How It Went recalls episodes from the life of Andy Catlett, a farmer of Port William, from his childhood in the 1940s into the new millennium as he looks back from his 80s. As happens in any Port William story, other familiar names appear during these tales, names that readers of Wendell Berry’s many Port William books will recognize.

Here, Andy, who is a stand in for the author most obviously at times, views his early love for being on the farm rather than in school. While he writes beautifully of the setting and aspects of life in the country, this older Andy is also a realist. He is able to recognize how difficult the farm life was for his grandparents, his father-who chose to be a lawyer, and those other men and women he met as he grew up and began his own farm life.

The descriptions of friendship, so much said with so few words, is again, beautiful. And there are some great stories of pranks and silly stories as well as the gift of story telling itself.

A major reason to read this book is Berry’s insights into people, relationships, behavior, history, time, love, and the subtler impacts of industrialization and mechanics on farming people and their lives and relationships to the earth and each other. There are messages for all of us to consider.

Highly recommended for anyone who has read Wendell Berry and I do suggest everyone give Berry a try, perhaps with one of the earlier books to start. There are many great books to choose from. Then read about Andy.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this book in return for an honest review.

Wendell Berry’s latest collection of essays on the Port William Membership feels like a newsy letter from a friend. This time, Berry’s leisurely storytelling spotlights Andy Catlett, now 80 years old, as he looks back over his shoulder at the place he has inhabited within the close-knit community he calls home.

The thirteen stories of How It Went provide plenty of space for wise and winsome conversations spanning a panorama of topics from the the comings and goings of the Membership and the mixed blessing of “progress” to the movement of the Port William economy away from its agricultural base.

Andy’s voice lends just the right touch of cranky nostalgia to the mindset of “using the world’s fundamental tools to do the world’s fundamental work.” It’s phrases like this that require me to read Berry always with pen in hand. His essay titled “The Art of Piling Bush” is worth the price of the book on its own.

In Port William, the land takes on the status of a character as the Membership discusses its gifts and its requirements. Andy recalls with fondness his father’s observation about the homeplace, “This land responds to good treatment.” May this be said of us all.

Many thanks to Counterpoint and NetGalley for providing a copy of this book to facilitate my review, which is, of course, offered freely and with honesty.

Wendell Berry and his fiction about Port William, KY are a gift and a treasure. This collection of short stories visits Andy Catlett over the years from 1945 to the present. As always, Berry’s fiction is luminous and his characters are ones I deeply wish I knew. Berry portrays the passing of a way of life that I never experienced directly but that I’ve caught glimpses of in my father and grandparents all my life. I’m beyond grateful to Mr. Berry that I’m able to visit this life I’ve not been lucky enough to live myself.

I read Wendell Berry’s The Memory of Old Jack when it came out in paperback in 1985. It was an experience I never forgot. I passed the book on to my father and brother to read. I found it on my dad’s bookshelf after he died. Over the years, I remember reading Berry’s poetry and some non-fiction books. How did I miss all of the Port William fiction? I was living in small towns, and it was before Internet access, and I had a child. Reading How It Went, I hope to return to the novels about these characters.

The world Berry writes about was not my world. It was disappearing while my dad was a teenager. Berry’s Andy Catlett was a teenager in the 1940s, as was my dad. Port William was still farmland, before the mechanization of farming. As a teen, my dad helped out the neighboring farmer John Kuhn, driving his tractor. Photographs of Kuhn and his farm from decades before that show the world Andy grew up in. By the time of my birth, post-war housing had sprung up on the farmland.

The stories in How It Went are beautifully written. There is humor and sadness, and great nostalgia for a kind of community that has disappeared. A place that had shared stories, where people helped each other. But there is also prejudice and judgement. From the perspective of old age, Andy understands the beauty of the old world and how quickly it disappeared. Now, most of his friends are “in the graveyard on the hill.” Who is left to remember, to tell their stories?

We were telling of course the story, clearly ongoing and with no foreseeable end, of the departure of the people and the coming of the machines.
from How It Went by Wendell Berry

the boy Andy wants nothing more than to do a man’s work. He attaches to hired hand Dick, who he greatly loved and admired, and who patiently taught him the quiet pride of workmanship. His grandmother told him the stories of the past while he longs to escape outdoors. His father longed to be a full time farmer, but unable to make ends met becomes a lawyer to pay the bills.

Farmers warn against purchasing farming machines, against borrowing money which could be a trap to lose everything. Several years of bad harvest and you can’t pay back the loan, and you lose the farm.

The stories are an elegy to time gone, the end of a way of life. Andy understands that the stories were disappearing as fewer remembered them. “I see that we are passing through this world like a river of water flowing through a river of earth,” our lives being a chance to learn “something of love,” this being “the order of things, nothing to complain about.”

As gorgeous and evocative as these stories are, I was sometimes too aware of the idealism of the past. Elders have always talked about the ‘good old days’ when things were better. Andy’s good old days still included coal furnaces and food fueled cooking fires. There was danger and prejudice and ostracism.

I greatly enjoyed these beautifully written stories.

I received an ARC from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Wendell Berry is an exquisite writer and a national treasure. I read this short story collection slowly, savoring it, limiting myself to only one story a day to prolong the pleasure.. You don't have to be familiar Berry's other novels and short stories about the fictional rural town of Port William and its inhabitants to appreciate How It Went. But if this book is your first encounter with Berry's fiction and characters, you'll want to read all the others. Wonderful!

A very biased review as I’ve long loved the writings of Wendell Berry. This nostalgic glimpse of Port William through the eyes of Andy Catlett is a treasure. Poetically lyrical, a beautiful read, not to be missed.