Loren Eiseley
“I am midde-aged now, but in the autumn I always seek for it again hopefully,” begins the final essay, entitled “The Secret of Life,” in Loren Eiseley’s book of essays, The Immense Journey (1957). It is a great essay in a lifetime of great essays by one of the greatest naturalist-writers in American literature. It is characteristic that he wrote the essay claiming middle-age before he was 50, but then he may have had Dante’s beginning of the Inferno in mind — “Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita / mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, / che la diritta via era smarrita” [Midway in the journey of our life / I came to myself in a dark wood, / for the straight way was lost.”] If any writer would be mindful of passing time and be a good guide for the reader in traversing a dark wood, Loren Eiseley (1907-1977) would be the man.
Eiseley was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, and eventually graduated from the University of Nebraska there with a B.A. in English and a B.S. in Geology/Anthropology. While recovering from tuberculosis in mid-college, he rode the rails in the Depression, gathering experiences that would unexpectedly enter his writing about nature and time and humanity’s frail existence. He acquired a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and eventually returned there to head its Anthropology Department.
Eiseley’s essays are haunted by his perspective of the Other. Through temperment and training he acquired a distance from humanity, sometimes as close as the Neanderthal, sometimes as distant as a fox, often even further back in time. He walked the narrow ridge between a nonverbal lyrical approach to the universe and a scientifically honed analytical approach to the universe — and he would be the first to say it was all the same universe, not at all affected by a primate’s attempt to define it. He is one of a distinguished line of naturalist-philosophers that have arisen in modern times, among them Henry David Thoreau, Jean-Henri Fabre, Aldo Leopold, Edward Abbey, Rachel Carson, Annie Dillard, and other distinguished company.
All the Strange Hours: The Excavations of a Life
All the Strange Hours: The Excavations of a Life
A native of Lincoln, Nebraska, Loren Eiseley began his lifelong exploration of nature in the salt flats and ponds around his hometown and in the mammoth bone collection hoarded in the old red brick museum at the University of Nebraska, where he conducted his studies in anthropology. It was in pursuit of this interest, and in the expression of his natural curiosity and wonder, that Eiseley sprang to national fame with the publication of such works as The Immense Journey and The Firmament of Time.
In All the Strange Hours, Eiseley turns his considerable powers of reflection and discovery on his own life to weave a compelling story, related with the modesty, grace, and keen eye for a telling anecdote that distinguish his work. His story begins with his childhood experiences as a sickly afterthought, weighed down by the loveless union of his parents. From there he traces the odyssey that led to his search for early postglacial man—and into inspiriting philosophical territory—culminating in his uneasy achievement of world renown. Eiseley crafts an absorbing self-portrait of a man who has thought deeply about his place in society as well as humanity’s place in the natural world.