townesvanfaulkner

Writing Style-6.5
Originality-7.0
Plot-2.0
Merit(whatever that means)-6.2
Overall-6.1

This is yet another book that could have been so much more if only I were the editor.

Ok, here’s how it played out. I had read about 40 pages and thought it was brilliant. I hadn’t read such detailed, highly perceptive writing about southern Appalachian nature scenery since reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Orchard Keeper. I thought, ‘I’m in for a treat. This book is going to be brilliant.’ By the time I had reached page 45 I had started to get slightly annoyed by the tone of the book. By the time I had reached page 50 I thought, ‘This book better change gears in a hurry and start going somewhere else because I’m getting tired of this crap’. By the time I had reached page 60, I hated it.

Now, that said, by the time I finished it I didn’t really hate it, I just hated the tone of the writing. Between pages 40 and 60 I was able to pinpoint what was grating on my nerves. The Orchard Keeper is written in the third person and the natural surroundings come off almost as though they are a main character in the story. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is written in the first person about a girl observing her natural surroundings and comes off as pompous flowery crap.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is not really a novel at all, it’s more a collection of philosophical essays centered around observing nature. Sort of a Zen and the Art of Sitting Beside a Fucking Creek All Day. Each chapter could probably stand on it’s on and is typically some observation, for instance, observing a muskrat, and then something philosophical that the author gleans from this observation. The problem is the annoying, holier-than-thou tone that the author takes about these observations. Like, ‘I’m so patient, I can sit beside a creek completely motionless and wait to see a muskrat. I am so zen. And then I can see the beauty of the muskrat and the world around us that no one else can see. I am so smart.’ And then on top of this the writing is flowery and audaciously overwritten.

On the good side, many of the observations are pretty interesting and much of the philosophy is pretty good. A lot of the “novel” is random scientific trivia, sort of like a book that Jeopardy champ Ken Jennings might write. For instance, I now know that 10% of the world’s species are parasitic. That’s interesting (and gross) and the author goes on to discuss the moral implications of this. Why would God create so many species that all they do is feed off other animals? It’s weird and doesn’t seem like intelligent design. So, the book is full of stuff like this—pretty interesting science trivia and an interesting philosophical aside that follows.

All in all, this is a pretty decent book. I like what the author was going after. First, I think that the book should be marketed differently. I thought I was going to read a Southern Gothic novel and instead I got philosophy essays. Secondly, the tone of the writing is nigh on unbearable. You can’t help but think this is written by some crazy old lonely lady with nothing better to do than sit by a creek all day and live in her own head where she’s the smartest person in the world. At the end of the book, in the ‘About the Author’ section I found out that Dillard was actually 27 when she wrote the book so she wasn’t actually old, but her youth could by blamed for the flowery writing too.

Another point I’d like to make in the book’s favor is that it would probably behoove artists, particularly painters or photographers, to read this book or at least the second chapter, titled ‘Seeing’, because much of the book is about the art of observing our world and this is at the heart of what artists do—see things in our environment that others might not latch on to and make connections to our morals, values, beliefs, etc.--or at least just paint a pretty picture or take a pretty photograph.

Natury/literary/philosophy types would probably really like this book. I don't want to put it down TOO much because a couple of TVF readers come to mind here.

# posted by townesvanfaulkner @ 4:04 PM