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A review by wellworn_soles
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
5.0
Annie Dillard, in her 1999 afterward, says she wrote this book after reading three disappointing works by older authors. This prompted her to write a book while she was young, before she too lost her “nerve for excellence”.
I think this explains why some people could find this work to be too much. Its rapturous flights of joy and ecstatic energy could be read as overblown or bordering on witless. But for me, there is real muscular power coursing like a branching tree of lightning under the surface of these words. Annie, at 27, is brash, bold - leaping into depths, exalting the air above and the earth beneath her feet. These flights of vision sometimes run into excess, but there’s a real beauty in even these overdone blazing passages. I couldn’t help but read them as praise and exultation; for who can keep their words about them when staring straight into the face of incomprehensible mystery?
Dillard sets this book up as a neo-platonic theodicy: the first half of the book is a via positiva seeing all the positive and beautiful things in the world as glimpses of God. The second half, which starts after a flood, reexamines this ecstatic rush in a via negativa. This approach focuses on the unknowability of the divine, emphasizing all we may say on it is immediately untrue. As someone much wiser than me once said, Nature is no great teacher, because you can see anything in Nature you wish to see.
Annie’s acute, singularly reverent and piercing insights into the natural world, as well as into the deep questions and desire of the human spirit, wrapped me in their swell. I want to press in this deeply and fully at all times - to strike out onto a dark surface and sing in glory and trembling. But as Annie acknowledges, it is Presence that lifts us. It is always a gift, only recognized in fleeting moments.
Perhaps I’m particularly vulnerable to this type of excitement and aching yearning because it’s something I contend with daily. Perhaps, like Annie herself reflecting on it later, the certainty and bravery here will begin to fade into a darling, but naive loveliness. I won’t discount that I am also Annie’s age as I read this, and similarly feel transfixed, marveling and awash in majesty. I don’t know. But I do think I’ll be returning to this book over and over again to grasp at words formed around light and awe.
I think this explains why some people could find this work to be too much. Its rapturous flights of joy and ecstatic energy could be read as overblown or bordering on witless. But for me, there is real muscular power coursing like a branching tree of lightning under the surface of these words. Annie, at 27, is brash, bold - leaping into depths, exalting the air above and the earth beneath her feet. These flights of vision sometimes run into excess, but there’s a real beauty in even these overdone blazing passages. I couldn’t help but read them as praise and exultation; for who can keep their words about them when staring straight into the face of incomprehensible mystery?
Dillard sets this book up as a neo-platonic theodicy: the first half of the book is a via positiva seeing all the positive and beautiful things in the world as glimpses of God. The second half, which starts after a flood, reexamines this ecstatic rush in a via negativa. This approach focuses on the unknowability of the divine, emphasizing all we may say on it is immediately untrue. As someone much wiser than me once said, Nature is no great teacher, because you can see anything in Nature you wish to see.
Annie’s acute, singularly reverent and piercing insights into the natural world, as well as into the deep questions and desire of the human spirit, wrapped me in their swell. I want to press in this deeply and fully at all times - to strike out onto a dark surface and sing in glory and trembling. But as Annie acknowledges, it is Presence that lifts us. It is always a gift, only recognized in fleeting moments.
Perhaps I’m particularly vulnerable to this type of excitement and aching yearning because it’s something I contend with daily. Perhaps, like Annie herself reflecting on it later, the certainty and bravery here will begin to fade into a darling, but naive loveliness. I won’t discount that I am also Annie’s age as I read this, and similarly feel transfixed, marveling and awash in majesty. I don’t know. But I do think I’ll be returning to this book over and over again to grasp at words formed around light and awe.