Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard - Rerun
Backlisted
In this archival episode of Backlisted, hosts Andy and John revisit the discussion of Annie Dillard's Pulitzer Prize-winning classic, Pilgrim at Tinker
Key takeaways
- Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek won the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction in 1975.
- Jay Griffiths describes Dillard's work as an exploration that scales from the level of an amoeba to the entire universe.
Main topics
- Annie Dillard's legacy
- Nature writing as spiritual inquiry
Notable quotes
The writer is translucent.
Conclusion
The episode serves as a moving tribute to Dillard's ability to find th
Transcript preview
Speaker 4 (0:00) Hi, it's Andy. Hi, it's John. Welcome to another archive show from Backlisted. This week you're going to hear an episode we recorded four years ago, and it's about Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek by Annie Dillard. Yeah, a Speaker 3 (0:15) Pulitzer Prize winner for non-fiction in 1974, and we had, I think, a really cracking pair of guests to discuss it. Jeff Dyer, whose most recent book then was... the last days of Roger Federer, but whose book, Homework, has been published, I think, last year, and his memoir has got marvellous coverage. Anyway, he's a massive Annie Dillard fan, almost as big an Annie Dillard fan as the great Jay Griffiths, who's the author of Wild, An Elemental Journey. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, I think, is one of those books that people discover at a certain moment in their lives and have plenty to say about it forever afterwards. And this show definitely Speaker 4 (0:55) harvests that. And there is a sadly, a timely reason for us revisiting this episode, John, which is that Annie Dillard died this week in September 2026, which is when we're recording this. And so it seemed appropriate at this. She was 81. Speaker 3 (1:14) I Speaker 4 (1:14) mean, Speaker 3 (1:14) which used to be a good innings, but now people, I don't know, we always slightly expect, it's a bit like Dolly, you know, we always expect people to live a little longer. Not that I'm suggesting that Annie Dillard is in any way the Dolly Parton of religious nature Speaker 4 (1:30) writing. Stop digging. 80 is the new 70. There you go. In a sort of gloomy way. Andy, tell us what's coming up. If you go over to the Patreon, patreon.com. forward slash backlisted. You can join the conversations that are happening there. You can listen to episodes of shows like Backlisted Readers. We've just recorded one on Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, a much-loved book and with good reason. And we've just had an episode of Posh Bingo, our random selection from winners of the Booker Prize for Fiction over the last 50-plus years. Our most recent discussion was about Disgrace by J.M. Kurtzayer. You can find that on the Patreon. And coming up on October the 12th, for some obscure reason, we'll be talking about Amsterdam by Ian McEwan. Because that's what the random tin produced on its slip of paper. But I'm actually looking forward to that a lot because... Me too. There's lots to say about Ian McEwan and there's lots to say about that novel. might not be what you're expecting. So do join us on October the 12th at the Patreon for that. And in the meantime, enjoy this conversation on Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek by Annie Dillard with our guests, Jay Griffiths and Jeff Dyer. Speaker 3 (3:14) Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books. Today you find us near the town of Roanoke in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. It's a sunny day in January 1971 and we're heading north following a stream. Ahead of us, in the middle of the water, there is a tear-shaped island sitting on the dry grass at the far end. A young woman is staring intently at the slow-moving current as water striders skate across the surface. and a frog sits half Speaker 4 (3:44) in and half out of the water. And today we're joined by two guests making their bat-listed debuts. Please welcome Jay Griffiths and Geoff Dyer. Hello to you both. Welcome, welcome. Speaker 5 (3:55) Hi. Speaker 4 (3:56) Thanks for coming. Jay Griffiths is the author of many books, including Wild, An Elemental Journey, Kith, The Riddle of the Childscape, Tristamania. Pip Pip, A Sideways Look at Time, and Why Rebel? She won the Discover Award for the best first-time author in the USA, the inaugural Orion Award, and has been shortlisted for the Orwell Prize. She has held the Hay International Fellowship and has broadcast and written widely, including for Radiohead and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her work has received widespread accolades, including from Gary Snyder, Barry Lopez, John Berger, and... Katie Tunstall. She wrote the script for Almost Invisible Angels, a short film about insects, scored by Sam Lee and voiced by Mark Rylance. And her most recent book is titled Nemesis, My Friend, Journeys Through the Turning Times, published by our friends A Little Taller. She is, she claims to be, and perhaps is, a wild skater. Yes! Please tell me what that is. Speaker 5 (5:04) Don't claim. I am. Skating, whenever the lakes freeze near me in Wales, which used to be at some point in most winters, and then it didn't freeze between 2011, was it, and last year. So there was 10 years there was no skating. But it is beyond question the single... most wonderful thing I have ever done and obviously you have to be pretty safe with it you have to take the depth of the ice which you can do with a with a really hot poker if you like a fire or you can do it with a hand drill but anyway and then friends of mine I've got my own skates friends of mine have got a huge bag full of secondhand and some antique skates and so generally as many of us as we can muster Go down. So I've skated in sunshine and sunrise and I've skated in moonlight and I've skated in starlight and it's the best. I can teach you. I Speaker 4 (6:12) don't do wild anything. We don't know one another well, but that's not really in my... Andy Speaker 3 (6:17) is domesticated, I think it would be fair to say. Speaker 4 (6:20) Correct. I can't even domestic skate. So let's be absolutely clear about that, let alone do it wildly. My goodness. You Speaker 5 (6:27) take a broom. You take a broom. That's the best advice I've ever been given for beginner skaters. OK, because if you lean on another person, then you fall over and they do. But if you take a broom, it's like it's enough pressure so that it supports you, but it doesn't slip. And your sweep. It's Speaker 4 (6:46) great. We're getting wild skating tips. Regular listeners to this podcast will know I Speaker 3 (6:52) will never do that. But Speaker 4 (6:55) thank you nonetheless. I'm Speaker 3 (6:58) noting it down. Speaker 4 (7:00) Jeff Dyer. Thanks for coming, Jeff. Jeff Dyer's many books include the novel Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, but beautiful about jazz. yoga for people who can't be bothered to do it, and most recently, The Last Days of Roger Federer, which John enthused about on our recent episode on Gormenghast. Geoff is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His books have won numerous prizes and have been translated into 24 languages. He is a writer in residence at the University of Southern California. Geoff, I had the great... pleasure last year of watching the film uh uh stalker for the first time oh Speaker 2 (7:47) i'm what took you so long Speaker 4 (7:51) Fear. Fear of boredom. Fear of not understanding what was going on. But I thought it was incredible. And I read your book the same day. I watched the film in the morning and then I read Zona in the afternoon. So the film was totally alive in my mind when I went straight into the book. And that was a really intense and valuable and incredibly enjoyable experience. So thank you for helping me do that. Well, Speaker 2 (8:23) that was a well-spent day. And as a reward, you could have the follow-up. You could watch again a film, which I'm sure you saw when you were a boy, Where Eagles Dare. And then you can read my book about that film as well, called, of course, Broad Sword Calling Danny Boy. Speaker 4 (8:41) I still regularly shout broadsword calling Danny boy and will very much look forward to doing so. Speaker 2 (8:47) It's a common thing for men of a certain age, isn't it? Speaker 4 (8:50) It appears so, yes. Was that one of those moments where you thought to yourself, I'm the only person who ever says broadsword calling Danny boy and then you met more and more people saying it? Speaker 2 (9:02) Oh, no. Whenever I do anything that I think is unique to me, whenever I have that feeling, that's when I feel very sure that I'm part of some sort of universal experience. Speaker 4 (9:13) Yes. Good. Good instinct, I think. The book Speaker 3 (9:17) we're here to discuss is Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, first published by Harper Magazine Press in 1974. It's a classic of nature writing that has exerted a huge influence over the genre. It tells the story of an unnamed narrator's year spent living by Tinker Creek in rural Virginia. Precise and unsentimental observation of the natural world is matched by a constant attempt to draw moral, metaphysical and spiritual meaning from what's observed. Organised into 15 chapters, spending four seasons, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek's commitment to awareness has often been compared to Thoreau's Walden. Annie Dillard was only 28 when the book came out, and it went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction in 1975, selling over 37,000 copies in its first three months, and it's remained in print ever since. As well as being admired for its prose and appreciation of nature, it's also established itself as a kind of religious text. The American sci-fi writer Ted Chiang said recently that the book gave him maybe the closest I'm likely to get to an understanding of a kind of religious ecstasy. But before we strap on our boots and light out for the bridge, Andy, what have you been reading this week? Thanks, Speaker 4 (10:27) John. I've been reading Robert Baldick's edit of Pages from the Goncourt Journals by Edmond and Jules de Goncourt. currently published in this edition by nyrb and this is a total coincidence with an introduction from jeff dyer um and the reason i'm i've been reading those is i'm working on a thing at the moment uh a piece at the moment which involves um reading the six novels co-authored by Edmund and Jules de Goncourt between 1851 and 1869, including Sir Philomen Germany Lacerto, which I've just finished reading, and Manette Salomon, which I read a couple of months ago. And I'll be saying more about that on future episodes of Backlisted. But having been reading the novels, I thought, well, it would be very interesting to read the journals because... The journals that the two brothers kept, initially Jules de Goncourt, the younger brother, and then after he died, his older brother Edmund, are a sort of repository of 19th century French literature, celebrity, illness, history, and just, Jeff, as well as I think you say in your foreword, a kind of... Speaker 4 (11:55) The indication that when writers get together or talk about one another behind one another's backs, nothing has much changed. Speaker 2 (12:04) Yeah, it remains a very contemporary book, doesn't it? Speaker 4 (12:09) Basically, Edmund and Jules de Goncourt were fairly of the opinion that they had invented most important things in 19th century literature. I found it hilarious, I must say. I did laugh a lot. Speaker 2 (12:21) Yeah, part of the fun of it is the amazing eavesdropping on these giants of 19th century French literature. But there's a huge cast of characters, many of them famous in their day, but now forgotten. And one of them, significantly, I can't even remember his name. He's a great friend of theirs, but he gets this great being in his bonnet. He becomes obsessed with dueling. All he wants to do is just, all he wants to do is do duels. And there's just endless incidental things like that from these minor characters. Speaker 4 (12:54) Yes, if you're a fan of the E-Day fix, this is the book for you. I'll just read three successive entries. Because, Geoff, what this book could have been called is pages from the Goncal Journals complaining about Zola. That's a big thing for these boys, isn't it? Speaker 2 (13:10) Oh, yeah. Well, they so feel that they haven't had the acclaim that they merit. I think at one point they claimed that they were the ones to... discovered the importance of the nerves in, they were the first people to pay attention to that in literature. That's disputed. But yeah, they feel very, they feel consistently hard done by. And that's kind of fun. But then things take a very, a very significantly darker turn when the brother dies. And after his, but they've really, you know, although they're doing lots of bitching and moaning. They're very seriously committed to an idea of literature. And after the brother dies and the other brother takes over, there's a really moving bit where he says after his brother has died, he said, I now hate and despise literature because the idea is the brother was in some way consumed by his literary ambition. Speaker 4 (14:12) I must say, I've found reading their novels absolutely fascinating. Oh. Because they're much better than their British reputation might lead you to think, or rather their English-speaking world reputation, where half of them have still never been translated. And also, they are... Speaker 4 (14:37) paint strippingly offensive in terms of the misogyny and antisemitism so they create this this this beautifully 21st century dilemma about how do you draw attention to the artistic innovation and integrity while also giving health warnings about uh attitudes that are i mean attitudes which were Pretty outrageous, even at the time, I imagine. But anyway, let me just read you three successive entries from Paget and Goncourt journals. I felt these gave a very nice flavour of what you'll read if you read them. From late 1876, Friday the 1st of September, 1876. Speaker 4 (15:26) Flow Bear told me that during the two months he had spent confined to his room, the heat had given him a kind of intoxicated urge to work, and he had worked for 15 hours every day. He went to bed at four o'clock in the morning and was sometimes surprised to find himself back at his writing table at nine, a grind interrupted only by a swim in the Seine in the evening. And the result of those 900 hours of work is a story 30 pages long. Speaker 4 (15:57) So there you go. The idiot Flaubert, writing on Kerr sampler. This sounds great. I've got to get this. Oh, God, it's fantastic. I mean, if you've listened to these episodes over the years, listeners, I've chosen very deliberate, because we haven't done Flaubert, but we have done the next two authors. Friday, the 3rd of October, 1876. Yesterday, I received a novel by Monsieur Huisman, L'Histoire d'une Fille. with a letter saying that the book had been seized by the censors. That was Huisman's author of Against Nature, of course, who had just published his first novel, Mutt, in Belgium. In the evening, at the far end of the princess's drawing room, I talked for a good hour with the Barrister du Merc about my dispute with my honest solicitor. This persecution of a book similar to the one I am writing, end note, similar to the one I am writing, and this conversation with a clean-shaven lawyer dressed all in black resulted in my dreaming last night that I was in prison. A prison with stone walls looking like a stage set of the Bastille. And the peculiar thing