Episode 26. Introducing New Host Matt Wheeler & Season 4 Preview

Now that you are the co-host, one of the things that we have changed is that kind of the intro and outro music, and we're going to have little bumper music, I think it's called, kind of interspersed in between.

All of that are instrumental pieces from A Hard History of Love.

And one of the questions that I get all the time is, you know, I'm new to reading Wendell Berry.

Where should I start? And you must get that question all the time.

And so I'm curious, how do you answer that?

I do get that a lot, especially because it's in a music concert setting.

And sometimes people, you know, have never heard of Wendell Berry.

And it's like it's a matter of me introducing them, which is a joy to be able to do.

And it's not at all uncommon, and especially now, it would seem, since as we're recording this, it's not long after Wendell passed.

And as is always, perhaps curiously, a cultural factor, like, you know, someone passes, it's like there's suddenly new interest in checking out, like, what were they about? Yeah, I noticed

that almost all of his books are in backorder.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I imagine the Barry Center bookstore is having hopefully the good problem of needing to fulfill lots and lots of orders.

They tend to be my go to for whenever I'm ordering Barry books and the related stuff.

Yeah.

So as far as where to start, though, it's a bit like with Lewis, too.

It's kind of like, well, you know, here are the three mainstreams.

Which of these would speak most to you, do you think? I mean, usually I'm talking about Port William because that's what the stories that the songs are coming from.

That's the source of those stories.

So usually I'm telling people either if you want to start with a novel, then Hannah Coulter.

And if you want to start with short stories, either The Distant Land is a good one.

But I mean, you could also go very well with The Wild Birds, which was again, The first that I read, Fidelity would work really well.

And there's some overlaps as far as what's in those collections.

The nice thing about starting with The Distant Land is you start with this 11-page masterclass of formational moments in the story The Hurt Man, which might be my favorite Wendell Berry short story.