In addition to his scientific and academic work, in the mid-1940s Eiseley began to publish the essays which brought him to the attention of a wider audience. Anthropologist Pat Shipman writes, "the words that flowed from his pen... the images and insights he revealed, the genius of the man as a writer, outweigh his social disability. The words were what kept him in various honored posts; the words were what caused the students to flock to his often aborted courses; the words were what earned him esteemed lectureships and prizes. His contemporaries failed to see the duality of the man, confusing the deep, wise voice of Eiseley's writings with his own personal voice. He was a natural fugitive, a fox at the wood's edge (in his own metaphor)..."
In an interview on National Public Radio (NPR), author Michael Lind said, "Before the rise of a self-conscious intelligentsia, most educated people – as well as the unlettered majority – spent most of their time in the countryside or, if they lived in cities, were a few blocks away from farmland or wilderness... At the risk of sounding countercultural, I suspect that thinkers who live in sealed, air-conditioned boxes and work by artificial light (I am one) are as unnatural as apes in cages at zoos. Naturalists like Eiseley in that sense are the most normal human beings to be found among intellectuals, because they spend a lot of time outdoors and know the names of the plants and animals they see... For all of his scientific erudition, Eiseley has a poetic, even cinematic, imagination."
Purposes of his writings
Dr. Richard Wentz describes what he feels are the significance and purposes of Eiseley's writings:"For Loren Eiseley, writing itself becomes a form of contemplation. Contemplation is a kind of human activity in which the mind, spirit and body are directed in solitude toward some other. Scholars and critics have not yet taken the full measure of contemplation as an art that is related to the purpose of all scholarly activity – to see things as they really are... Using narrative, parable and exposition, Eiseley has the uncanny ability to make us feel that we are accompanying him on a journey into the very heart of the universe. Whether he is explicating history or commenting on the ideas of a philosopher, a scientist or a theologian, he takes us with him on a personal visit."
However, because of Eiseley's intense and poetic writing style, and his focus on nature and cosmology, he was not accepted or understood by most of his colleagues. "You," a friend told him, "are a freak, you know. A God-damned freak, and life is never going to be easy for you. You like scholarship, but the scholars, some of them, anyhow, are not going to like you because you don’t stay in the hole where God supposedly put you. You keep sticking your head out and looking around. In a university that’s inadvisable."
1950s
- The Immense Journey (1957)
His first book,
The Immense Journey, was a collection of writings about the history of humanity, and the rare science book that appealed to a mass audience. It has sold over a million copies and has been published in at least 16 languages.
Author Orville Prescott wrote, "Consider the case of Loren Eiseley, author of
The Immense Journey, who can sit on a mountain slope beside a prairie-dog town and imagine himself back in the dawn of the Age of mammals eighty million years ago: 'There by a tree root I could almost make him out, that shabby little Paleocene rat, eternal tramp and world wanderer, father of all mankind.' ... his prose is often lyrically beautiful, something that considerable reading in the works of anthropologists had not led me to expect. ... The subjects discussed here include the human ancestral tree, water and its significance to life, the mysteries of cellular life, 'the secret and remote abysses' of the sea, the riddle of why human beings alone among living creatures have brains capable of abstract thought and are far superior to their mere needs for survival, the reasons why Dr. Eiseley is convinced that there are no men or man-like animals on other planets, ...".
He offers an example of Eiseley's style: "There is no logical reason for the existence of a snowflake any more than there is for evolution. It is an apparition from that mysterious shadow world beyond nature, that final world which contains—if anything contains—the explanation of men and catfish and green leaves."
- Darwin's Century (1958)
According to naturalist author Mary Ellen Pitts, in the "seminal"
Darwin's Century, Eiseley was studying the history of evolutionary thinking, and he came to see that "as a result of scientific studies, nature has become externalized, particularized, mechanized, separated from the human and fragmented, reduced to conflict without consideration of cooperation, confined to reductionist and positivist study." The results for humankind, "as part of the 'biota' – Eiseley's concern as a writer – are far reaching." In the book, his unique impact as a thinker and a literary figure emerges as he reexamines science and the way man understands science. She concludes that "Nature," for Eiseley, "emerges as a metonym for a view of the physical world, of the 'biota,' and of humankind that must be reexamined if life is to survive."
The book won the Phi Beta Kappa prize for best book in science in 1958.
1960s
- The Firmament of Time (1960) Read online
Discussing the book, Professor of Zoology, Leslie Dunn wrote, "How can man of 1960, burdened with the knowledge of the world external to him, and with the consciousness that scientific knowledge is attained through continually interfering with nature, 'bear his part' and gain the hope and confidence to live in the new world to which natural science has given birth? ... The answer comes in the eloquent, moving central essay of his new book."
The New Yorker wrote, "Dr. Eiseley describes with zest and admiration the giant steps that have led man, in a scant three hundred years, to grasp the nature of his extraordinary past and to substitute a natural world for a world of divine creation and intervention... An irresistible inducement to partake of the almost forgotten excitements of reflection." And the review in
The Chicago Tribune, added, "[This book] has a warm feeling for all natural phenomena; it has a rapport with man and his world and his problems; ... it has hope and belief. And it has the beauty of prose that characterizes Eiseley’s philosophical moods."
It was awarded the 1961 John Burroughs Medal for the best publication in the field of Nature Writing.
- The Unexpected Universe (1969) Read online
Poet W.H. Auden wrote, "The main theme of
The Unexpected Universe is Man as the Quest Hero, the wanderer, the voyager, the seeker after adventure, knowledge, power, meaning, and righteousness." He quotes from the book:
"Every time we walk along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war... Mostly the animals understand their roles, but man, by comparison, seems troubled by a message that, it is often said, he cannot quite remember or has gotten wrong... Bereft of instinct, he must search continually for meanings... Man was a reader before he became a writer, a reader of what Coleridge once called the mighty alphabet of the universe."Reviewers at Amazon.com: "I think every book this man ever wrote is a masterpiece. His style is thoughtful, haunting, and beautiful. They are all good. Evolutionary biologist, Theodosius Dobzhansky described him as "...a Proust miraculously turned into an evolutionary anthropologist..." and science fiction novelist Ray Bradbury wrote glowing reviews of many of his books including this one. ... Here he writes from a naturalist's perspective on the unexpected and symbolic aspects of the universe. Read about seeds, hieroglyphs on shells, the Ice Age, lost tombs, city dumps and primitive Man. The underlying theme is the desolation and renewal of our planet's history and experience."
"Loren Eiseley's dark, brooding prose is unique in the annals of nature writing.
The Unexpected Universe features some of what are considered Eiseley's best essays. Heavily autobiographical and deeply personal, these essays are not cheerful ramblings on the joy of communing with nature. They are bleak, lonely musings on the human condition."
1970s
- The Invisible Pyramid (1971) Read online
Gregory McNamee, of Amazon.com writes, "In 1910 young Loren Eiseley watched the passage of Halley’s Comet with his father. The boy who became a famous naturalist was never again to see the spectacle except in his imagination. That childhood event contributed to the profound sense of time and space that marks The Invisible Pyramid
. This collection of essays, first published shortly after Americans landed on the moon, explores inner and outer space, the vastness of the cosmos, and the limits of what can be known. Bringing poetic insight to scientific discipline, Eiseley makes connections between civilizations past and present, multiple universes, humankind, and nature."Eiseley took the occasion of the lunar landing to consider how far humans had to go in understanding their own small corner of the universe, their home planet, much less what he called the 'cosmic prison' of space. Likening humans to the microscopic phagocytes that dwell within our bodies, he grumpily remarks, 'We know only a little more extended reality than the hypothetical creature below us. Above us may lie realms it is beyond our power to grasp.' Science, he suggests, would be better put to examining that which lies immediately before us, although he allows that the quest to explore space is so firmly rooted in Western technological culture that it was unlikely to be abandoned simply because of his urging. Eiseley's opinion continues to be influential among certain environmentalists, and these graceful essays show why that should be so.
Book excerpt:
- "Man would not be man if his dreams did not exceed his grasp. ... Like John Donne, man lies in a close prison, yet it is dear to him. Like Donne's, his thoughts at times overleap the sun and pace beyond the body. If I term humanity a slime mold organism it is because our present environment suggest it. If I remember the sunflower forest it is because from its hidden reaches man arose. The green world is his sacred center. In moments of sanity he must still seek refuge there. ... If I dream by contrast of the eventual drift of the star voyagers through the dilated time of the universe, it is because I have seen thistledown off to new worlds and am at heart a voyager who, in this modern time, still yearns for the lost country of his birth."
- The Night Country (1971) Read online
Kirkus Reviews wrote, "... like the medievalists, Eiseley reads nature as the second book of God's revelation, mysterious and heavy with latent, lurking fertility. His sizable audience should welcome the latest voyage in search of the secret springs of creativity - evolutionary, cosmic, mental - as a muted adumbration of temporal mortality." Other reviews: "Eiseley has met strange creatures in the night country, and he tells marvelous stories about them ... For Eiseley, storytelling is never pure entertainment. The autobiographical tales keep illustrating the theses that wind through all his writing - the fallibility of science, the mystery of evolution, the surprise of life."- Time Magazine
; "A sort of Odyssey by a man in dialogue with nature and evolution; Eiseley remains one of our foremost humanists-and prose stylists." - Christian Century
;In a published essay, alumni Carl Hoffman wrote, "An old man who had done almost all of his writing late, late at night, was speaking to a younger man who liked to read in those same dark hours. In a chapter entitled 'One Night’s Dying,' Eiseley said to me: 'It is thus that one day and the next are welded together, and that one night’s dying becomes tomorrow’s birth. I, who do not sleep, can tell you this.' Today, well into my fifties, in the midst of a lifetime of almost compulsive reading, I still regard
The Night Country as my all-time favorite book."
- All the Strange Hours: The Excavation of a Life (1975) Read online
"In
All the Strange Hours," states Amazon.com, "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."
- The Star Thrower (1978)
His friend and science fiction author Ray Bradbury, wrote,"The book will be read and cherished in the year 2001. It will go to the Moon and Mars with future generations. Loren Eiseley's work changed my life." And from the
Philadelphia Sunday Bulletin, "An astonishing breadth of knowledge, infinite capacity for wonder and compassionate interest for everyone and everything in the universe.
- Darwin and the Mysterious Mr. X (1979)
The book attempts to solve a mystery: "Samuel Butler, a master of acrimonious polemic, confronted Charles Darwin with the sorest of all scientific subjects...a dispute about priority. In
Evolution Old and New (1879), Butler accused Darwin of slighting the evolutionary speculations of Buffon, Lamarck, and his own grandfather Erasmus." The Kirkus Reviews calls it, "...an essay devoted to resurrecting the name and importance of Edward Blyth, a 19th-century naturalist. Eiseley credits Blyth with the development of the idea, and even the coining of the words "natural selection," which Darwin absorbed and enlarged upon...[and] some thoughts on Darwin's Descent of Man; and a concluding speculation on the meaning of evolution. The last piece is very much Eiseley's poetic from-whence-do-we come/whither-do-we-go vein..
Eisley's ideas as set out in this book have been further investigated - with the complete texts of the relevant articles by Edward Blyth - by retired history teacher Andrew Bradbury
Posthumous
- The Lost Notebooks of Loren Eiseley (1987) Read online
Just before his death, he asked his wife to destroy the personal notebooks which he kept since 1953. However, she compromised by disassembling them so they couldn't be used. After great effort, however, his good friend, and the editor of this compilation, Kenneth Heuer, managed to reassemble most of his notebooks into readable form. It includes a variety of Eiseley's writings, such as childhood stories, sketches while he was a vagabond, old family pictures, unpublished poems, portions of unfinished novels, and letters to and from literary admirers like W.H. Auden, Howard Nemerov, Lewis Mumford and Ray Bradbury.
Author Robert Finch, in a review of the book, writes, "Like Melville, Eiseley thought of himself, and by extension all mankind, as 'an orphan, a wood child, a changeling,' a cosmic outcast born into a world that afforded him no true home." He adds that his "distinctive gift as a writer was to take powerfully formative personal influences of family and place and fuse them with his intellectual meditations on universal topics such as evolution, human consciousness and the weight of time. ... he found metaphors that released a powerful view of man's fate in the modern world." As Kenneth Heuer writes, "there are countless examples of Eiseley's empathy with life in all its forms, and particularly with its lost outcasts...the love that transcends the boundaries of species was the highest spiritual expression he knew.
Finch adds, "We are grateful for a life and a sensibility that would be welcome in any age, but never more so than in our increasingly depersonalized world. ... he made a generation of readers 'see the world through his eyes.' In an undated passage, circa 1959, Eiseley wrote, 'Man is alone in the universe...Only in the act of love, in rare and hidden communion with nature, does man escape himself.'"
The Lost Notebooks contains numerous examples of his "creative and sympathetic imagination, even when that creation takes place in the solitude of journals never meant for public eyes."
From other reviews: "Eiseley has rightly been called 'the modern Thoreau.'" -
Publishers Weekly; "[an] extensive and enlightening glimpses ... into the intellectual and emotional workshop of one of the most original and influential American essayists of this century." -
New York Times Book Review; "Eiseley's great genius for the art of the word coupled with a poetic insight into the connection between science and humanism shines through in page after page... This is a book that will be read and quoted and whose pages will grow thin with wear from hands in continued search of new meaning within its words and images." -
Los Angeles Times; "it will enhance any dedicated reader's knowledge of this most remarkable literary naturalist... They provide more than a glimpse into Eiseley's mind and imagination." -
The Bloomsbury Review; "It is a joy, like finding a lost Rembrandt in the attic, to discover that Eiseley left behind a legacy." -
San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle.