Why Wendell Berry Didn’t Worry About the Future

Wendell Berry was not an easy man to reach. When I wanted to interview him for this magazine in the spring of 2015, his publicist warned me that a press request would take some doing. Berry didn’t have a cellphone. He didn’t use email. He didn’t even have a computer. He wrote most of his drafts by hand during the day, without electric light. And he definitely didn’t make himself available to any old reporter who wanted to talk. I knew this already, of course. Berry, who died on Monday at the…