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.
Collected Essays: A Library of America Boxed Set
Collected Essays: A Library of America Boxed Set
A modern Thoreau explores the mysteries of the universe in this deluxe collector’s boxed set.
To read Loren Eiseley (1907–1977) is to renew a sense of wonder at the miracles and paradoxes of evolution and the ever-changing diversity of life. At the height of a distinguished career as a “bone-hunter” and paleontologist, Eiseley turned from fieldwork and scientific publication to the personal essay in six remarkable books that are masterpieces of prose style. Weaving together anecdote, philosophical reflection, and keen observation with the soul and skill of a poet, Eiseley offers a brilliant, companionable introduction to the sciences, paving the way for writers like Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, and Neil deGrasse Tyson. Now for the first time, the Library of America presents his landmark essay collections in a definitive two-volume set.
Beginning with the surprise million-copy seller The Immense Journey (1957), Eiseley produced an astonishing succession of books that won acclaim both as science and as art. Here, for the first time in a single collector’s edition, are all of Eiseley’s beloved, thought-provoking, sometimes darkly lyrical essay collections, from The Immense Journey to the posthumous The Star Thrower (1978). Eiseley’s subjects are wide-ranging, curious, and meticulously realized: the role of flowering plants in evolution; a disturbing insect, seen in childhood; the questions raised by a new fossil; a forgotten episode in the history of science. Beginning with close observation and vivid detail, Eiseley is fearless and imaginative in pursuit of the cosmological dimensions of the phenomena he describes.
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