Fox at the Woods Edge: A Biography of Loren Eiseley

Rating:
Summary: A Biography at the Wood's Edge
Review: As to the quality of the scholarship, there can be little question. With few exceptions, it appears that all of the "i's" are dotted, all the "t's" crossed.

Christianson rightly avoids emotional involvement with his "subject," except for occasional pronouncements and conclusions about Eiseley's character, mostly negative. The author avoids hero-worship with a vengeance. This makes the book interesting in another dimension, because it starts one to thinking about Christianson himself. The downside is that this inevitable digression of thought gets in the way of thinking about the subject of the work. But at least it's not a starry-eyed whitewash.

One can't help wondering why the author, who does let some positive elements shine through via quotes by Eiseley himself, seems resentful of his subject rather than understanding. Perhaps he admired his subject so much that he went overboard and emphasized the "warts" too much. Perhaps he began as one seduced by his subject's work, but had his bubble burst when his research exposed the "warts." Perhaps he was jealous. Perhaps he took pleasure in attempting to topple one more successful than he, a practice known as "trophy hunting" in some circles. One way of "standing tall" is to put down, but it is a curious way.

Read this book for information but not for a sympathetic treatment of Eiseley. Just as an overly sentimental treatment would be flawed, this book lacks balance, lacks any depth of understanding of the complex relationships of insight and science and literature and how these were combined in Eiseley. It is linear in its "analysis," and many a reader will want that.

It is a fair guide to the facts, but not skillfully written in the sense of being "reader-friendly." While real contortions of prose are relatively rare, the writing is not easy to follow. Certainly the author knew his subject well (at least one guesses that this must be the case), but the reader does not close this scholarly tome with a coherent picture of the subject. One is left with more of a sense that one has been present while Eiseley's closets were not only emptied of their skeletons, but watched while they were scattered about. One imagines Eiseley's own skeleton among them, disarticulated, incomplete, broken, even pulverized. But dead men cannot protest, eh?

Rating:
Summary: All the Strange Dours
Review: As to the quality of the scholarship, there can be little question. With few exceptions, it appears that all of the "i's" are dotted, all the "t's" crossed.

Christianson rightly avoids emotional involvement with his "subject," except for occasional pronouncements and conclusions about Eiseley's character, mostly negative. The author avoids hero-worship with a vengeance. This makes the book interesting in another dimension, because it starts one to thinking about Christianson himself. The downside is that this inevitable digression of thought gets in the way of thinking about the subject of the work. But at least it's not a starry-eyed whitewash.

One can't help wondering why the author, who does let some positive elements shine through via quotes by Eiseley himself, seems resentful of his subject rather than understanding. Perhaps he admired his subject so much that he went overboard and emphasized the "warts" too much. Perhaps he began as one seduced by his subject's work, but had his bubble burst when his research exposed the "warts." Perhaps he was jealous. Perhaps he took pleasure in attempting to topple one more successful than he, a practice known as "trophy hunting" in some circles. One way of "standing tall" is to put down, but it is a curious way.

Read this book for information but not for a sympathetic treatment of Eiseley. Just as an overly sentimental treatment would be flawed, this book lacks balance, lacks any depth of understanding of the complex relationships of insight and science and literature and how these were combined in Eiseley. It is linear in its "analysis," and many a reader will want that.

It is a fair guide to the facts, but not skillfully written in the sense of being "reader-friendly." While real contortions of prose are relatively rare, the writing is not easy to follow. Certainly the author knew his subject well (at least one guesses that this must be the case), but the reader does not close this scholarly tome with a coherent picture of the subject. One is left with more of a sense that one has been present while Eiseley's closets were not only emptied of their skeletons, but watched while they were scattered about. One imagines Eiseley's own skeleton among them, disarticulated, incomplete, broken, even pulverized. But dead men cannot protest, eh?

Rating:
Summary: A Biography at the Wood's Edge
Review: Christianson gave the work a hearty try. His facts, often presented in calendar fashion, are given in such a way that one can glimpse the character of Eiselely as he would appear to one who was observing him. In this fashion, the book is a success. But I strongly wonder that the book misses its mark in finding what was inside the man, rather than merely describing what the man did. Christianson seems to have made a real effort, but the many people he interviewed or researched that were acquainted with Loren and Mabel, seem also to have been observers of WHAT THEY DID rather than who they were. In this sense, I dont think that anyone will do a better job at an Eiseley biography, as both Mr and Mrs E seem to have made it plain that they werent to be really known.