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arts I the Literary Return to Port William spoke to Wendell Berry in the early evening by phone, agreeing with him that the mid-December rains had been much needed for flling creeks and ponds and that in this slower time (in his case, on a farm), "it's easier to sit down, work on a piece of writing." Ten the celebrated Kentucky author refected on his long relationship with the fctional community of Port William and on our relationship to the land and to each other. His latest short-story collection, A Place in Time, is his frst new fction since 2006. For readers like me, whose introduction to your fction is A Place in Time, describe this collection, particularly as it complements or responds to prior Port William works. "Well, these are short stories and they stand alone, I hope. Each one is an independent story and they spread over a considerable length of time, over a hundred years, from 1864 to one night in 2008, if I'm not mistaken. And so they would ft into the chronology and that's why I've given the years for each one. But they also ft in by returning to themes that were begun in other stories, or the novels. For instance, the story called 'A Desirable Woman' tells what happens to Tom Coulter after he left home, which was in the novel Nathan Coulter and was published in 1960. So almost 50 years later I began to imagine what had happened to him. And then the story called 'Stand by Me' tells the rest of the story, of his death; a lot more about his life, too." Over the years of writing about this fellowship, which character or characters continue to surprise and delight you the most? Which continue to vex you? "Oh, the same characters keep turning up. I like to write about people I care about, people I enjoy, and I suppose in this collection the most talked-about character is Burley Coulter — who, well, he talks about himself — and Andy Catlett and Elton Penn. But I didn't return to them because I wanted to write more about those characters. I went back because new stories came to me and I became able to imagine more about them in these stories." 76 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 2.13 Many of the key principles in your essays over the years — stewardship, the beauty of Creation, good work, and now afection, which you discuss in the Jeferson Lecture — seem to be in practice in the community of Port William. I assume that was intentional, but how has your thinking about afection and the practice of a neighborly, kind and conserving economy informed your writing? "You write a story because you have a story to tell; now, the story is almost certain to be informed in some way by the thinking that went into the essays, but you're not writing a story to deliver a message the way you're doing when you write an essay. Te story is the primary thing. Te theme that's connected these stories is the theme of membership in a community, and Burley Coulter is in a way the chief spokesman for that understanding of the ways that people belong to one another and how they feel their obligations to each other." Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future of that kind of community in Kentucky? "Optimism and pessimism are programs in a way; I don't want to be either one. I think the correct thing for me to say about myself is that I'm hopeful that these old connections can be renewed and that things can be taken care of as they should be. We're a long way from that now." What are you reading currently? "Right now I'm reading nothing new. I reread Te Great Gatsby not long ago; I'm reading Elizabeth Marshall Tomas' second book on the African Bushmen, called Te Old Way: A Story of the First People. I'm rereading some things that have meant something to me. I go back all the time to Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer — the old poets. Faulkner. Not too long ago I reread Light in August. I reread Dr. Zhivago, which is really well worth the time. Boris Pasternak wrote that book, published in 1958, and won the Nobel Prize in that year. It's a valuable book; but the Soviet government treated him harshly because of it." By Lynnell Edwards Photo by Pam Spaulding A Reader's Guide Ask readers to name their most beloved work by Wendell Berry and you're likely to get a description like the blind men gave of the elephant. One will recall the "Window" poem that changed his life; another may claim to know the members of the fellowship of Port William as intimately as her own kin; others swear by the manifestos of the "Mad Farmer." But Berry has made his mark as an intellectual perhaps most signifcantly as an essayist, and it is the essays that ensure his voice will persist as one of the most strikingly original and informed of his generation. Berry's most recent collection is It All Turns on Affection: Te Jefferson Lecture and Other Essays. Tis brief assemblage contains the full text of his 2012 Jeferson Lecture for the National Endowment for the Humanities, the federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities (on the heels of a 2011 National Humanities Medal). Also included is a collegial follow-up conversation between Berry, his wife Tanya and NEH Chairman Jim Leach, in which Berry further explicates his notion of "afection" and the future of agriculture. Te Art of the Commonplace: Te Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry (2002) compiles 21 essays from past collections, including Te Unsettling of America (1996), Home Economics (1987), the early A Continuous Harmony (1972), and 1992's Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community — topically, rather than chronologically, giving readers a sense of Berry's primary touchstones for culture, religion and economics. At the conclusion of our phone conversation, Berry spoke passionately about his most recent advocacy for the Fifty-Year Farm Bill, a proposal by the Land Institute in Salinas, Kan., for developing sustainable agricultural practices. Te bill is, in his words, "an attempt to address those problems of erosion, toxicity and the destruction of rural communities, rural cultures." For students of Berry's long advocacy for conservation as "good work," his brief paper of Nov. 13, 2012, discussing the proposal can be found on theatlantic.com.