Written in part as homage to Henry David Thoreau, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is a slow, meditative book about nature, God, and awe. When you go searching for God through the lens of creation, you end up seeing some pretty messed-up stuff, like a bug eating a bug eating a bug…or a mosquito sucking on a snake's head. Though Pilgrim at Tinker Creek brought Dillard an unwanted level of fame-she refused a book tour and interviews, and wanted to publish it as A rather than Annie-she was delighted when a reviewer called her "one of the foremost horror writers of the 20th century." And make no mistake: This is a horrifying book. The second half, as you might expect, is decidedly darker. So, you know, roll up your sleeves.ĭillard decided to try her hand at both approaches, and divided her book into two parts accordingly. The key to glimpsing divinity, they said, was to look at creation and weed out everything that wasn't God. Those who favored the latter, however, believed that God was unknowable, which made anything man said about God untrue.
Philosophers who favored the former believed that God was omniscient and good-you know, the stuff you hear in church.
The idea for the book came, in part, from Dillard's study of Neoplatonic Christianity, which suggested two opposing routes to God: the via positiva and the via negativa. Yes, including those terrifying water bugs.
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek-published in 1974 and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in 1975-chronicles a year Dillard spent in a cabin in the woods in Virginia's Roanoke Valley, all by her lonesome, observing a ton of wildlife.
Okay, duh on that last one-who doesn't love puppies? She is not, however, a fan of giant, venom-spitting, innard-sucking water bugs.
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