egreiner reviewed Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Dope
5 stars
Taught it to my students
Hardcover, 271 pages
English language
Published 1974 by Harper's Magazine Press.
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
5 stars
(17 reviews)
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is a personal narrative. It highlights one year's explorations on foot in the author's own neighborhood, one year's assaults and curiosities. Here are both beauty and terror: the vision of a cedar tree charged with light, and the sight of a crippled moth crawling on the ground, his wings crumbled and glued to his back.
In the summer, Annie Dillard stalks muskrats in the creek and thinks about wave mechanics; in the fall, she watches a monarch butterfly migration and dreams of Arctic caribou. She tries to con a coot; she collects pond water and examines it under a microscope on her kitchen table; she frightens frogs. She unties a snakeskin, witnesses a flood, and plays "King of the Meadow" with a field of grasshoppers. Throughout the year, she brings anecdotes and bizarre bits of information to bear on what she experiences.
"I am no scientist," …
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is a personal narrative. It highlights one year's explorations on foot in the author's own neighborhood, one year's assaults and curiosities. Here are both beauty and terror: the vision of a cedar tree charged with light, and the sight of a crippled moth crawling on the ground, his wings crumbled and glued to his back.
In the summer, Annie Dillard stalks muskrats in the creek and thinks about wave mechanics; in the fall, she watches a monarch butterfly migration and dreams of Arctic caribou. She tries to con a coot; she collects pond water and examines it under a microscope on her kitchen table; she frightens frogs. She unties a snakeskin, witnesses a flood, and plays "King of the Meadow" with a field of grasshoppers. Throughout the year, she brings anecdotes and bizarre bits of information to bear on what she experiences.
"I am no scientist," she says of herself. "I am a wanderer with a background in theology and a penchant for quirky facts.
"As a thinker I keep discovering that beauty itself is as much a fact, and a mystery, as the most gruesome parasitic roundworm. I consider nature's facts — its beautiful and grotesque forms and events — in terms of their import to thought and their impetus to the spirit. In nature I find grace tangled in a rapture with violence; I find an intricate landscape whose forms are fringed in death; I find mystery, newness, and a kind of exuberant, spendthrift energy."
Fionnáin reviewed Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
A perfect landscape painted in words
5 stars
Annie Dillard is a writer who takes joy in writing, in learning, and piecing it all together. In her most well-known book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, she perfects the art. The book is like Thoreau's Walden revised for a 20th Century audience (in fact, Dillard references the American philosopher several times) but with a more playful voice. Dillard explores the world around Tinker Creek, where she lives for the duration of the book, and interacts with the place, from watching a praying mantis egg sac hatch to standing in a field so full of grasshoppers the entire thing is moving, to a neighbour boy carrying a snapping turtle with leeches on it, to lying under the stars and considering their vastness.
Within all this, Dillard maintains a wit and a clever storytelling that is endlessly enjoyable. Every sentence drips with her own sharp prose. She is an avid reader, …
Annie Dillard is a writer who takes joy in writing, in learning, and piecing it all together. In her most well-known book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, she perfects the art. The book is like Thoreau's Walden revised for a 20th Century audience (in fact, Dillard references the American philosopher several times) but with a more playful voice. Dillard explores the world around Tinker Creek, where she lives for the duration of the book, and interacts with the place, from watching a praying mantis egg sac hatch to standing in a field so full of grasshoppers the entire thing is moving, to a neighbour boy carrying a snapping turtle with leeches on it, to lying under the stars and considering their vastness.
Within all this, Dillard maintains a wit and a clever storytelling that is endlessly enjoyable. Every sentence drips with her own sharp prose. She is an avid reader, and intersperses religious texts, philosophy, nature writing and obscure historical books with her observations and ideas. She moves from micro to macro, and paints a landscape image of this place beautifully and excitingly. Wonderful.
Matto reviewed Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Review of 'Pilgrim at Tinker Creek' on 'GoodReads'
4 stars
A young woman's writings during a spiritual year in nature. Nice to read.
drizzy reviewed Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Review of 'Pilgrim at Tinker Creek' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
It was quite fun watching the seasons change with the author. It certainly helps to have a vivid imagination while reading this book. It is full of trivia and biological information which I would not expect in a book about beauty of nature. But it shows the "ugly" side as well and shows that we can enjoy even those brutal, inexplicable parts of it.
Things that were bugging me were mostly around overly philosophical parts which are sprinkled throughout Pilgrim and last but not least - unnecessarily (from my point of view at least) complex language. It felt as if author was sitting with a dictionary next to the typewriter. But maybe that just shows how much I have yet to learn...
BethOwl 📚✍🏻🦉🇺🇦🌈 reviewed Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Review of 'Pilgrim at Tinker Creek' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
One of the best books I ever read; it changed my life. It might have helped that Tinker Creek is just a few miles away from the place I spent my childhood summers - pretty much alone with the woods and apple trees and enchantment of the mountains near Roanoke, Virginia.
