Back Matter (afterword) Annie Dillard
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard Afterword In October, 1972, camping in Acadia National Park on the Maine coast , I read a nature book. I had very much admired this writer’s previous book. The new book was tired. Everything in it was the dear old familiar this and the dear old familiar that. God save us from meditations. What on earth had happened to this man? Decades had happened, that was all. Exhaustedly, he wondered how fireflies made their light. I knew—at least I happened to know—that two enzymes called luciferin and luciferase combined to make the light. It seemed that if the writer did not know, he should have learned. Perhaps, I thought that night reading in the tent, I might write about the world before I got tired of it. I had recently read Colette’s Break of Day , a book about her daily life that shocked young metaphysical me by its frivolity: lots of pretty meals and roguish conversations. Still, I read it all; its vivid foreignness intrig...