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Libbie Hawker (L.M. Ironside)'s Reviews > Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
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by
Libbie Hawker (L.M. Ironside)'s review
bookshelves: can-t-stop-thinking-about, eat-prose-with-spoon, general-nonfiction, memoir, read-this-right-now, pulitzer-prize-winners
Jan 10, 2012
bookshelves: can-t-stop-thinking-about, eat-prose-with-spoon, general-nonfiction, memoir, read-this-right-now, pulitzer-prize-winners
O my god.
I just finished this book and there is not much I can say about it, because I am still in the grips of its quiet, beautiful power. If you want to know what it's about, read others' reviews. Here I can only tell you that my life is changed for having read this book. I will never look at the world the same way again, and I will spend every day I have.
Annie Dillard reminds me that if I live for a thousand years and write every day I will never achieve this simple, perfect beauty, but I never want to stop trying anyway.
---
Addendum!
Now that I've been able to digest this book a bit more, I feel prepared to add a few comments.
People have said that this book is about theology broadly, or theodicy specifically (that is, the attempt to make the idea of a loving personal god fit into a cruel, cold natural world.) I don't think that's true. Annie Dillard may well have written Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and designed it to be about theology or theodicy, and to her it may be a treatise on those themes. But it is so accessibly crafted that it is just as much about the lack of a god in the universe, and the independence of nature, if that is the way you approach nature on a personal level. The Bible and other Abrahamic-religious sources are often quoted, but so are field guides, nature writers, and poets; and they are all quoted in such picturesque and touching ways that anyone can relate to the message therein. To Dillard, the Bible is just another source to be mined for understanding of human nature, or for understanding humanity's place in nature. When Dillard writes directly of God, it's not to preach at the reader or even to assume. It's to question, to imagine, to ask the reader whether she is God and whether she is finished yet with Creation.
This book is not about any point of theology. It is about mystery: The mystery of being, of being alert and aware, of seeing and experiencing. The mystery of life's briefness and life's beauty. It is one of the finest, most touching, most human books I have ever read, and doubtless one to which I'll return whenever I need comfort or whenever I simply want to know that I'm not the only one who loves the world so intensely, or who wonders about so many things.
I just finished this book and there is not much I can say about it, because I am still in the grips of its quiet, beautiful power. If you want to know what it's about, read others' reviews. Here I can only tell you that my life is changed for having read this book. I will never look at the world the same way again, and I will spend every day I have.
Annie Dillard reminds me that if I live for a thousand years and write every day I will never achieve this simple, perfect beauty, but I never want to stop trying anyway.
---
Addendum!
Now that I've been able to digest this book a bit more, I feel prepared to add a few comments.
People have said that this book is about theology broadly, or theodicy specifically (that is, the attempt to make the idea of a loving personal god fit into a cruel, cold natural world.) I don't think that's true. Annie Dillard may well have written Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and designed it to be about theology or theodicy, and to her it may be a treatise on those themes. But it is so accessibly crafted that it is just as much about the lack of a god in the universe, and the independence of nature, if that is the way you approach nature on a personal level. The Bible and other Abrahamic-religious sources are often quoted, but so are field guides, nature writers, and poets; and they are all quoted in such picturesque and touching ways that anyone can relate to the message therein. To Dillard, the Bible is just another source to be mined for understanding of human nature, or for understanding humanity's place in nature. When Dillard writes directly of God, it's not to preach at the reader or even to assume. It's to question, to imagine, to ask the reader whether she is God and whether she is finished yet with Creation.
This book is not about any point of theology. It is about mystery: The mystery of being, of being alert and aware, of seeing and experiencing. The mystery of life's briefness and life's beauty. It is one of the finest, most touching, most human books I have ever read, and doubtless one to which I'll return whenever I need comfort or whenever I simply want to know that I'm not the only one who loves the world so intensely, or who wonders about so many things.
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Reading Progress
January 10, 2012
–
Started Reading
January 10, 2012
– Shelved
March 4, 2012
– Shelved as:
can-t-stop-thinking-about
March 4, 2012
– Shelved as:
eat-prose-with-spoon
March 4, 2012
– Shelved as:
general-nonfiction
March 4, 2012
– Shelved as:
memoir
March 4, 2012
– Shelved as:
read-this-right-now
March 4, 2012
– Shelved as:
pulitzer-prize-winners
March 4, 2012
–
Finished Reading
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No problem! Glad you enjoyed the review. I read somewhere -- I just can't remember where now -- that Dillard is now somewhere on the spectrum of non-believers. She wrote Pilgrim in her mid- to late twenties, and when I read it I could feel her rational brain and her "god box" competing fiercely with one another. It's a very interesting book on many different levels. But most of all, the prose is amazing, so I wouldn't care if it were all YAY JESUS! I'd still read it.
Thanks for articulating that so well here.