Jayber Crow

Summary: A barber, near the end of his life, tells of life in the small town of Port William, along the Ohio River. 

I have been more interested in fiction lately, so I decided to pick up Jayber Crow, the book that most people I know suggest is the best book to start with for the Port William series. I have previously only read Hannah Coulter. A different member tells each book of the series of the community. There are eight novels and dozens of short stories.

I am reading this soon after reading Eugene Peterson's biography, A Burning in My Bones, for the second time. Eugene Peterson was born in 1932, a few years before the fictional Jayber Crow started being the barber at Port William (at 23 years old). So there were about 17 years between them. Jayber dropped out of seminary, and although he took some classes at a college, he was not really enrolled to get a degree. So when he, on a whim, quits his job and starts walking in a rainstorm, he eventually returns to the home where he lived before he went to an orphanage (his parents both died, and then his uncle and aunt died before he was 10.)

Port Wiliam is a realistic book that details the cultural changes of the 20th century. When Jayber moved to Port Wiliam, he purchased a barbershop that had been abandoned to the bank by the previous barber. Jayber lived above the one-room shop in a one-room apartment. There was no running water or bathrooms. There was electricity, but there was no reason for it other than his razors. For 30 years, Jayber has been the town's bachelor barber. There are not enough people in the town for Jayber to earn enough money to support a family. He has to become the church janitor and the town gravedigger even to support himself. The story is being told from the view of a retired Jayber in 1986.

Wendell Berry is an agrarian author. He writes nostalgically about a time when farms were fairly self-sufficient and limited by the number of animals the land could support and the number of crops the animals needed to eat to use the animal fertilizer. Even though Berry does not idealize the people, there is real tension, bad behavior, and humanity, but life is still idealized.

Eugene Peterson was a fan of Berry's fiction. And I am too. Berry can write stories that I want to read. But when I read Peterson or about Peterson, I see a real-life attempting to grapple with a world that wants to encourage us away from a human-focused world and church. Berry is trying to remind the reader of the need for humanity to live at a pace and style that supports the limits of being human. While the two authors fit together in many ways, I think the genre matters. Fiction always idealizes because it is not a real-life being discussed. The biography or memoir may only tell part of the story, but it is still attempting to tell a real story.

I enjoyed Jayber Crow. But I could never get wholly past the nostalgia. Many novels that I enjoy are about ideas and ideals. Jayber Crow is a story about what it means to be a part of a community, a real part, and how that community supports life, including a life of faith.