Pathways, August 2026
Each month, we keep track of the different paths that modern life is taking and how writers are keeping up. Here are some routes we recently found in our modern life.
Welcome back to Pathways.
On August 31, Wendell Berry—writer and farmer of Kentucky—passed away at 92 years old. Berry relentlessly critiqued industrial and technological modernity, drawing attention to its harmful effects on agriculture, the natural environment, and the bonds that sustain human communities. He never owned a TV or computer. Instead he wrote his poems, essays, and novels by hand, producing works that celebrated the beauty and glory of creation. His life and writings—which do fit neatly within the categories of either major political party—remain an inspiration to many. See Paul Kingsnorth’s homage to him in First Things, as well as obituaries in the New York Timesand Christianity Today.
Over the years, Berry’s name has appeared in GenMod’s pages many times. As you contemplate his legacy, consider reading John-Paul Heil’s “Wendell Berry’s Genealogy of Place” and our interview with Peco and Ruth Gaskovski, “Reclaiming a Grounded Life.”
Here’s what else we’ve been reading at GenMod:
Commonweal’s symposium on Omri Boehm’s Radical Universalism (2025), featuring responses by Samuel Moyn, Shai Held, and Paul J. Griffiths.
Cathleen Kaveny’s essay on physician-assisted suicide, in particular the “aid in dying” movement, titled “The Importance of Being a Burden.” Kaveny’s article on the ars moriendi—that is, “the art of living well while diminishing and dying”—connects to a fascinating recent entry in the “Forms of Life” section of The Point: Zach Marcus’s reflection on former senator Ben Sasse’s very public decline in health due to stage-four pancreatic cancer. What does it mean to die in public?
A pair of fascinating essays, also in The Point, on coed wrestling, by Laura Baudot, and on the history and current state of “microcolleges,” by Franklin Tucker Eccher.
And last, David Austin Walsh’s very clarifying review of Anton Jager’s Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization Without Political Consequences for Hedgehog, and Sam Dresser’s essay on C. P. Snow, F. R. Leavis, and the “two cultures” debate in Aeon.
See you back here at the end of September.
