Customer Reviews

Pilgrim At Tinker Creek

5 star:		(51)
4 star:		(45)
3 star:		(29)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

I had to read this book for an AP class, i don't recommend it to anyone unless you like books with a complete absence of plot or content. I could not finish the book, no matter how hard i tried.

English III AP just became a lot less interesting to me since being assigned this book. Often, people had compared Dillards style of writing to Thoreaus, of whom i am a fan. Thoreau, in his expository essay Civil Disobedience delivered a message not to be found elsewhere. So embarking upon Dillards Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, i found myself eager to begin. The first two chapters held my interest as Dillard put every day things into a new light. However, that is ALL she did throughout the whole book. Except, the deeper into the book you got, the more exotic the things became. She went from talking about what a penny means to a man to how a mantis lays eggs, how Eskimos skin people, to how a butterfly smells. Dillards book lacks a point. In 277 pages, she rambles on about nothing. It should be entitled the observer at tinker creek because all she did was observe. There is no interaction with humans, no dialogue (with the exception of the 5 pages where she talked to a snake), and no action. You can analyze the book to heaven, but reading it is a bore. i would only recomend this book to someone who lives in a Uni-bomber type environment who has nothing better to do than wait 2 hours to stare at nutrea than talk about it for 20 pages. PULITZER MEANS NOTHING

What kind of book is this? A description of some grass needles, a tree and a praying mantis. You can analyze all the hidden meanings you want, but where now does that get you? Don't waste the time or money, Pulitzer means not a thing.

Like the series on NBC, this book says nothing, and says it very well. However, Seinfeld has humor, and this has none. You will find yourself trying to analyze the book for hours, until you will come to the conclusion that it is smart because you don't get it, or that it is saying nothing, and taking a very long time to do so. Everyone I know has eventually come to the same conclusion, that this is nothing, and the only reason people claim to "get it" is because the words Pulitzer Prize are on the cover. Try to analyze this is you must, but just remember, if you do come up with something, you are misinterperting the book.

Dillard's book is entertaining, awe-inspiring, informative, wonderfully imaginative and a study of a small local area and the natural beauty and horror of existence surrounding it. I obviously loved it. It was hard to put down and entirely enthralled me as well as inspired me; anotherwords, it was one of those books that became and remains close to my heart.

I enjoyed it immensely, even if its sentences are overwrought often to an annoying degree. I appreciate how she looks at the world in poetry: the world is a painting, and we are the poets charged with understanding it. The thing about Dillard is that in spite of the fact that her uber-emotive imagination stands in that place in her brain where my philosopher/mathematician stands in mine, she can still ask brilliant--even terrible--questions without all of the normal dillusions about what the alternative answers really are.

There are downsides: the overdone sentences, the fact that not every chapter drove forward toward the point--or even manifested her goal. But one reads her and agrees, at the end of it, that yes, she earned that Pulitzer after all.

And to all of the "bright AP English" students out there, for goodness sake put the book down and leave the book reviews alone. It just isn't for you. Pick it up again once you've lived some more of life.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard is an exceptional book. It is like a modern day version of Walden by Henry David Thoreau. The deep thoughts and intricate details bring to life images that have not been experienced before. For example, when Dillard tells about the water bug sucking the frog, it brings to mind a very gruesome image that the reader just cannot get rid of. Yet, this image also sucks the reader in for more. Also, the exotocally intense descriptions make grotesque actions more beautiful, such as when the praying mantis lays its eggs. While writing about the praying mantis laying its eggs, Dillard seems almost frantic to get it all down. It is almost childlike, like a child who is to agitated by the sunlight and all of the beautiful things outside to stay inside and do their work. This technique makes the book more playful,fun, and attractive to young readers.

Dillard's paragraphs are woven together into tightly knit chapters by the nice transitions. The full circle effect ties up all of the loose ends at the end of each chapter and then again at the end of the book. The similes that are throughout the book make the book very poetic and intriguing. Dillard's obsessiveness with nature is intriguing because the reader does not know what she is goint say or do next.

Dillard's Actions bring the book to life. When she is describing running from tree to tree so that she would not be seen, the reader gets a sense of how full of life she is and how happy she is just doing simple things out in nature. Also, when she is less then four feet from the snake, she just sits there amazed by it like a child.

I never thought that I would read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, but as a part of a class I had to. Now that I have read it, I am glad that I did read it because I thoroughly enjoyed it. I recommend it to everybody.

Overall, a very interesting read. The adjective "interesting" can be taken in more than one sense, however. For example,
A. The subject matter found within is unique and intriguing, revealing tidbits about nature one would not discover in a normal lifetime.
B. Writing styles and techniques change throughout the book. At times Dillard is darkly pessimistic, while turning around a few sentences later to include some light wit. There is a lot of imaginative figurative language found that augments the writing a good deal.
C. The author herself is an ... amusing person. I never would have thought one person could be so thoroughly interested in nature, at least if I had not read Walden, by Henry David Thoreau, before.
And since the topic of Walden comes up, a comparison of the two would be appropriate. Dillard is much more appropriate for a modern audience. Both contain many insightful thoughts about nature and its relation to life, but you have to sift through a good deal of gunk to get to those points in Walden.
So, I would recommend this book, along with Walden, to anyone willing to take it seriously and probably get grossed out a few times. The time and mental strain will be worth it in the end.

In writing Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard uses an enormous amount of detail. Detail that some readers could find fascinating and intricate. But some could find goury and discomforting. Yes, her detail adds complexity that is needed to understand her as a person and a writer, but it also adds a displeasant hora to the books meaning.
When Annie Dillard mentions the water bug sucking the insides of a frog out, and then watching the frogs remains (skin) float down the river repeated throughout the book, she brings a gut renching picture into the readers head. A picture that can be stood once, but not four and five times over.
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is enhanced because of its detail as well. Not one reader could get the full affect of her private world if her discription of the Monark butterfly was not so brillant, or if her repeated spider references were not so intricate.
Given that there is an excess amount of detail in some parts of her book, and that she does tend to disgust the reader at some points, Annie Dillard accomplished describing nature, its bad, and its good. After all, not everything can be red roses and crystal water lines.
Read this book. If someone really reads this book, then they will get a fulfilment out of it. They will learn to mix the bad with the good, and appreciate nature just a little bit more. After all, that was Annie Dillards goal in the first place.

About once every five or so blue moons, one will come across a book that is both interesting and inspiring while holding the attantion. Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is one such book. It is a majestic work exploring the nature of life (no pun intended). She employs many different stylistic techniques in comveying her musings.
Dillard's Pilgrim is subdivided into chaptyers, many of these titles being dervived from Biblical references. This holds a great deal of signifigance as Dillard wanders over the "meaning of life." She repeatedly makes ilusions to occurances and charactersin the Bible, defining her need to establish firm and truthful bounderies in a choatic world. She also refers to alternate religions, but these references are relatively few and she always returns to her Biblical bases.
Another notable tactic Dillard uses is extrodinary and aids the reader in folowing her train of thought nad meaning. Of her life she selects a few happenings and repeatedly refers back to them to establish her themes and ideas. A bell, one tree with lights in it, Eskimos, and sharks are only a few of these buildng blocks.
The most interesting element of Dillard's writing is her diction and syntax. Or, rather, how the diction and syntax aid in reveiling her view on life. Though she is an adult striving to find answers about the world nad its Creater, she has a child's view of most everything about the world. She stalks muskrats in rediculous positions and laspes into bouts of bemoaning the loss of one frog to a water bug. Many of her reflections are also from the time of when she was young.
These few examples of the style in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek greatly illustrate the deep turmoil and tension felt by Dillard about life and the univerese.
The greatestr asset, I belive, about this book is its ability to write and speak of the many truths about the world that we know but rarely think on. It is also exciting and relatively fast paced. I would greatly recommend it.