John Berger is an amalgam as odd as his strange new book…. "Pig Earth" is the first of a trilogy of fictions he will publish under the general title "Into Their Labours," an account of the metastasis of peasant society into a modern metropolis—a sort of prayer book of alienation. Mr. Berger wants us to understand that peasants are virtuous victims; their conservatism is a kind of guile; their guile is somehow liberating….

[A] particular peasant, Marcel, has deep thoughts: "Walking is a form of thinking, whereas machines, such as tractors are harbingers of debt, of a mortgaged future." For a peasant, Marcel thinks too much; his observations on the transforming of work into spirit, or of work into imagination, are unlikely and incredible. Equally unlikely and incredible is the epiphany of another peasant, Lucie Cabrol…. (p. 513)

Mr. Berger can't make up his mind. The Marxist in...