This volume of six linked stories and the novella from which the book
derives its title is set in Port William from 1908 to the Second World
War. Here Wendell Berry introduces two of his more indelible and
poignant characters, Ptolemy Proudfoot and his wife Miss Minnie,
remarkable for the comic and affectionate range that--with the mastery
of this consummate storyteller working at the height of his powers--here
approaches the Shakespearean.
Tol Proudfoot is huge, outsized, in the tradition of the mythic. The
three-hundred-pound farmer, personally imposing and unkempt, is also the
most graceful of presences, reserved and gallant toward his tiny wife,
the ninety-pound schoolteacher.
Their contrasts are humorous, of course, and recall the tall tales of
rural Americana. In the novella Watch with Me, we are given a story of
such depth, breadth, and importance it earns being listed as one of the
most important short stories written in the American language during the
twentieth century.
"Wendell Berry writes with a good husbandman's care and economy . . .
His stories are filled with gentle humor." --The New York Times Book
Review
"Berry is the master of earthy country living seen through the eyes of
laconic farmers . . . He makes his stories shine with meaning and
warmth." --The Christian Science Monitor
"A small treasure of a book . . . part of a long line that descends from
Chaucer to Katherine Mansfield to William Trevor." --Chicago Tribune
