Pilgrim At Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

weaver · Mon Jan 04, 2010 11:45 am

Have not heard of Lee Smith---can you give a little background? A book title?
Congratulations on raising your children to feel free to explore and encourage their wandering! You are a Montessori teacher at heart. Nothing compares to turning over rocks in a creek and finding crayfish or a red eft scurrying through the leaves. Children thrive on the Aha! moment. Sometime I may tell you of all the sterile rules I broke when teaching children labeled Emotionally Disturbed. All teachers ought to read Ms. Dillard.
You've gotten me to think more on Dillard. She has such a singular talent in eloquence without discursive statements. Picture her at the top of Maslow's Self-actualization pyramid--one of a very few.

Saffron · Mon Jan 04, 2010 8:13 pm


	weaver wrote: Have not heard of Lee Smith---can you give a little background? A book title?

Here are the two books I read -- I especially liked Oral History:

Fair and Tender Ladies
published in 1988

Oral History
published in 1983

This I copied from Wikipedia:

Lee Smith (born on November 1, 1944) is an American fiction author who typically incorporates much of her home roots in the Southeastern United States in her works of literature. She has received many writing awards, such as the O. Henry award and the Academy Award For Literature. Her recent book The Last Girls was listed on the New York Times bestseller's list.

Lee Smith was born in 1944 in Grundy, Virginia, a small coal-mining town in the Appalachian Mountains, less than 10 miles from the Kentucky border. The Smith home sat on Main Street, and the Levisa Fork River ran just behind it. Her mother, Virginia, was a college graduate who had come to Grundy to teach school.

weaver · Thu Jan 07, 2010 1:28 pm

Thanks for the titles. The Last Girls sounds very familiar, wonder if I read it in a book review. As soon as I'm over this flu (sniffle) I will search out one of Smith's titles.

Saffron · Wed Jan 13, 2010 9:13 am

In chapter 12, Nightwatch, Dillard gives a magical description of being in a meadow full of grasshoppers. Did you know that locusts are just swarms of grasshopper that under stress have changed into locusts?!

Chris OConnor · Fri Jan 15, 2010 1:36 am

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek will be on the next non-fiction book poll.

Saffron · Fri Jan 15, 2010 5:36 pm

Chapter 12
Nightwatch
p. 218

This passage puts me in the mind of Paradise Lost. It is clear to me at this point in my reading that Dillard is exploring her own religious beliefs and trying to rectify her rapturous experiences of nature and the conflicting images of God in the Old and New Testament, as well as challenge the whole notion of a fall and the anthrocentric perspective of the Judeo-Christian belief system . Here is the passage:


	Quote: The thistle is part of Adam's curse. "Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee." A terrible curse: But does the goldfinch eat thorny sorrow with the thistle, or do I? If this furling air is fallen, then the fall was happy indeed. If this creekside garden is sorrow, then I seek martyrdom. This crown of thorns sits light on my skull, like wings. The Venetian Baroque painter Tiepolo painted Christ as a red-lipped infant clutching a goldfinch; the goldfinch seems to be looking around in search of thorns. Creation itself was the fall, a burst into the thorny beauty of the real. The gold finch here on the fringed thistletop was burying her head with each light thrust deeper into the seedcase. Her fragile legs braced to her task on the vertical, thorny stem; the last of the thistle down sprayed and poured. Is there anything I could eat so lightly, or could I die so fair? With a ruffle of feathered wings the goldfinch fluttered away, out of range of the broken window's frame and toward the deep blue shade of the cliffs where late fireflies already were rising alight under trees. I was weightless; my bones were taut skins brown with buoyant gas; it seemed that if I inhaled too deeply, my shoulders and head would waft off. Alleluia.

*my bold

weaver · Tue Jan 26, 2010 10:55 am

Have been away and missed the quotes and comments on Dillard. Nice to read.

One quote from Dillard in another of her books, haunts me. It's so economically viable and answers the question of why lottery winners go broke and why people marry within their own class:

"Money is like water; it seeks a level"

DWill · Tue Jan 26, 2010 3:26 pm

The passage Saffron quoted is extraordinary. I missed this book, but I'm glad to see Chris will put it on the next NF poll. I was considering whether to take up "The Passion of the Western Mind," but after inspecting that book, I find that Dillard looks so much better. So I'll wait and hope "Tinker" comes up. If it doesn't, I still have a strong incentive to read it.

hmrush · Wed Jan 27, 2010 12:16 pm

Love Love Love Annie Dillard. I read a short story by her in one of my Lit classes, it was about her as a child and when she hit a car with a snowball and was chased by the man driving it, the writing was beautiful and my father bought my Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I was thoroughly impressed by her prose, the descriptions are so amazing (the first story reminded me of the beginning of grapes of wrath!)

Not to mention, definitely informative!

Saffron · Fri Feb 05, 2010 7:53 pm

To everyone who has been following this thread:

I'd like to propose that we read Teaching a Stone to Talk. It is easier to find in a book store than Pilgrim and I'm ready to read more Annie Dillard. Anyone interested? If I get any positive responses I'll set up a thread in about 2 weeks or so -- lets say March 1. That will give everyone interested enough time to get the book and get reading. It is a short little book of 14 essays.

Saffron · Mon May 24, 2010 8:12 am

I am finally reading Teaching a Stone to Talk. It is a collection of essays written at different times. In fact, a few of the essays are pieces left out of Tinker Creek. I have mixed feelings about the essays. I like many of her ideas and the way she can connect two seemingly unrelated things together to make a point or illustrate an idea. The first essay in the book "Total Eclipse" is a fine example of Dillards ability to use the description of an experience to create connections between ideas and to vividly illustrate her points. "Total Eclipse" is little over the top in the descriptions of the event, but she concludes with a bang.

Here is my favorite bit so far. It is from the first essay, "Total Eclipse":

There are a few more things to tell from this level, the level of the reastaurant. One is the old joke about breakfast. "It can never be satisfied, the mind, never." Wallace Stevens wrote that, and in the long run he was right. The mind wants to live forever, or to learn a very good reason why not. The mind wants the world to return its love, or its awareness; the mind wants to know all the world, and all eternity, and God. The mind's sidekick, however, will settle for two eggs over easy.

The dear, stupid body is as easily satisfied as a spaniel. And, incredibly, the simple spaniel can lure the brawling mind to its dish. It is everlanstingly funny that the proud, metaphysically ambitious, clamoring mind will hush if you give it an egg.

Veneer · Mon May 24, 2010 10:18 pm

I read Pilgrim At Tinker Creek back in the early 90's. It was an excellent book, but I found I liked American Childhood better, which is odd because I am into nature and the spirituality found in nature. I think Pilgrim was perhaps a tad too poetic for me--although as I say, I did enjoy the book.

Another writer that I have enjoyed immensely is Diane Ackerman. She made one observation which almost brings tears to my eyes and it reminds me of some of the writing in Pilgrim.

“That evening, as I watched the sunset’s pinwheels of apricot and mauve slowly explode into red ribbons, I thought: The sensory misers will inherit the earth, but first they will make it not worth living on. When you consider something like death, after which (there being no news flash to the contrary) we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably doesn’t matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly. It probably doesn’t matter if, while trying to be modest and eager watchers of life’s many spectacles, we sometimes look clumsy or get dirty or ask stupid questions or reveal our ignorance or say the wrong thing or light up with wonder like the children we all are. It probably doesn’t matter if a passerby sees us dipping a finger into the moist pouches of dozens of lady’s slippers to find out what bugs tend to fall into them, and thinks us a bit eccentric. Or a neighbor, fetching her mail, sees us standing in the cold with our own letters in one hand and a seismically red autumn leaf in the other its color hitting our sense like a blow from a stun gun, as we stand with a huge grin, too paralyzed by the intricately veined gaudiness of the leaf to move.”

A Natural History of The Senses, Diane Ackerman pg 256

Saffron · Mon May 24, 2010 10:22 pm


	Veneer wrote: A Natural History of The Senses, Diane Ackerman pg 256

I'm so glad you posted. I have another title to add to my list!

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