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christiek's review
3.5
An super interesting combination of short story, memoir, essay and art. Eiseley is diving deep into pondering the human relationship to the dark, fear, death and other things found the the night country.
itsprobable's review
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
weird and wacky male nature philosophy on death's door yapping
likecymbeline's review
4.0
This is what I search for: a scientist who writes like a mystic. Loren is that old fantastical duke of dark corners, ruminating on life and death, time and eternity. A student of human nature, caught in the double-world of his sense of isolation and separateness, and yet highly attuned to the social history of humanity. His style is grand; some might call it over-written but if so it's in exactly the way that I like. He's a capital-R Romantic, the wanderer above the sea of fog, and if you have felt that then search for what Eiseley has to offer you.
Fisher's illustrations with each chapter are a perfect match for the tone and study of these essays, these shadowy images of the psyche that seem Jungian in nature, taken from a part of the mind that works in half-formed images and that mean beyond their meanings. In contrast, Eiseley creats richly-coloured scenes over and over, so that you hardly realise he's doing it. I have watched these episodes from his life, have actually stood there beside him.
Particular favourite essays were "The Places Below," that subterranean exploration of the underworld that seems unreal, like it could've been a dream, that the Rat could not have been a real boy, until Eiseley abruptly grounds us again in saying: "A few weeks later he was dead—dead of some casual childhood illness." That word, 'casual,' the stark materiality of death. Wonderfully rendered. And "The Relic Men" was another fantastic essay. I must read more.
Fisher's illustrations with each chapter are a perfect match for the tone and study of these essays, these shadowy images of the psyche that seem Jungian in nature, taken from a part of the mind that works in half-formed images and that mean beyond their meanings. In contrast, Eiseley creats richly-coloured scenes over and over, so that you hardly realise he's doing it. I have watched these episodes from his life, have actually stood there beside him.
Particular favourite essays were "The Places Below," that subterranean exploration of the underworld that seems unreal, like it could've been a dream, that the Rat could not have been a real boy, until Eiseley abruptly grounds us again in saying: "A few weeks later he was dead—dead of some casual childhood illness." That word, 'casual,' the stark materiality of death. Wonderfully rendered. And "The Relic Men" was another fantastic essay. I must read more.
physicalsecrets's review
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
2.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty
prcizmadia's review
5.0
I feel seen, and that doesn’t happen very often. I have tremendous affinity to the author and so many of my internal monologues and digressions feel suddenly validated, long after I ever gave up hope or need for such a thing.
ewo2's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
sad
slow-paced
4.75
trsr's review
4.0
Although Loren Eiseley has this to say about nature writers such as Gilbert White, Richard Jefferies, and W. H. Hudson, the words apply equally to himself: "Even though they were not discoverers in the objective sense, one feels at times that the great nature essayists had more individual perception than their scientific contemporaries. Theirs was a different contribution. They opened the minds of men by the sheer power of their thought. The world of nature, once seen through the eye of genius, is never seen in quite the same manner afterward. A dimension has been added, something that lies beyond the careful analyses of professional biology."
Eiseley's writing is lyrical, deeply reflective, even melancholic. The essays in this book defy a simple description. Are they examples of nature writing? Memoir? Reflections on archaeology and anthropology? Ruminations on the external and internal worlds of the human? Essays on education and what it means to be a teacher? The essays are drawn from all this, gain synergy, become something larger and memorable. It is rare, I feel, to find emerging from the pen of a scientist, educator, and thinker, prose of such grace and humility.
Still, there are those who would complain of such writing, flay his ornamentation of ideas, rubbish his reflection as mysticism. It is difficult to imagine Eiseley himself being able to publish some of these essays in the literary and nature magazines of the present day. Where are the details? the editors may ask. The specifics, the hook, the motif, thread, conflict, and denouement? Or they might return his manuscript, advising him as one of his colleagues did, in all seriousness, to 'explain himself', perhaps 'confess' the state of his mind and internal world in the pages of a scientific journal. In Eiseley's words again: "No one need object to the elucidation of scientific principles in clear, unornamental prose. What concerns us is the fact that there exists a new class of highly skilled barbarians--not representing the very great in science--who would confine men entirely to this diet." Fortunately, Eiseley does not join the ranks of the barbarians, even as he admits in "Obituary of a bone hunter", with due humility, that his own scientific career is marked by "no great discoveries", that his is but a life "dedicated to the folly of doubt, the life of a small bone hunter."
Eiseley's writing is lyrical, deeply reflective, even melancholic. The essays in this book defy a simple description. Are they examples of nature writing? Memoir? Reflections on archaeology and anthropology? Ruminations on the external and internal worlds of the human? Essays on education and what it means to be a teacher? The essays are drawn from all this, gain synergy, become something larger and memorable. It is rare, I feel, to find emerging from the pen of a scientist, educator, and thinker, prose of such grace and humility.
Still, there are those who would complain of such writing, flay his ornamentation of ideas, rubbish his reflection as mysticism. It is difficult to imagine Eiseley himself being able to publish some of these essays in the literary and nature magazines of the present day. Where are the details? the editors may ask. The specifics, the hook, the motif, thread, conflict, and denouement? Or they might return his manuscript, advising him as one of his colleagues did, in all seriousness, to 'explain himself', perhaps 'confess' the state of his mind and internal world in the pages of a scientific journal. In Eiseley's words again: "No one need object to the elucidation of scientific principles in clear, unornamental prose. What concerns us is the fact that there exists a new class of highly skilled barbarians--not representing the very great in science--who would confine men entirely to this diet." Fortunately, Eiseley does not join the ranks of the barbarians, even as he admits in "Obituary of a bone hunter", with due humility, that his own scientific career is marked by "no great discoveries", that his is but a life "dedicated to the folly of doubt, the life of a small bone hunter."
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