Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow (And Sometimes Hannah Coulter)

Book Review of Jayber Crow (and sometimes of Hannah Coulter)

Contains spoilers

Wendell Berry is best known for his essays and poetry, but I have begun with his novels, great literary works about a small Kentucky town called Port William, and the community who consider themselves Port William's membership. 

I read Hannah Coulter first, a sweet and somewhat scandalous novel about a simple young woman who grows up to be a happy wife and mother, and then at last a reflective and welcoming old woman. It was one of those books that felt good to read. The prose was poignant. The story meant many things, like a well-spiced apple pie does, rich in texture. I wanted to savor it forever, and yet was glad to live after having finished reading such a book. 

And so, I began Jayber Crow, considered to be one of Berry's best novels. 

At the start I loved it more than Hannah Coulter. We are introduced to Jayber, a barber who loves his clients and their stories, who comes and goes as he pleases leaving a sign that he'll be back by a specific hour (and how that hour gives him the flexibility of coming on the following day, or hours later that day). 

It starts out wonderfully, then falls to his childhood, the better part of the book, though one doesn't realize this until much after the book is closed. Always Jayber is pointing toward his future life as a barber, always we are thinking, this part of the book doesn't matter. And yet it was meant to be devoured with relish.

A younger Jayber, then called Jonah, loses his parents and his aunt and uncle, and is sent to an orphanage. At the orphanage some escape for cigarettes. Freedom entices him, but not for those sort of things. He sneaks out to see the changing leaves, or to make bits of money. He experiences every fiber of his world, he desires for community, for a wife and the food she'd cook. He feels called. Called to what? Naturally one is only called to be a pastor. And so he goes to seminary school. 

Except for my clothes and books, I spent just nearly nothing. I would let the coins rattle in my pocket until I got enough to change into a bill, and then I would put the bill into my shoe, or poke it through a little hole in the lining of my jacket. I was as tight as a tick in those days, and would as soon have thrown my money away as trust it to a bank. You can bet I took care where I hung up my jacket or took off my shoes.

He thrives in his new environment, having learned well the ways of distrust, but having yet to learn the ways of love. He talks about sharing a kiss with a young girl, of how when he imagines himself preaching, he mostly dreams of himself going home to his wife, as all preachers must have a wife. Beyond this are doubts and questions stronger than his fantasies. 

Is he called to be a preacher? Or does he simply want a wife? 

And then one day I asked myself, "How is it going to suit you to be called Brother Crow?"

He realized it wouldn't sound very good at all. The dreams were well and fine, but his doubts were not. P1a

Everything bad was laid on the body, and everything good was credited to the soul. It scared me a little when I realized that I saw it the other way around. If the soul and body really were divided, then it seemed to me that all the worst sins–hatred and anger and self-righteousness and envy and greed and lust–came from the soul. But these preachers I'm talking about all thought that the soul could do no wrong, but always had its face washed and its pants on and was in agony over having to associate with the flesh and the world. And yet these same people believed in the resurrection of the body. 

If we are to understand the Bible as literally true, why are we permitted to hate our enemies? If Jesus meant what He said when He said we should love our enemies, how can Christians go to war? Why, since He told us to pray in secret, do we continue to pray in public?

But the worst day of all was when it hit me that Jesus' own most fervent prayer was refused: "Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless, not my will but thine be done." ... It just knocked me in the head. This, I thought, is what is meant by "they will be done" in the Lord's Prayer, which I had prayed time and again without thinking about it. It means that your will and God's will may not be the same. It means there's a good possibility that you won't get what you pray for. It means that in spite of your prayers you are going to suffer. It means you may be crucified. 

I had prayed my own private prayers complacently enough, asking for things I wanted even though I knew well already that a lot of things I wanted I was not going to get no matter how much I prayed for them. (Though I hadn't got around to thinking about it, I already knew that I had been glad to have some things I had got that I had never thought to want, let alone pray for.)

These bits were some of the most beautiful, I thought. Heartfelt questions, acknowledgement of unsought blessings, a seeking to understand just how he was called and willing to sacrifice what he wanted to be in line with whatever God really had called him for. 

Jayber went to talk to the head professor, a rather non-judgmental man surrounded by books and full of silent opinion that demanded Jayber to have his own conviction.

"Well, I said, "I've got a lot of questions." 

He said, "Perhaps you would like to say what they are?" 

"Well, for instance," I said, "If Jesus said for us to love our enemies–and He did say that, didn't He?–How can it ever be right to kill our enemies? And if He said not to pray in public, how come we're all the time praying in public? And if Jesus' own prayer in the garden wasn't granted, what is there for us to pray, except 'thy will be done,' which there's no use in praying because it will be done anyhow?" 

He said, "Have you anymore?"

"Well, for instance"...

"So," I said, "I reckon what it all comes down to is, how can I preach if I don't have any answers?"

"Yes, Mr. Crow," he said. "How can you?" He was not one of your frying-size chickens. 

"I don't believe I can."

He said, "No, I don't believe you can."

I said, "Well," for now I felt ashamed, "I had this feeling maybe I had been called."

"And you may have been right. But not to what you think. You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out–perhaps a little at a time." 

"And how long is that going to take?"

"I don't know. As long as you live, perhaps."

"That could be a long time."

"I will tell you a further mystery," he said. "It may take longer."

Expectant goosebumps moved me. This book would be good. At this point I loved Jayber and was excited to see the result of his calling (now to leave and find answers). 

I wanted to see what the answers would look like. God promised Abraham, "Look at the stars and so shall your children be." 

Jayber had just been promised (and so I had been promised, too) that his story would show him answers. 

Perhaps this is why the novel disappointed. Without this first third of the book, I wouldn't have loved Jayber, nor cared so much that his life failed to live out the answers to his questions. I am disappointed, as Abraham would have been if his descendants had not been as the stars and the sand. 

In some ways I wish the novel could have ended there. 

After he leaves behind the calling to be a preacher, Jayber isn't sure where to go. He walks to Lexington and finds a rundown barber and his dirty barbershop. Jayber realizes he may not be called to preach the gospel, but he has been called to cut hair.

It is a good season. Jayber helps this older barber regain respectability. Jayber saves his money and attends the local college. All seems well enough. But he grows dissatisfied. He stops attending his classes. 

One morning in the latter part of January, in 1937, instead of going to the shop, I packed my belongings into the same box I had brought with me from Pigeonville, leaving out what wouldn't fit in, and laid a full week's rent along with my key on the table in my room. I walked out of town as easily and freely as one of the old beat-down gamblers who would show up and hang around the shop for a few weeks or months and then be gone. I thought of taking leave of Skinner Hawes and my old landlady–but what for? To be asked for an explanation that I didn't have?

Jayber leaves, without a goodbye, to some place from his childhood. 

I was glad he was going. Already I knew he would: I was excited for him to return to where he'd been at the opening chapter. With knowledge of the future, I knew he belonged in Port William, where he cut hair and fished as it suited him.

But this part also left me feeling uneasy. Why not say goodbye? Just because he was scared or unable to communicate a reason? So what? He didn't have to give a reason. After all they had done for each other up to this point a goodbye seemed warranted.

But I was fond of Jayber and only later looked back as this is when my dissatisfaction for the book kindled.

Up unto this point I routinely reached out to friends, this book is amazing. And then over the span of a chapter things change. 

Jayber notices a girl much younger than himself, and takes a special dislike to her her boyfriend. One day her schoolbooks are accidentally left in his shop. He looks through them, and sees a handwritten note from her suitor:

"Remember me and bear in mind That a gay bird's heel sticks out behind. You know who"

I did know who, and in the way of the knowing bystander I took offense. Troy Chatham's inscriptions was a claim; beyond anything it actually said, it announced that he felt entitled to a lot of room in the mind and life of Mattie Keith. It bothered me in particular that, having claimed her, he did not sign his name. 

... And then I grew ashamed of my intrusion and put her books away. 

At least he had enough decency to be ashamed. But from what possible virtue did he draw forth offense at Troy's note? It was cute. Mattie was not offended, but accepted and reciprocated, as he found out scrolling further into her books.

So Troy made a claim. What right had Jayber to feel anything about this? He had looked into Mattie's eyes and felt... chemistry? Well, she hadn't. She loved this boy, and didn't mind carrying his note around in her schoolbooks. 

And the fact Jayber opened her schoolbooks reminded me of when he left his barber friend without a farewell.

The first third of the book is Jayber as a child, but also Jayber mostly in his head. A beautiful place, full of dreams and words and meaning. It is the sort of place one can't help but love. He presented his innermost being and I loved what I saw, as a girl loves a man for the things he says he will do.

But the rest of the book we see what Jayber does. I felt how a woman feels when she sees a man not living out his dreams, when his actions undermine the message of his soul. It left me feeling repulsed and deceived.

And so begins a strange sort of story.

Sometimes Jayber is cutting hair and listening to stories. Sometimes he is running off to another town to lead his nighttime life. Always he is obsessed with the relationship of Mattie and Troy, who soon enough marry.

Troy brought nothing to the marriage but himself and an automobile... 

He was all show, and he had the conviction, as such people, do, that show is the same as substance. He didn't think he was fooling other people; he had fooled himself. 

This is all a woman wants: that a man presents himself outside his dreams. It seems even Troy failed to live out the dream he promised Mattie. But certainly, it wasn't because he brought only himself to the marriage. 

"He brought nothing to the marriage but himself" is why Mattie married Troy and not Jayber.

It would have been easier if I could have thought that Mattie was willfully foolish or silly, in some way deserving of him. But this was impossible for me to think, given any number of things I knew. I had to propose to myself that she had seen something in him that I had not seen, and then I had to wonder what. I thought, and hoped, it was more than his undeniable physical attractiveness, though that might have been enough. I admitted, reluctantly, that he had energy; he was not lazy. With greater reluctance, I required myself to admit that he was not stupid. He had, in fact, plenty of intelligence–plenty more than he ever used, in fact. And then I thought, "Suppose there is somewhere in him, after all, some tenderness that he has shown only to her." And then perhaps I could imagine a little how it was. Suppose you were a young woman, offering yourself to the life of this world, to the use of the life force, as young women do. Suppose this young man, excellently handsome and graceful and strong, out of his unquestioning self-confidence, turned toward you with tenderness, with need, such as he had shown to no one else. Suppose that you could not know that you yourself had made the tenderness in him that you felt. Suppose that within his tenderness you felt rewarded, cherished, and safe. Do you see? 

Yes, I see.

I see a miserable man who thinks it's somehow alright to psychoanalyze the marriage of a woman he's obsessed with. It's twisted and sick. The false effort of trying to understand something Jayber clearly didn't understand and was none of his business to understand anyway.

Mattie married Troy. 

Sure, she may have been the one to arouse that tenderness within Troy. Nothing wrong with that. 

Who cares why? Who cares if she was deserving of him? Way beside the point. 

Even yet, when I think of them at that time, newly married in their beauty and their young longing, I feel a shiver go over me, and it is not a shiver of foreboding, of knowing what is to come. It is a shiver of recognition of what the two of them desired, and of what, for a while, they even had. 

I got shivers too. Sooo wrong. To imagine another's romance is pure madness.

And then Jayber becomes wrapped into the story of the entire family's lives. 

Mattie's father in law and and Troy begin to have differing opinions on how to run their farm.

Athey said, "Wherever I look, I want to see more than I need." Troy said, in effect, "Whatever I see, I want." What he asked of the land was all it had. 

Pretty soon he would be working away from home, into the night, while Mattie, carrying the baby on her hip, went about doing his barn chores. 

And so the farm came under the influence of a new pattern, and this was the pattern of a fundamental disagreement. 

And of course, Mattie is depicted as the silent, forbearing hero, and Troy is the selfish husband who doesn't appreciated the woman Jayber spends this entire book lusting after. 

And so after spending all his words on how Troy was such an awful husband to Mattie and poorer son in law to Athey (as he tries to depict the goodness Mattie must've seen in Troy to justify her actions), he returns to waxing poetic about the life he supposes Mattie must have. Bear with me, as I gear up to release another rant.

It was impossible to know of the trouble down at the Keith place without supposing that Mattie was caught somewhere in the middle, and isolated. Her mother could only have been torn and troubled by the conflict. But Della was free in the privacy of her own heart to take sides and stand by Athey. Athey, mostly in silence, was entirely on his own side. 

But Mattie, I thought, was divided. Though she was in love with her young husband, she was her father's daughter still. Somewhere, sometimes, the full force of their difference would have to be suffered–and Mattie would be the one who suffered it. That she was her parents' child meant, as Troy's ambition and his arrogance grew clear, that she would finally have to love him without approving of him. In fact, their marriage settled early upon the pattern it would always have: she was trying to wind up at home the thread that he unraveled elsewhere. He had been seized by a daydream of "farming big" having what he wanted. What he wanted as time would reveal, was to be a sort of farming businessman... 

She gardened and canned and tended to her flock and milked the cows and did whatever else Troy 
"didn't have time to do," and of course she took care of the children. 

She was taking up the slack. We all knew it. One Saturday afternoon somebody waiting for a haircut said something about Troy Chatham's tractor equipment, for he already had more than anybody around. And Burley Coulter, who had my razor stone on his thigh, sharpening his knife, said without looking up, "the best equipment he's got is his wife." 

But the remarkable thing was that Mattie Chatham never looked like a woman who was put upon and divided in her loyalties and having a hard time; she didn't look as though she would have welcomed sympathy, or as though she needed it. She was not her parents' child for nothing. She was going about her life, taking her pleasures as she found them, suffering what was hers to suffer, doing what she had to do, she had about her no air of self-pity or complaint. And this could have been because, in her own heart, she was not pitying herself or complaining. It was as though her very difficulties had confirmed her in her sense of herself and her capabilities. 

I knew Mattie Chatham a long time, and I never knew her to falsify or misrepresent herself. Whatever she gave you–a look, a question, an answer–was honest. She didn't tell you everything she knew or thought. she never made reference even by silence to anything she suffered. But in herself she was present. she was present in her dealings with other people. She was right there. She was, to my eye, a good mother who liked and enjoyed her children, leaving them free within limits that both she and they understood. But she was also coming into responsibility for the community. 

Certain passages in fiction pull out the feminist from me. Sometimes I think it's beautiful the way Dickens or Tolstoy write about women, of their sweet spirits and forgiving ways and constant faithfulness. But there is also something twisted in their methods of worshipping women as beings who have just the feelings and dispositions man needs them to have. And then you look at the private lives of these men, and their troubles with their wives and imagine accurately how their wives felt. 

"Oh. So, I'm not to be heard, but you want my grace and forgiveness??" 

Jayber Crow says of Mattie she was remarkable and never looked like a woman who was having a hard time. She suffered, but she took her pleasures. There was no air of self-pity or complaint. She was isolated, he imagined. Alone yet content. 

He saw evil in Troy and only good in Mattie, and somehow his hatred of Troy gave him permission to adore Mattie even more. 

But he did not know Mattie outside his imagined sympathies. Up until this point of the book they'd had no recorded conversations. He was not in her close circle of friends. He knew not of her feelings, if she even had divided loyalties. Perhaps the farm talk was the talk of the men, important to them and nothing to her. Perhaps she was proud to care for the barn and children as her husband lived out words he'd whispered to her. 

Certainly, just because Jayber didn't hear of her complaints didn't mean she hadn't any, or that she had none to talk of her struggles with. Briefly before Mattie's best friend Althie Gibbs was mentioned. Mattie most definitely had trials (some Jayber could never imagine, some in line with thoughts, many contradicting his thoughts) and she would tell these to her best friend and because of that trust it would not get around town to Jayber. 

Mattie most certainly had community and did not feel alone. And I doubt her husband's ways bothered her all that much for the majority of their early years. 

Jayber did not know Mattie. To pretend otherwise and to think of her as this perfect person did true injustice to the nature of Mattie and all women who have feelings that they must and will express to those they trust... not to ineligible bachelors. To imagine that a woman's serene face is always serene and that she isn't later dealing with her struggles much like a man would, or at least getting it out in some way, mocks the strength of her serenity.

It is wonderful how secrets, always told secretly, can get around; I have been told the same secret three times in one day, each time with a warning to tell nobody. But some women see, are more likely to act on what they know than most men. The men are not uncharitable; they are quick to get together to harvest a crop for a neighbor who gets sick. But it is the women more than the men who see to it that cooked food goes where it is needed, that no house goes without fuel in the winter, that no child goes without toys at Christmas, that the preacher knows where he should go with a word of comfort. 

And yet the rest of the book is still sprinkled with beautiful passages, that make one think, perhaps this book is still as beautiful as it once seemed. I still loved Jayber; he wasn't always delusional. 

He starts working at the church graveyard, to save up a little extra for his old age. One day he watches Mattie bring her children to vacation Bible school, and he has thankful thoughts that he never had to spend such a summer inside when he could be outside. He breaks from his thoughts to watch Mattie with her little ones: 

It was nevertheless a great pleasure to me to watch Mattie and the children... I was all of a sudden overcome with love for her. 

Such a thing is maybe one of the liabilities of ineligible bachelorhood. Maybe it is one of the liabilities of manhood. For a long time I did not know what to make of it, and I suffered from my ignorance. What business had an ineligible backer to be in love with a married woman? 

After long chapters rambling over his obsession for Mattie it suddenly dawns upon him that he is in love with Mattie. He begins dreaming of them running off together and fantasizes a life with her. What business had he to be in love with a married woman? (or going through a young girl's schoolbooks?). Momentarily he honestly asks himself such questions, but always justifies himself: his love is the liability of being a bachelor, more so of being a man. He speculates if this is indeed love, or if it's merely infatuation. Again, he justifies his feelings: 

After a long time, it proved by its own suffering that love itself was what it was, and I am thankful. 

It was love... because he suffered? What weak thinking, Jayber. And yet, as the book progresses it seems to be dominated by the idea that love and suffering are together inseparable. Jayber brings it all back to the gospel later in the book: 

His (God's) love is suffering. It is our freedom and His sorrow. To love the world as much even as I could love it would be suffering also, for I would fail. And yet all the good I know is in this, that a man might so love this world that it would break his heart. 

This was the heart of Jayber's romance with Mattie. He believed he was made to understand God better, because he suffered through unreciprocated love for the remainder of his life. But this misunderstands both God's love and Jesus' suffering. 

Jesus did not suffer because he loved us. He loved us therefore he suffered. He will not always suffer; but his Love will always be. Love may suffer all things, but it is not suffering. 

And suffering proves nothing. The wicked suffer in their lusts. The righteous suffer for unjust causes. Because his mentality suffers some illness, a serial killer destroys lives. And yet his suffering means nothing, surely not love. And while we admire the martyr who suffers for Faith, we know that Faith doesn't promise suffering rather miracles performed.

If Jayber's suffering showed anything, it spoke of a man made miserable because he clung to delusions. 

Jayber Crow did not love Mattie Chatham. 

- - - 

Jayber claimed to love Mattie, but he frequently drove to another town to visit another woman. He claimed not to love Clydie, for reasons he gave. She dated another man who was rarely in town, had an old aunt and mother to look after, and seemed content with their relationship situation. Jayber used all this to justify how things were. 

This was something, I think, that would not have occurred to me in thinking of Clydie, who always consciously reserved something of herself. Clydie was always holding a high card that she wouldn't play–or maybe couldn't play, given her circumstances. But what moved me so toward Mattie was the sense that she withheld nothing' she was not a woman of defenses or devices. Though she might be divided in her affection and loyally, within herself she was whole and clear. She would be wholly present within her presence. 

Mattie withheld nothing from Jayber? True in the sense that she had nothing to give Jayber, and never gave him anything save a certain smile he took to mean more.

And so Jayber lived his wild life with Clydie and watched and judged Troy and Mattie's struggling marriage. 

I imagined a moment when the husband and wife realize that their marriage included their faults, that they do not perfect each other, and that in making their marriage they also fail it and must carry to the grave things they cannot give away. 

Jayber never asked himself if Mattie's love for her husband wasn't proved through her suffering marriage. In this instance, her suffering proved, to Jayber, that Mattie was too good for Troy and had too much love to give to a man who could have no love. 

Christmas found Jayber and Clydie dancing. He wrote poetry to her, she moved freely for him alone. And then he took back his previous thoughts where he said he only liked rather than loved Clydie. There was a scale to love, and Clydie was somewhere near the top. He did love this woman who had been there for him when he needed companionship and someone to hear him. And she loved him. 

As they fell deeper into each other's arms Jayber saw another dancer near them. 

When I looked up again, I looked directly into the face of Troy Chatham, who was dancing with a woman whose face I did not see, but her long blond hair could not have been Mattie's. 

Troy gave me a wink and a grin, raising his hand to me with the thumb and forefinger joined in a circle. 

I stopped dancing. What I felt must have showed in my face, for Clydie pushed away from me and said, "What's the matter with you, Jayber. Are you sick?" 

I said, "I am. I'm as sick as a dog."

And I headed for the men's room. 

Jayber thought of Mattie alone at home and how her heart must be breaking. He acknowledged he was no different than Troy. He deteremined to be different than Troy, to be a better man. But he did not go inside. He did not do as a proper man of the Port William membership ought. He did not beat sense into Troy and tell him, "Get back to your wife and don't let me ever hear you've been treating her less than she deserves." 

If Jayber really were different than Troy that's what he would've done. 

Instead, he crawled out the bathroom window, and left a spineless man's note to Clydie: 

Dear Clydie,

I am taken ill (iller than you think or I can describe) and have got to go. I don't know when we will see each other again. I am changeable, I hope. Here are the keys to the car. I am leaving it to you with thanks for everything. You have been a true friend to one in need. Love, Jayber

It shook me to see what I had written and the way I had signed it "Love." I said earlier that I didn't love her so much as I liked her. I will have to take that back. Love has a scale, and Clydie and I were on it somewhere. 

If Jayber were different than Troy he wouldn't have run away from this situation. And yet, Jayber always ran from communication and commitment. I wonder if he only liked Mattie for the mere reasons, he never had either with her. He did not bid the barber in Lexington gpodbye. He felt good about leaving Clydie behind because he'd given her the car (that he no longer wanted anymore anyway). 

But did he think of how Clydie must have felt? Probably not much differently than how Mattie currently felt. Both women were stood up. Both men felt justified. Neither man had the gumption to be where they ought to have been, or to at least make amends. 

He left Clydie alone on the dance floor and thought of Mattie alone in her bed. He knew where Troy belonged. But Jayber did nothing. 

I thought of Mattie at home up the river ahead of me, perhaps lying awake. I knew the subject of her thoughts, but I did not know her thoughts.... this was what moved me and drew me toward her, though I could not come near her or be in her presence. 

I knew also that Troy was incoherent and obscure within himself. He was a wishful thinker. A dreamer. His mere dream had led him into the reality of endless work and struggle, endless suffering of the weather and weariness and the wear and tear of machines, and yet he was a dreamer still. He was an escapee. He would plunge from the confines of one dream into the confines of another. 

Troy Chatham was a dreamer, doing most of his dreams publicly with means and assets that were open to him. Jayber was a dreamer, too, coveting after another man's wife. But he would not think himself confined in his covetous thoughts. Because he suffered.

What Troy Chatham was, was my business–not because I chose to make it my business, but because it was. It was my business because I did not want to be what he was, and that was no sure thing.

It was Jayber's business, as much as it was any man's business in Port William to make sure the men of Port William acted like men. It was Jayber's business what Troy Chatham did. But what did Jayber do with this knowledge that it was his business? 

In my mind, then, I began to question myself and answer myself. I wanted clarity, I wanted sight, but it seems to me that I did not try to think the thoughts I thought. I did not foresee the thoughts I was going to think. 

"You want to believe that Mattie Chatham did not necessarily have to have an unfaithful husband." 

"Yes, that is right." 

"But can you prove that?" 

"Maybe not." 

"She could prove that she could have a faithful husband only by having one." 

"I suppose so." 

"So, her need, then, you're saying, is to have a faithful husband?"

"Yes, that must be what I'm saying." 

"Well, where is she going to get one?" 

"Well, I don't know. It seems a stupid question. She already has got a husband." 

"But is he not unfaithful?"

"Yes, he is unfaithful." 

"And she needs a faithful one." 

"Yes, she does."

"But if she never has one, you will never know if the terms of this world might have allowed her to have one." 

"I suppose that is right." 

"But where could–how could–she get one?"

"Well, if she ever is going to have one, I'm sure, of course, it will have to be me." 

"Wait, now. Hold on. Do you know what you just said?"

"Yes." 

"Do you mean that you love Mattie Chatham enough to say what you just said?" 

"Yes. Oh, yes! I do." 

"You love her enough to be a faithful husband to her? Think what you're saying, now. You're proposing to be a the faithful husband of a woman who is already married to an unfaithful husband." 

"Yes. That's why. If she has an unfaithful husband, then she needs a faithful one." 

"A woman already married who must never know that you are her husband? Think. And who will never be your wife?" 

"Yes." 

"Have you foreseen how this may end? Can you?"

"No." 

"Are you ready for this? Think, now." 

"Yes. I am ready." 

"Do you, then, in love's mystery and fear, give yourself to this woman to be her faithful husband from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death?" 

"I do. Yes! That is my vow." 

This is the most ridiculous section of the entire book, full of creeper logic. It sounds like he's having a conversation with a devil. An angel might have said, "Take her under your wing like a sister and make sure her husband becomes the faithful man she needs."

Only a demon would suggest such a thing as, "You can be her faithful husband."

Who cares if Mattie didn't necessarily have to have the husband she had. She had him. End of story.

But all this weirdness comes in. She had no faithful husband. She must have a faithful husband. Troy would not be that husband. He must be what Troy would not be. And so, he looks to the sky and proclaims himself ... her husband.

That is not how marriage works, buddy. Nor vows. Later he diverts on this rabbit trail about how it might not be legal but... doesn't matter what's legal. A vow isn't validated by a stamp from the state. It takes communication and commitment from all parties involved. He wasn't married to Mattie for the simple reason that she wasn't married to him.

Ok. Maybe he thought Mattie needed some man to show her faithfulness. Fine. She probably did need that. But uttering a few nonsense words up to the moon did nothing for Mattie. Jayber filled no need, only gratified some part of his lust. Mattie was still alone in her bed and her husband was still unfaithful and dancing in a nightclub with some other woman, as Clydie probably stared dumbfounded at the car and note unsure whether or not to be hurt or angry. 

As Jayber lay in bed dreaming of how he was some faithful husband of Mattie's, Clydie was probably considering driving the car into his shop window and telling him, "What do I need a car for when I can walk from home and work just fine, thank you." 

I doubt he had one true thought for Clydie nor Mattie as he slept happily over his vow, more meaningless than Troy's failed dreams. 

It is a fearful thing to be married and yet live alone, and sleep alone (as I felt in my worst nights) like the dead in the ground. And yet after that night of the Christmas dance, I lived under the power of my vow, and I kept it....

Was I fooling myself? I know myself to be a man skilled in self-deception, and so maybe. 

Kept his vow how??? By fantasizing over a married woman thus never committing to an actual woman. Yes, Jayber. You fooled yourself. 

I was married to Mattie Chatham but she was not married to me, which pretty fairly balanced her marriage to Troy, who became always less married to her, though legally he remained her husband. 

Hah. The logic here... you can't just use the word marriage like that. And comparing his delusion to Troy's marriage is further loopiness. 

Even after all this, there were moments Jayber remembered the ways of his youth: to ask and see the mysteries of the gospel. Stories from his clients would distract him. He closed his shop and moved to a cabin by the river, where he fished and joined the meals and life of a nearby family, at last some healthy interactions. And his thoughts returned to Heaven. 

Prayer is like lying awake at night, afraid with your head under the cover, hearing only the beating of your own heart. It is like a bird that has blundered down the flue and is caught indoors and flutters and the windowpanes. It is like standing a long time on a cold day, knocking at a shut door. 

But sometimes a prayer come that you have not thought to pray, yet suddenly there it is, and you pray it. 

I mostly understand why women hate this book. But I also do understand why the book is well loved. I never once hated Jayber. I waited for that promise; I waited to see Jayber's questions answered through a life lived. I hoped he would find Hannah Coulter and she would set him straight. I loved the way Jayber lived his Port William life. The things he did and the ways he did them, the people he loved and the stories he heard, the thoughts that came on the wind and stewed about in his conscious. I never stopped loving what the book meant to be, or what it was really about. 

There is something sweet to Port William and Jayber's membership there. It makes one know that somewhere out there is also their Port William and their membership. But what the book fails to let us know is there are lots of towns that are almost Port William. There is no one Port William, save for a possible nostalgic, unreachable place from some time in our past.

Port William is the home you decide upon.

It's where you learn a little about communication and commitment and stay there to make and be family. It's where you don't just leave without a farewell. You trust others to know your reasons if you can't share them. It's where true faithfulness is displayed and held up by the membership.

Port William, though, didn't last. Hannah Coulter described its death. Jayber Crow showed it happening with Mattie's death and Troy cutting down their favorite bit of woods.  

But there, in her diminishment, she seemed to resemble only herself, as if suffering finally had singled her out.

Jayber believed Port William's goodness was proved through its members that suffered. I believed Port William died because it suffered without cause. The town would have lived if Hannah's children had stayed to carry on the membership. If the membership of Port William was all the old folks thought, the younger ones would have been raised a part of that membership. Why did Hannah Coulter never come to Mattie and comfort her, or help her with her children? Why didn't Jayber nor Nathan Coulter nor any of the other men do something about a man who ran off on his wife? Why didn't some woman, namely Hannah Coulter, take the bachelor Jayber Crow under their wings to make sure he had family, and maybe found a wife? Why didn't Jayber raise children to leave Port William off better than he'd found it? 

Clydie never was a real option (and yet he could have tried). She might have tried. He may have said, "My barber shop can't support a family" and she might have said "Well, it sure won't with that mindset" and she would've shown him just how they could've managed just fine. Or she would have turned him down and still chosen to marry her Tobacco man, and Jayber moved onto some other Port William woman (because I'm sure there were others).

The membership could have amounted to something. Jayber's questions might have led somewhere. Faithfulness shouldn't have been vacant in such a town. Port William's suffering ought to have brought it somewhere, to some resurrection. 

But it all came to this: the town's children left, farms were bulldozed or turned into nature preserves, and Jayber did nothing but suffer. 

Beating his resounding gong.