Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
A giant water bug dissolving a frog, a mockingbird in freefall, and the question of why there is so much of everything. Dillard was twenty-nine and won the Pulitzer.
Dillard spent a year at one Virginia creek, looking harder than the material seemed to warrant, and won the Pulitzer for it at twenty-nine. The book moves between close natural observation and theology without announcing the transition, and its governing puzzle is extravagance: the sheer wasteful abundance of a world that did not need to be this full.
Recommended by 1 Person
Maria Popova
I was suddenly reminded of an essay by Annie Dillard from her 1974 masterpiece Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (public library), which won her the Pulitzer Prize and which I revisit frequently as basic irrigation for the soul.
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