Issue #19 - The Poet's Wife, Part 2, and the Novelists' Widow
Tanya Berry
A while back, I had the thought to write about some famous writers’ spouses because my marriage has had such a large influence on my writing. While watching Netflix’s documentary Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry, I was struck by how vital his marriage to Tanya was to the whole of his life, one small part of which is being a prolific writer.
I began to do some research on Tanya Amyx Berry and found that others had not only beat me to the punch, but were able to give Mrs. Berry the real attention she deserves.
First, over at Front Porch Republic, Grace Olmstead discusses Tanya Berry’s own artistic contributions as she reviews a book of Berry’s photographs. Wendell was best friends with the photographer James Baker Hall, but Tanya’s photographs deserve to be considered by a wider audience.
Another writer, Robert Jensen, considers Tanya Berry’s literary contributions as Wendell’s primary editor. The portrait he paints of the Berry’s shared economy is wonderful.
Sidenote: Olmstead’s review of Tanya’s book of photographs was my introduction to Gracy’s work, and I just happened to stumble across it the week before she released her fantastic book Uprooted: Recovering the Legacy of the Places We’ve Left Behind..
Olmstead left smalltown Idaho to attend college in a big city. The book is part memoir and part journalistic study of the massive young persons’ exodus from small towns, and the loss our culture in general is experiencing from our rootlessness.
She covers some of the same territory as Heartland by Sarah Smarsh, but Uprooted is warmer. I know that tone isn’t high on a list of things to criticize in a non-fiction book, but I think it ought to be. I can despair on my own; Olmstead helps me to respair.
I've just discovered the beautiful word 'respair' (15th century), and it feels like we need it today: fresh hope; a recovery from despair.
— Susie Dent 💙 (@susie_dent) June 14, 2017
Writing is often viewed as a solitary task because only one set of hands fits on the keyboard. But I really like the idea of a marriage sharing the tasks. My grandmother and grandfather ran a farm. Grandad took care of the big cash crops and large animals (sheep, pigs, beef cattle, horses); Granny managed chicken and egg production, the dairy, and the garden and food production. The kids eventually filled in roles around the farm and both Granny and Grandad became managers of people. Writing can be like that as well, and I think our culture romanticizes it as some mysterious act of solitary genius. That might be why nearly every writer I’ve admired has a divorce or two on their resume.
Not Wendell and Tanya though.
Larry McMurtry and Wendell Berry at the Dairy Queen
Larry McMurtry passed away on March 25. While I was still thinking about how to respond, Jason Boyett, a writer local to Amarillo, but hardly local, posted a succinct tribute. Jason, who was kind enough to expand on his thoughts over email, often amazes me with how quickly and clearly he can turn words. I’m envious of the people with journalism backgrounds.
Anyway, one section of his post said, > I’d grown up reading Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and Stephen King, so Lonesome Dove was the first novel I encountered that featured scenes set in Texas Panhandle locations I actually knew and recognized.
Jason set me on a track of my own which became an essay entitled “Larry McMurtry and Wendell Berry at the Dairy Queen.” Front Porch Republic published it this week. You can read the opening below if you’re on the fence about clicking the link above.
Amarillo, TX. On a pre-Covid Saturday afternoon in Amarillo, I was having a beer with the poet Donald Mace Williams at a bar that was otherwise empty—save for one cowboy drinking alone. At 90, a lifelong newspaperman with a Ph.D. in Old English, Don has contributed his fair share to Texas letters, including an adaptation of Beowulf set in our forgotten section of Texas called the panhandle. Around Beer #2, we began discussing the works of Larry McMurtry. Don proclaimed loudly that he believed Lonesome Dove was a farce. The cowboy down the bar perked up at the mention of the novel.
“Lonesome Dove is the greatest book ever written,” said the man, pushing back his Stetson.
Don, undeterred, said it again. “It’s a farce. McMurtry thought the Western was dried up, and then he wrote one!”
The cowboy squinted down the length of the bar, sizing up the old poet. For a moment, I felt Don had just drawn me into a fist fight with a stranger.
“I don’t know about all that,” the cowboy mumbled. “It’s just a great book.” He pulled his hat down and returned to his beer.
Larry McMurtry’s Widow
An important fact that I just couldn’t figure out how to include in that essay is one about McMurtry’s other classmate and friend Ken Kesey. As I mentioned in the article, Kesey was the antithesis of Wendell Berry (though they got along). Besides the drugs and general debauchery, Ken also flouted the boundaries of marriage that Berry regards highly.
Ken was married to his high school sweetheart, Faye, and their 45 year marriage lasted until he died in 2001. At one point, Faye gave Ken permission to impregnate one of their friends, Carolyn Adams. Ken didn’t take any responsibility as the father of the daughter (Sunshine Kesey), but she was raised by her stepfather, Jerry Garcia (yes, that one), who Kesey mentored as an artist. That is very complex.
When Kesey died, the New York Review of Books had McMurtry pen a remembrance. He spends a good deal of the essay complimenting Faye, who he remembers as shy and quiet, except the one time she destroyed a piano with an axe.
Fast forward to 2011, and McMurtry married his old friend’s widow. Faye and Larry remained married until his death on March 25, 2021. In the NYRB essay, he said of Faye, “I don’t know a wife I respect more.”
I’m Seth Wieck. Thanks for the company. If you enjoyed or despised anything here, let me know. I’m happy to continue the conversation.