One of the things that is clear from the outset of reading For Common Things is that Purdy is a man shaped by a time (perhaps both personal and historic) that has really established his thinking in a fundamental way.  His parents raised their family in West Virginia, in what sounds primarily (but not solely, as he adds in an afterword) a real “living off the land” situation.  Consider:

Maybe because so much of our talk had to do with [these] stable, certain, solid things, West Virginia was not an ironic place. There was not much talk of trust, hope, or reliance; but there was a great deal of each of those, so thoroughly present that there was no need to name them. They were bound up in the things we did name.

My upbringing was a blend of centuries, with strands of old American idyll and always elements of whatever year the calendar announced. Since leaving that time between times, I have never left behind a sense of betwixtness, of being from somewhere else— another place and, in some measure, another perdiod, another way of living. Wherever I found myself, I came as a visitor, often a willing participant, but never exactly a member. Something in me is always native to another place. But the more I am of these new places and populations, the more imperfectly I am of that anomalous and mainly irretrievable Appalachian childhood.

It is good, I believe, to live in a place where irony is outpaced by “trust, hope, and reliance.”  Such a life probably isn’t an easy life, but I believe it must in some deep way be good.

I especially like what he said about always being “native to another place.”  As someone who has moved west (and then even more west), I feel that.  And that’s as much about location as it is disposition.  I am often surprised when I find out idealogical moves in the 90s that I had no awareness of until a decade and an ocean stood between us.

I do not think this part of For Common Things is some unnecessary appeal to tradition, especially taken with thoughts from the book that I’ll get to later in the week.  I do think, though, that it is a reminder of the possible dignity of place and of people who know the work of “stable, certain, and solid things.”  I can’t help but think that something about that is key to thriving in the next bit of the 21st century.