Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper

Steven White makes the good point that one of the main heroes of the foodie left – Wendell Berry – is actually something of a diehard, reactionary traditionalist.

I had the general displeasure of reading some of the man’s works in a class called the Contested American Countryside. Berry is only difficult to label politically because he doesn’t, ultimately, care about economics. He cares about traditionalism. Which for him depends stringently on gender roles and a glorification of rural life and values, despite however many comments he’s made over the years that make back-to-the-earth leftie types nod their heads in approval. If the paleoconservatives want him, I say let them have him.

A big problem with the entire ouvre of food writing and thought is an almost reflexive traditionalism. Michael Pollan, at least, admits that he’s being a traditionalist and actually makes a very specific argument for why traditionalism, in the realm of food, is a good thing. Berry, on the other hand, really just lends rhetorical firepower to those “traditionalists” who are not part of any cause or movement that most Wendell Berry readers would ever dream of supporting. I’m basically convinced by Pollan that our current relationship to how we eat is deeply, deeply screwy, but when it comes to the question of the environment or nature as a whole, I can’t sign on for an agenda that’s simply backwards looking. Nordhaus and Shellenberger, despite all their faults, have a vision for relating to nature that can coexist with good things things  – like global economic development and liberalism. Berry, despite being a wonderful writer, doesn’t have much of a vision, unless you’re some sort of die-hard traditionalist that wants women spending all their time having babies and fetching water.