Matthew Henry John Bartlett

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Monday 22 November, 02004

by Matthew Bartlett @ 10:00 pm

Wendell Berry, in a interview in 1973 said:

I mean I’m completely against this idiocy … that says surfboarding is an acceptable way of life. That’s utterly absurd … surfboarding is not a way of life. People are free to think it is because the care and responsibility for society has been broken up and parceled out to the experts. People who make a life of surfboarding are living off other people. They’re leeches of the affluent society. They’re parasites of a parasite. As long as we have people making some kind of amusement a way of life, you’ll find they’re getting their support from something destructive, like strip-mining or needless ‘development’ or war-making.

14 responses to “”

  1. Hans says:

    WB is right. A lot of “X games” stuff is of the more cannibalistic destructive type. Youth culture is a huge “strip mine” of money from the young, or their families, for the cynical not-so-young who exploit the ephemeral enthusiasms of the adolescent.

  2. Richard D. Bartlett says:

    People who make a life of surfboarding are living off other people.

    who doesn’t? what a load of shit

  3. Tim says:

    I’m with Chud. I think Wendell is just jealous.

  4. david says:

    While I agree with some of what Wendell says, I think he makes his point as clear and well said as Chud did. In other words, not very.

    Wendell suffers with his point when he appears to condemn people who make some kind of amusement a way of life. Is it wrong then to be a poet, sell you poems and live off your earnings? Likewise a painter, or musician, or Shotover Jet operator? All these things appear to me to be some form of amusement, but I could not consider them wrong in and of themselves.

  5. If you haven’t already, I can recommend reading the interview to get a bit of cotext.

  6. I’m sorry but, purely from the perspective that every young person judges a book by its cover, I will not tolerate anyone with a dumb name like ‘Wendell’ telling me if the summer sport I adore is an unacceptable “waste of life.” What nerve. To check if I was accurate in my fears that an isolated old man – out of touch and condemning of anything recent or urban – had made these proclamations, I read his interview. I was pleasantly verified in all the above fears.

    Matt, if you require your readers to look for context in a mildly edited quote, then perhaps you could try and use comments like “I think… chocolate is nice.” Or “The sun… is hot.” And that way I won’t have to get angsty and angry.

    And Hans, if you had ever talked to a surfer about the beauty of a six foot swell or their amazement at the power of a human body as it paddles UP such things you would retract your comment that the culture is “destructive.” I agree with your comment on the manipulation of youth however.

    Never have I felt more wonderment at God’s creation than the moments I look across a tubing barrel of water that stretches for metres and metres. I work all year so that I can have three weeks in His sun and surf without feeling cannibalistic for being paid a holiday wage of eight hours a day. If a surfer can sustain himself without bludging off others, or having a job, then good for him. I wish I could.

  7. Deborah says:

    I agree
    with WB.

    I don’t feel he is talking about everyone who enjoys surfing, just the ones who do it all day, collect their dole and scoff at those who work for a living. I know a few folks like that.

  8. DBMcC,
    I’m torn in two, one part of me wants to be a seal and only swim, eat fish and make love. The other part says, “No, that’s what seals are for, and there are gardens to tend and people to care for back home.”

    I think you might quite enjoy Kim Stanley Robinson‘s Mars series, particularly the short story collection The Martians.

  9. Tim says:

    I agree with Dave’s comment. WB appears to be dumb.

  10. Meh. It’s our dumb fault for paying money towards a system without much rules or legislation to differentiate between ‘looking for a job’ and ‘living on a beach.’ Not theirs. If we wanna provide The Dole to everyone in this country then we must suffer the consequences of abusers. You can certainly change the system, but you can never alter human laziness or greed in a non-christian world.

  11. Hans says:

    Goodness me. On the one hand we have author poet farmer philosopher WB. On the other we have “WB appears to be dumb” “what a load of shit” “I think Wendell is just jealous” “I will not tolerate anyone with a dumb name like ‘Wendell'” ” an isolated old man – out of touch and condemning of anything recent or urban”.

    Do not give up Matt, there may be some chance of enlightening your interlocuters.

  12. david says:

    Hans, you have wisdom beyond your years. If only some of us youth could even begin to learn some…

  13. Hans. Wendell says, in the same interview:

    “It’s awfully hard, when you write arguments, to avoid the tone that implies that you know what other people ought to do. My work is best, I think, when I talk as a person who’s not an authority on anything but his own experience.”

    Contradicting himself on a number of levels by loathing the people who are different from himself and operate machinery in farming; or surf their lives away on a beach; or don’t use human excrement as compost he was clearly not “at his best” on that day. In 1973.

    I cannot retract my comment about him being judgemental and isolated, but I am willing to consider his name not being as dumb as I originally thought.

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