The Stackpole Legend by Wendell Berry, 2024
The magic trick:
Subtly contextualizing the story within its town’s history
Sad news this month with word of Wendell Berry’s death. What an icon. Some writers have brushes with fame, maybe they’re popular for a few years when a certain book hits. But you can see pretty clearly that Berry is one of those rare writers for whom the trajectory will only continue to rise in his death. His work, we can confidently say, will live on.
So, of course, it’s fitting to do a Wendell Berry feature on SSMT this week.
“The Stackpole Legend” made me cackle with laughter almost uncontrollably for about five minutes. So there’s that. That’s pretty good.
It’s one of those perfect little gems of a story. You couldn’t possibly think of something lacking or a place it might have been even slightly better.
My favorite part is the way the narrator re-centers the story at the very end to focus on the town. It reminds us – or maybe makes the point plain for the first time depending how you’re reading – that the Stackpole legend we’re reading exists only within the context of his family and the town. This is as much a story of the family name as it is a specific romance. It makes it all the more special even as in a way it diminishes the individual significance.
And that’s quite a trick on Berry’s part.
The selection:
After Stump began farming all day every day with his father, their relationship slowly altered in the way of nature. At first Stump worked for his father, and at last his father worked for him. This immemorial change was accomplished without any particular attention needing to be paid to it. Their farm’s business at the Independent Farmers Bank of Port William had long been conducted under the single name of Stackpole. Though by Stump’s time the Stackpole family was old in Port William, it had never been numerous. The male line in fact had stayed so thin that a Stackpole man had rarely needed a first name. Stump had needed to be Delinthus only to give him a sort of normality in the eyes of Professor Skelton, monarch of the school, who otherwise identified the boys by the length of the switch he needed for their instruction. And so when he came of age, Stump inscribed “Stackpole” on a piece of paper for Mr. Fawker, monarch of the Independent Farmers Bank of Port William, who looked upon him with favor, for Stackpole deposited more frequently than he withdrew.
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