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What
other writers say about Gene Logsdon
ON
THE ONE HAND...
"Some farmer-writers, such as Gene Logsdon, whose analysis of the
ills of modern farming is generally right on the mark, reject outright
any discussion of farm life whose tone doesn't accentuate the positive."
—Novelist
Jane Smiley in The New Yorker magazine, in an article, "Losing
the Farm," (June 3, 1996) page 91.
AND
THEN ON THE OTHER HAND...
"Logsdon [concluded]: 'When you ask what the problem with agriculture
is, you're really asking what the problem is with human nature. The
root of the problem is that we're all frail, dumb, greedy sons-of-bitches."
—From an interview with J. Tevere MacFadyen, in his book Gaining
Ground: The Renewal of America's Small Farms (Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
New York, 1984), page 224.
INSPIRING
A BEST-SELLING NOVELIST
"I've never loved any earthly thing so much [as our farm]. It seems
to my husband and me that the farm is something we need to work hard
to deserve...For several years now we've received from each other as
gifts, on nearly all occasions, such books as are written by Gene Logsdon,
Michael Phillips, Elliot Coleman, Carol Ekarius, Vandana Shiva and Wendell
Berry. Some other wife might wish for diamond earrings, but my sweetheart
knew I wanted Basic Butchering." —The novelist Barbara
Kingsolver, writing in the introduction to The Essential Agrarian Reader:
The Future of Culture, Community and the Land (University Press of Kentucky,
2003), page xv.
AND
A BEST-SELLING ESSAYIST
"And then we drive back where the day began...It is looking more
and more as if we will soon be tending this patch of land. We'll try
to keep it realistic. In preparation for the move, we have placed a
copy of Gene Logsdon's All Flesh Is Grass in the bathroom. We
dip into it and dream." —Michael Perry, author of the best-selling
book of essays, Population: 485, in his latest book, Truck: A Love Store
(HarperCollins, 2006), page 278.
AS
WELL AS AN AWARD-WINNING JOURNALIST
"Our friendship was forged in the second half of the turbulent
1960s when both of us worked at Farm Journal's home office in Philadelphia.
There, I watched Logsdon stretch his already awesome abilities. Not
content with being our magazine's most creative writer, despite his
lack of a single day in anyone's journalism class, he started writing
books. The prose in Logsdon's early books, those he wrote while still
at Farm Journal, startled all of us, and not just because it
sparkled with his unique expression of original ideas. In a Logsdon
sentence, words cavort to a cadenced conclusion: subjects seduce, clauses
compel, predicates provoke. Above all, a Logsdon effort evokes a wondrous
wellspring of emotional response—as do, say, images of seed corn
daubed on canvas by painter Andrew Wyeth. Indeed, Wyeth People
was the title of Logsdon's first book." —Joe Dan Boyd,
the only journalist to twice win the coveted award "Farm Writer
of the Year" from the American Agricultural Editors Association,
in his profile of Logsdon, "A Spiritual Harvest," in Farm
Journal magazine in the mid-March issue, 1994, pages 34 and 35.
NOT
TO MENTION A HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEUR
"My Creative Action Heroes live their ideals through creating alternatives
that solve social problems and make a positive difference in the world...Creative
Action Heroes may also be independent writers like Wendell Berry and
Gene Logsdon who went back to their roots on farms to apply their lives
to 'experiments in life' and published their carefully-gained insights
for us to admire and possibly emulate. They spawned thousands of other
Creative Action Heroes...This web of heroes, great and small...move
mankind ever forward by the work they do and the lives they lead...
—To Be Of Use: The Seven Seeds of Meaningful Work by Dave Smith,
co-founder of Smith & Hawken. (New World Library, Novato, Calif.,
2005, p. 162-163.
WHEN NOT INSPIRING, HE BUSTS IDOLS
"Speaking of which [brewing beer] 'that useful man, Gene Logsdon,'
as the British have dubbed him, has unburdened himself of yet another
book; this one related to this subject. Ever the idol buster and supreme
non-conformist, Mr. Logsdon has taken on the whole politically-correct
admonition against demon rum in his new book entitled Good Spirits,
a veritable manual on how to produce exquisitely thundering beverages
in an age of really awful commercial undrinkables...Mr. Logsdon has
never written a bad book and this one is a corker—or uncorker,
in this case. —"The Intentional Peasant" in an essay,
"What Does It Eat?" in Countryside and Small Stock Journal,
Vol. 84 No. 2, March/April 2000, page 114.
OR
SINKS INTO CHERRY PIE HERESY
It is with his great storytelling ability that he persuades us to pay
attention to our desires, even as he shares his own. Logsdon's stories
are rich in details and personalities, tension and drama—like the
one that opens this book with seminary boys desperate to steal cherry
pies baked for their teacher-priests. Laced with boyish pleasure and
fear, the story vibrates between the wish to heed God's call (which
he already questioned) and the worldly temptation of cherry pies...
As a writer, Logsdon skillfully weaves narrative and dramatic elements
into the story-essays he shares with us, a storytelling ability equal
to the writings he admired most in The New Yorker magazine."
—Beth Slocum, in her review of You Can Go Home Again: Adventures
of a Contrary Life in The Land Stewardship Letter, Sept./Oct., 1999,
pages 16 and 17.
WHICH
BRINGS HIM AN OFFER NEVER MADE BEFORE NOR SINCE
"[Logsdon] tired of all that a couple of years ago, vowed never
to write how-to-do anything ever again, and turned his attention to
larger questions. His last two books are about those bigger things,
to which he has answers that will appeal to all clear-thinking humanists...I
am so sure you need this book (The Contrary Farmer's Invitation To
Gardening) that I offer this unilateral contract: buy a copy, read
it. If you don't like it, the next time your subscription to this magazine
comes up for renewal, tell me to extend you a year for free, to repay
you the cost of Logsdon's book that I seduced you to buy. Not one of
you will ask for a refund." —Robert Kaldenbach, editor
and publisher of Rural New England Magazine writing in his Oct./Nov.issue,
1997, page 12.
WHY,
HE MIGHT EVEN BECOME A NOVELIST
"...he joined Rodale Press, as a contributor to the old Organic
Gardening and Farming magazine and as the author of numerous back-to-the-land
how-to books—the only ones that are fun to read. Logsdon could
be a novelist. Instead, he turns his writing skills... into some of
the most intelligent farm writing in America." —Dan Looker,
a staff editor at Successful Farming magazine, in an article, "New
Voices In Agriculture" in Prairie Sentinel June/July, 1983), page
25.
OR
AT LEAST PROVIDE AN ALTERNATIVE TO GARBAGE
Another brilliant antidote to much of the nihilistic garbage found on
many bookstore shelves is Gene Logsdon's The Contrary Farmer...In
addition to the tools and tenets the text provides, we are privy to
hilarious stories and beautiful evocations of the countryside. Logsdon
knows his place in the universe." —Don DeNevi, a book reviewer
writing in the Palo Alto Daily News, July 18, 1998, page 10.
HE GETS ANGRY IN JUST THE RIGHT WAY
"O, environmental writers. The religious scribes of our day. I
love them but I fear them too, because of the way self-righteousness
can rear up like some suddenly animated pond scum in a Stephen King
movie and over the picnic, the teenagers, everything that was ever fun
and alive and moving around...So when I had the opportunity recently...to
stop in rural Ohio to meet Gene Logsdon, I did. Gene Logsdon writes
like a dream (a reader of one of his books calls him 'a hardworking,
thinking person's genius and a national treasure'. And he covers all
the right things—family farming, the corporatization of agriculture
and how to brew really good beer. He's funny and humble, and when the
unjustness of the world makes him angry—which is often—he
gets mad in just the right way. His anger is direct and sharp and on
target." —Environmental writer Lisa Jones in Grist magazine
on line at Earth Day Network, April 22, 2000.
BUT
HE HAS KNOWN FEAR IN SOME VERY WEIRD SITUATIONS
"While his prose may lack the convoluted elegance of [Wendell]
Berry's and the rhythmic polish of Scott Russell Sanders'...Logsdon
writes with efficiency, passion and (when the topic warrants it, such
as the Blizzard of '78) considerable narrative force. Besides that,
he' funnier than those guys are, and he has more fun. It's hard to picture
Berry at a marathon softball tournament or Sanders at a rock concert,
but both events...are part of Logsdon's tableau of old-fashioned country
life, '90s style. While the crowd at a Ted Nugent show scares him as
much as his ride in an Amish buggy on a busy highway, he gives both
experiences favorable reviews. He calls rock concerts 'the sounds of
animality relieving the tensions of modern life,' which from a man who's
found happiness as a shepherd, must amount to about three stars."
—Dan Carpenter, staff writer, reviewing Logsdon's book, You
Can Go Home Again in The Indianapolis Star, October 24, 1998, page A13.
HE SEEMS IMPRESSED BY NATURE'S BEAUTY
" Logsdon says the natural world never ceases to amaze him...'Nature
is the most fascinating part of existing,' he said.... [Art] flows out
of man's innate desire to represent the beauty he sees in nature'."
—Chuck Bowen, in an interview for the Findlay, Ohio, Courier,
Sept. 18, 2004, pages A1 and A15.
BUT
THEN AGAIN, MAYBE NOT
"Comparing what he calls 'Romantic Faddists' to Maria Antoinette—the-silk-and-
satin- clad French queen who played at being a shepherdess while her
ladies-in-waiting cleaned up all the sheep manure—Logsdon says
they dream about living in productive and rewarding harmony with Mother
Nature, yet they haven't a clue about the hard work, compromises and
flat-out sacrifices it takes to turn their dream into reality. 'This
is not a Jean Jacques Rousseau noble-nature kind of world. Mother Nature
is a bitch,' says Logsdon." —Eileen Beal in an interview,
"Mother Nature's A Bitch: In Logsdon Logic, Less Is More,"
in the Cleveland, Ohio Free Times, Feb. 24-March 2, 1999, page 43.
AND
WOULD YOU BELIEVE, ALL THIS FROM A FARMER
"When the layman notes that Logsdon is an editor of Farm Journal
he is unprepared for the graceful and vivid portraits, the rich images,
the perceptiveness with which the book is written. It is an unfair judgment,
an unfounded stereotype among the masses of city and suburban dwellers
to think that the tilling of soil and the milking of cows precludes
the possession of intellect...But beyond the misconception, Logsdon's
writing is surprisingly polished, surprising because such craftsmanship
is getting more and more scarce." —Linda Hammond, in the
Courier Post, Camden, N.J., 1971.
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