A review by karlycay
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
4.0
This book was recommended as a source for inspiration from a science writer. I've heard it's required reading in some schools. But Dillard doesn't look at nature the way a scientist does, but as a poet does. In fact, some passages remind me of Mary Oliver's poems. It is a year's worth of observations by Tinker Creek. She wrote this book when she was 27 and that fact makes me want to die.
People think that once they know how a magic trick works, the magic is gone. But "knowledge does not vanquish mystery, or obscure its distant lights," Dillard writes. Even though she knows a lot about the natural world around Tinker Creek, still she stares at it with wonder. She explains the behavior of many animals and insects, contemplates evolution, the food chain, and enforcing morals on an immoral world.
This book can certainly be overwrought at times. It took me almost a year to finish it. Can she really be this affected by a mosquito biting a snake? Other times the prose grips me: my copy is dog-eared, highlighted, and scribbled in. I feel more curious about nature and satisfied it's still a mystery. Doesn't that make a good book?
People think that once they know how a magic trick works, the magic is gone. But "knowledge does not vanquish mystery, or obscure its distant lights," Dillard writes. Even though she knows a lot about the natural world around Tinker Creek, still she stares at it with wonder. She explains the behavior of many animals and insects, contemplates evolution, the food chain, and enforcing morals on an immoral world.
This book can certainly be overwrought at times. It took me almost a year to finish it. Can she really be this affected by a mosquito biting a snake? Other times the prose grips me: my copy is dog-eared, highlighted, and scribbled in. I feel more curious about nature and satisfied it's still a mystery. Doesn't that make a good book?