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Pilgrim At Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
I picked this book up just before I moved -- about 6 or so weeks ago. I had to let go of it to get myself boxed and into my new house. I have finally gotten back to it --Wow! Has anyone read it? Interested? I'd love to hear what others think and feel about this book.
Here is an example of how precise and beautiful Dillard's writting is:
It snowed. It snowed all yeasterday and never emptied the sky, although the clouds looked so low and heavy they might drop all at once with a thud. The light is diffuse and hueless, like the light on paper inside a pewter bowl. The snow looks light and the sky dark, but in fact the sky is lighter than the snow. Obviously the thing illuminated cannot be lighter than its illuminator. The classical demonstration of this point involves simply laying a mirror flat on the snow so that it reflects in its surface the sky, and comparing by sight this value to that of the snow. This is all very well, even conclusive, but the illusion persisits. The dark is overhead and the light at my feet; I'm walking upside-down in the sky.
_________________ Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads ~ Henry David Thoreau
“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” -Thich Nhat Hahn
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Re: Pilgrim At Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Another excerpt: Chapter 4, II P. 66 Harper Perennial Modern Classics ed.
Nature is, above all, profligate. Don't believe them when they tell you how economical and thrifty nature is, whose leaves retrun to the soil. Wouldn't it be cheaper to leave them on the tree in the first place? This deciduous business alone is a radical scheme, the brainchild of a deranged manic-depressive with limitless capital. Extravagance! Nature will try anything once. This is what the sign of the insects says. No form is too gruesome, no behavior too grotesque. If you're dealing with organic compounds, then let them combine. If it works, if it quickens, set is clacking in the grass; there's always room for one more; you ain't so handsome yourself. This is a spendthrift economy; though nothing is lost, all is spent.
_________________ Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads ~ Henry David Thoreau
“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” -Thich Nhat Hahn
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Re: Pilgrim At Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Read it quite a while ago and one of those books that I've kept--nobody can borrow. Dillard is America's preeminent philosopher. Hope you go on to read her other works. "Teaching A Stone" is a beautiful work as well. Do you find that you read a section and you feel you need to reread it to take it all in?
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Re: Pilgrim At Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Weaver: I definately plan to read more of Dillard's work. I just told someone today that I don't want Tinker Creek to end and that I think I'll just start reading it at the beginning when I finish! I just want to keep reading it forever.
_________________ Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads ~ Henry David Thoreau
“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” -Thich Nhat Hahn
Joined: Apr 2008 Posts: 2495 Images: 5 Location: Round Hill, VA
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Re: Pilgrim At Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
from Pilgrim At Tinker Creek wrote:
Chapter 4, II Nature is, above all, profligate.
This quote from Annie Dillard reminds me of the novel by Barbara Kingsolver, Prodigal Summer. Basically, it takes Dillard's sentence and expands it into a novel.
_________________ Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads ~ Henry David Thoreau
“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” -Thich Nhat Hahn
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Re: Pilgrim At Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
I suspect no one is reading my thread, but no bother, I've got to post anyway. This book, I can't leave it alone and it will not leave me alone.
Dillard is a keen observer of the world. In Pilgrim At Tinker Creek she examines her observations of nature and the natural world, bringing her curious, creative mind to bear on what she notices. What comes out is a song, a poem, a shout of hallelujah, a plea to the reader to be amazed at the world around and inside of ourselves.
p. 127-8
Quote:
All the green in the planted world consists of these whole, rounded chloroplasts wending their ways in water. If you analyze a molecule of chlorophyll itself, what you get is one hundred thirty-six atoms of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen arranged in an exact and complex relationship around a central ring. At the ring's center is a single atom of magnesium. Now: If you remove the atom of magnesium and in its exact place put an atom of iron, you get a molecule of hemoglobin. The iron atom combines with all the other atoms to make red blood.....
The world really is truly amazing!
Annie Dillard writes at the bottom of p. 128 -- Just prior to the quoted passage she is talking about interconnectedness and interdependence, and really I think, the oneness of the world:
Quote:
We go down landscape after mobile, sculpture after collage, down to molecular structures like a mob dance in Breughel, down to atoms airy and balanced as a canvas by Klee, down to atomic particles, the heart of the matter, as spirited and wild as any El Greco saints. And it all works. "Nature," said Thoreau in his journal, "is mythical and mystical always, and spends her whole genius on the least work." The creator, I would add, churns out the intricate texture of least works that is the world with a spendthrift genius and an extravagance of care. This is the point.
_________________ Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads ~ Henry David Thoreau
“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” -Thich Nhat Hahn
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Re: Pilgrim At Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Thanks. I can never understand why people often knock the materialist/scientific view as limited and offering less richness than what some call the spiritual view. The world as it really is will always be too much for us, impossibly rich for us ever to exhaust or fully comprehend, which is the delight that Dillard has discovered and invites us into.
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Re: Pilgrim At Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Dillard is said to write in an outbuilding on her property, alone with her thoughts and notes. AM so glad you are still reveling in her writing. Know one other person who loves her work and quotes from it. She will also take you quickly from the natural world to a peopled world and share her observations on American culture. Both of her themes do make me hug her books to my chest. Keep enjoying!!!!
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Re: Pilgrim At Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
weaver wrote:
Dillard is said to write in an outbuilding on her property, alone with her thoughts and notes. AM so glad you are still reveling in her writing. Know one other person who loves her work and quotes from it. She will also take you quickly from the natural world to a peopled world and share her observations on American culture. Both of her themes do make me hug her books to my chest. Keep enjoying!!!!
Hey, by the way, I took your advice about reading another Dillard book and bought Teaching a Stone to Talk.
_________________ Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads ~ Henry David Thoreau
“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” -Thich Nhat Hahn
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Re: Pilgrim At Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Don't think you'll be disappointed with Teaching---. It's a relaxing read punctuated by moments of Aha! Do let me know how it compares to Pilgrim Creek for you. As an asidde, Dillard's work saved me from what I thought would be an awkward dinner. An ivy league scholar was there whose thinking is so quick and so amazing that I was sure I could not keep up reading lips. Whiningly felt sorry for myseelf. But then this gentleman spotted Dillard on my shelf and the conversation was so exciting, so intriguing that thanks to Dillard I did not feel dumb. Enjoy!
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Re: Pilgrim At Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
More from Tinker Creek --
This book is as much about nature and philosophy as it is about Dillard herself. For those of us who see a kindred spirit in Annie Dillard the book is validation, a relief that there are other people in the world who can't get enough of seeing. Who are awe struck at the universe. Daily, I have to resist pestering people with information that I have found that amazes or fascinates me. Why has been my raison d'être. Funny though, as I get older I am less interested in trying to answer the question and more interested in just observing what is.
Chapter 8 - Intricacy
p. 133-34
Quote:
There are, for instance, two hundred twenty-eight separate and distinct muscles in the head of an ordinary caterpillar. Again, of an ostracod, a common fresh-water crustacean of the sort I crunch on by the thousands every time I set food in Tinker Creek, I read, "There is one eye situated at the fore-end of the animal. The food canal lies just below the hinge, and around the mouth are the feathery feeding appendages which collect the food . . . Behind them is a food which is clawed and this is partly used for removing unwanted particles from the feeding appendages." Or again, there are, as I have said, six million leaves on a big elm. All right . . . but they are toothed, and the teeth are toothed. How many notches and barbs is that to a world? In and out go the intricate leaf edges, and "don't nobody know why." all the theories botanists have devise to explain the functions of various leaf shapes tumble under an avalanche of inconsistencies. They simple don't know, can't imagine.
I have often noticed that these things, which obsess me, neither bother nor impress other people even slightly. I am horribly apt to approach some innocent at a gathering and, like the ancient mariner, fix him with a wild, glitt'ring eye and say, "Do you know that in the head of the caterpillar of the ordinary goat moth there are two hundred twenty-eight separate muscles?" The poor wretch flees. I am not making chatter, I mean to change his life. I seem to possess an organ that others lack, a sort of trivia machine.
_________________ Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads ~ Henry David Thoreau
“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” -Thich Nhat Hahn
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Re: Pilgrim At Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Here is a bit of biographical information I copied from Wikipedia:
Quote:
After her college years, Dillard became, as she says, "spiritually promiscuous," incorporating the ideas of many religious systems into her own religious understanding. Not only are there references to Christ and the Bible in her first prose book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, but also to Judaism, Buddhism, Sufism, and even Eskimo spirituality. In the 1990s, Dillard converted briefly to Roman Catholicism.
I hope she really used the phrase, "spiritually promiscuous." I love it!
_________________ Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads ~ Henry David Thoreau
“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” -Thich Nhat Hahn
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Re: Pilgrim At Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
"The poor wretch flees".
Typical Dillard, which makes her all the more loved. She seems to be so at home with herself which is so refreshing. Wouldn't you just love to sit down wth her and let her chat about whatever she wants? She had enough unstructured time in her youth to let her senses take her on tangential trips, In my old age I think this is a valuble lesson for all the children who are scheduled every day to do this and that.
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Re: Pilgrim At Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
weaver wrote:
"The poor wretch flees".
Typical Dillard, which makes her all the more loved. She seems to be so at home with herself which is so refreshing. Wouldn't you just love to sit down wth her and let her chat about whatever she wants? She had enough unstructured time in her youth to let her senses take her on tangential trips, In my old age I think this is a valuble lesson for all the children who are scheduled every day to do this and that.
I completely agree on all counts. I would love an opportunity to chat with Dillard. She graduated from Hollins College a year before another writer I like, Lee Smith. I think they live in the same town in NC. Boy, would I like to sit down for a cup of tea with them!
As for over scheduled children, it is the topic of my own little crusade. I attribute my own attitudes toward the world and my ingenuity to all the free time I had to wander through the wooded areas and farm fields surrounding my childhood home. I raised my own three daughters in the same spirit.
_________________ Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads ~ Henry David Thoreau
“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” -Thich Nhat Hahn
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