a number of years now. Mostly I have been reading his non-fiction books and essays that detail his agrarian lifestyle as a farmer in Kentucky and his philosophies about food, farming, family and the way we should live in tune with our places. More recently I have been reading his fiction and if anything, have found this even more satisfying, as his stories place his ideas into a context that is utterly absorbing and life affirming. Berry’s fiction breathes abundant life into his essays.My first introduction to Berry’s Port William tales was in a collection of short stories published by Penguin under the title Stand By Me. A standout in this collection is Fidelity, in which Burley Coulter is dying and absorbed into the industrial medical complex from which his son Danny Branch determines to free him to die in the place where he lived with the people who loved him. It is an utterly beautiful piece of writing and it expresses the experience of human life and community in a deeply poetic way that could never be achieved through any other means than story telling.Nathan Coulter was the first of Berry’s novels about Port William and its people and so this is where I went in search of more of his wisdom. Burley is a younger man and his nephew Nathan is only a boy. The two are growing closer as Nathan’s father struggles to cope with the death of his wife, Nathan’s mother, and his relationship with his brother Tom drifts away from him towards adulthood, leaving Nathan behind in childhood and creating a gulf between them.Nothing much happens in what is a short novel at just 117 pages, but so much is explored. It is a coming of age story for Nathan who works alongside and watches these different male role models in his life and begins to understand his own place amongst them and on the land. Nathan’s father goads his boys that they only ever see the world with him stood in front of them and when he dies they will see for the first time what it looks like without him.For Tom this creates a restlessness to bring forward the break that must come naturally in the end and he forges his own path away from the farm, but for Nathan left behind to observe the deterioration of his grandfather an understanding develops of a life inseparable from the cycle of family working the land.Discovering his fiction, I love Berry’s writing even more than before. His essays appeal to my philosophical self, residing in my mind conceptualising how a better world might look, but his fiction moves these ideas into my heart and my hands. Although the books are set in Berry’s own Kentucky homeland all of the themes translate easily to me in my location. It is a counter cultural message though, as Berry’s real life is too, and many of the messages are ones that have been rejected by our modern western society, to devastating effect.I recommend Berry to everyone, his essays, his poetry and his fiction all enrich the reader.

I loved this book. My favourite by this author (so far) is Hannah Coulter, but this one was great for filling out Nathan's character. Enjoyable, and thought provoking.