Book Reviews: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

It is rare to read a book so beautiful and so funny and yet still somehow so inexplicably boring that I fought myself every day to not put it down.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is a book about experiencing, but in examining nature and creation it is also a book about everything. The meaning can be found in the title, Dillard journeys from the land of thought and humanity to that of nature and spends the next 300 pages or so riffing upon what she finds there. I love Dillard’s prose- sparing when it needs to be yet blissfully descriptive. Musings about the origin and goings on of nature and wild things in a beauty that reminds me of Walden with more tact and less ego (but I do think there is still a lot of ego.) Many of the religious reference are lost on me- if not occasionally abrasive in their presentation. For a book that in its conclusion asks the reader not to spend too much time analyzing it references so often I practically had to delve into Christianity to understand it. Dillard also takes certain things as fact that I would prefer stay in supposition. “God is subtle, but not malicious” is a laughably inaccurate taking in of reality in my eyes. Still, her ability to find beauty in the extravagance of the natural world warms me to her ideas even when she bothers me with her larger conjectures. I think my main issue with the text is the presupposition that any of these observations require rejecting the city when many of these same observations can take real growth in the city.

I, like the bear, see more of the same. Dillard interweaves humor and interest in what I find a rather dull topic- nature writing. She has a sarcastic and goofy tone that often makes me smile in earnest. Dillard insists she’s no scientist, and only in the game of observation. This sits in contrast to her very observational and scientific stance on observing itself- dealing in comparing the quantifiable amount of light illuminating earth in comparison to animals’ greater range of vision. I found myself often laughing out loud at her descriptions- “ticks are almost as widely distributed as lice, but much more catholic in their choice of hosts” shook me to my core it was so funny.

The Present

Dillard’s rumination on the present had interest to me and applied to my own life it reminded me a lot of drawing from life. Practicing drawing- having your hand become an extension of your eye and trying to cut out the moment where your brain start processing stimuli by what they are “this is a hand,” no- rather its a series of lines on a plane in depth that the brain can read as a hand when rendered accurately. I really enjoyed this section of cutting out self-consciousness but I did think it was funny to hear her negate being present in the city when for all intents and purposes she is so intrinsically connected to academia and society. Humanity cannot divorce itself from the city if it wishes to engage in society (and I don’t mean society- just any sense of human intrapersonal camaraderie.) Everything she writes is a reference- some way of connecting her experience to philosophical or religious texts she has read previously that are all so intrinsically tied to society. Why stare down at my hand when I can look out into the creek? The chapters of patting the puppy and attempting to live in the moment of experience and go up into the gaps all unified successfully in “the finale” where Dillard urges the reader to not be overly caught up in analysis. Still clearly I reject some of her more lofty points as I anylize to my heart’s content.

The Organism

Seeing as this work compares itself to Walden numerous times- I feel fair in my own drawing of comparisons to Walden as I process this novel. While Thoreau gazes out at the pond with a wistfulness, pen and paper in hand, I feel as if Dillard points out a magnifying glass or a rather narrow focused binocular to riff on the natural world. Riff being the operative word, there is a gratifying and desperate humor to Dillard’s voice, I feel like Dillard has a handle on what in nature is hilarious. I found a certain preciousness in her more palatable noticing- knowing that a monarch butterfly smells of honeysuckle adds amusement to their beauty. The chapters that focused more on the parasitism and death were harder to get through but that’s the circle of life I suppose.

The Sublime

To be in awe of incomprehensible vastness- this is one of the main topics I focused on in my conceptual art major and Dillard manages to expand on the idea in regard to a reverence for infinity in nature. Fractal multiplications of organisms on organisms transcending that which the the human mind is capable of comprehending. The complete randomness in regards to creation, both in the biblical context of the universe but also in the evolutionary context of the ecosystem. To find awe in what we can never known and how we might even be able to prove our inability to know (in regards to causality and The Principle of Indeterminacy) where she talks at length about fate.

Meaning

Dillard often uses religions as a vehicle to talk about what she physically sees. She interprets the strangeness of wonder of creation through many different lenses, passing through different ideologies as different ways of seeing the world. To pull out a direct quote Dillard mentions agnosticism asks who and faith asks what for- this was an interesting way of reframing spirituality and belief systems in my mind and I appreciated the challenge. I think often Dillard uses stories from The Bible to illustrate points she has about nature and the beyond and it was interesting to see the stories I knew reframed in this context but also be drawn to new passages I hadn’t heard before. Dillard’s religious references are often paired with what in the universe is so random, how many separate impossible situations need to align for something as simple as something as a birth of an insect.

I was captivated again in the final chapters when Dillard meditates on searching and longing; relating it to the biblical context. I think faith and religion is evident in this work both literally and in undercurrent, Dillard makes the case for the gaps in knowing and shows the reader how religious text can carry you to understanding. When Dillard muses on the dropping of causality and the indeterminacy of science, it’s not by accident she follows it with Moses stalking the face of god in the cliff. Dillard doesn’t seem to look towards one religion but instead faith as a whole, a longing and stalking nature toward that which cannot be known- acceptance of mystery. I empathize with her conclusion to find faith in the sublime- the moment of vast awe in beholding.

Plot

This novel somehow has no plot and is nothing but plot. There are no characters but the earth, and we have nothing driving the central story other than the seasonal passage of time. I think this is largely what made this novel so hard to get through for me. At a line level Dillard’s prose is incredibly compelling but in the experience of the novel it is repetitious and cyclical. I think this almost helps drive in many of her points but the experience of reading it is difficult and hard to follow sometimes.

Conclusion

In the afterword, Dillard talks a lot about the intentions of the work and how she largely most wants it to come off as bold, which I think it accomplishes successfully. One of the confounding things about the novel to me was its contradictions, but they are rooted in boldness so I think she cared less about that aspect. This book made me think of the world anew, gave me appreciation for the things around me, and occasionally struck up argumentative passion from me when I found myself disagreeing with Dillards conclusions. I think it was just a little too repetitive and overly long in some of its descriptions of observation otherwise it would have been a perfect read.