Monday, March 11, 2013

The Immense Journey

Who am I kidding? No one needs to see my face frequently on this site. I attempted the video but I have opted, as the FINAL decision, to keep it real and actually write about literature in this literary endeavor of mine. This month is Loren Eiseley month, that is what I've secondly decided.

I've had this book for a few months now, having acquired it by chance and at no cost. It's an old beat up edition but the title lured me into taking it home. (Vintage Books, A Division of Random House)

The Immense Journey: An imaginative naturalist explores the mysteries of man and nature. I began with the last essay in the collection, I started it, again, by chance and with no great expectations. A few sentences later, I was lured into the wonder painted in the pages, with no other option but to devour the rest of the book in a matter of days. The Immense Journey is a collection of essays and was the first book published by Loren Eiseley, around 1946. Loren Eiseley was a native of Nebraska, an anthropologist, an archaeologist, a writer, a naturalist, a philosopher, an educator, a humanist and, from what I've recently learned much more.

To say this book surprised me is only skimming the surface. In each essay found in the book, perspectives are challenged as Eiseley retraces the steps of the human animal within the planet it inhabits and calls home. Each essay touches on seemingly minute details involved in the evolution of the planet and subsequently the human species.

The title of the essays are as follows (in order as they appear in the book):
The Slit
The Flow of the River
The Great Deeps
The Snout
How Flowers Changed the World
The Real Secret of Piltdown
The Maze
The Dream Animal
Man of the Future
Little Men and Flying Saucers
The Judgement of the Birds
The Bird and the Machine
The Secret of Life

The entire book is full of vivid imagery that recreates the truth and the possibilities of what once was a young earth. Each essay can be reread with pleasure and at leisure. I highly recommend to those of you who stumble upon this site of mine to find the book, used or new, and read it. And for those that have the book and haven't read it, pick it up and start with one essay. Just one, I doubt anyone would regret this enlightening book.

Therefore, for these brief reasons and more that I will show later, I have chosen to gush over Loren Eiseley's The Immense Journey this month. In just a a few days from now I will be writing about the last essay in the collection.


On a side note and to end, there is a Loren Eiseley Society that recently published The Loren Eiseley Reader.

Click on the link, or type this in a search –––––––––––––––––––––––>



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