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The Night Country
Toward the end of his life, Loren Eiseley reflected on the mystery of life, throwing light on those dark places traversed by himself and centuries of humankind. The Night Country is a gift of wisdom and beauty from the famed anthropologist. It describes his needy childhood in Nebraska, reveals his increasing sensitivity to the odd and ordinary in nature, and focuses on a career that turns him inward as he reaches outward for answers in old bones.
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1971
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About the author
Loren Eiseley
50 books315 followersLoren Corey Eiseley (September 3, 1907 – July 9, 1977) was a highly respected anthropologist, science writer, ecologist, and poet. He published books of essays, biography, and general science in the 1950s through the 1970s.
Eiseley is best known for the poetic essay style, called the "concealed essay". He used this to explain complex scientific ideas, such as human evolution, to the general public. He is also known for his writings about humanity's relationship with the natural world; these writings helped inspire the modern environmental movement.
Eiseley is best known for the poetic essay style, called the "concealed essay". He used this to explain complex scientific ideas, such as human evolution, to the general public. He is also known for his writings about humanity's relationship with the natural world; these writings helped inspire the modern environmental movement.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 93 reviews
November 1, 2022
This may not be a book for younger people. Looking at the reviews he seems to catch criticism for melancholy, self pity, or romanticism. I felt there was no self pity or romanticism. Melancholy, maybe a touch. The book was written at the end of his life. He was plainly a beautiful writer of prose and I liked the thoughtfulness and insights of his wanderings.
Often the darkness and the night he discusses in the book come from his experience as a naturalist and anthropologist thinking about the fears of early man as well as ourselves. Sometimes there is humor, such as the story of a friend who opened a city hotel window and at some point in the night felt a cat-like weight on his feet. By managing to light a match he saw to his horror a cat-sized rat. The match extinguished, the rat, the blanket and man all nearly went out the window. Rats being often nocturnal are only one of the uncertainties to be encountered in the dark. Sometimes there is even more to a nocturnal rat story too. While sitting near a pompous colleague on the man’s large, watered and manicured lawn in the desert Southwest, he listened to the man as he spread his arms and told the company that man will conquer nature. Of course this was probably in the 50s or 60s when at least some people were so much surer than now. As Eiseley lifts his drink he glances at the man’s feet and sees a large, wet rat sitting there calmly. There will always be rats.
Eisley started out in a very poor family in the Mid-awest, managed to start school, ran out of money, hoboed on trains, went back to school, ended up an eminent scholar, educator, poet, writer etc. His wanderings took him world-wide. The writing in this book is sensational and never boastful. I would give anything to have taken a class from him. I have some hesitation giving the book a complete 5 stars. It is probably my own inability to fully synthesize or fully understand what Eiseley has to say. It was slow reading for me. The individual chapters were written at different times and that feels a little disjointed but oh so amazing.
Often the darkness and the night he discusses in the book come from his experience as a naturalist and anthropologist thinking about the fears of early man as well as ourselves. Sometimes there is humor, such as the story of a friend who opened a city hotel window and at some point in the night felt a cat-like weight on his feet. By managing to light a match he saw to his horror a cat-sized rat. The match extinguished, the rat, the blanket and man all nearly went out the window. Rats being often nocturnal are only one of the uncertainties to be encountered in the dark. Sometimes there is even more to a nocturnal rat story too. While sitting near a pompous colleague on the man’s large, watered and manicured lawn in the desert Southwest, he listened to the man as he spread his arms and told the company that man will conquer nature. Of course this was probably in the 50s or 60s when at least some people were so much surer than now. As Eiseley lifts his drink he glances at the man’s feet and sees a large, wet rat sitting there calmly. There will always be rats.
Eisley started out in a very poor family in the Mid-awest, managed to start school, ran out of money, hoboed on trains, went back to school, ended up an eminent scholar, educator, poet, writer etc. His wanderings took him world-wide. The writing in this book is sensational and never boastful. I would give anything to have taken a class from him. I have some hesitation giving the book a complete 5 stars. It is probably my own inability to fully synthesize or fully understand what Eiseley has to say. It was slow reading for me. The individual chapters were written at different times and that feels a little disjointed but oh so amazing.
November 23, 2009
Loren Eiseley is where I go to find peace.
It may be a tenebrous peace, in the crepuscular dimming of the world just after sunset, but it is always peace. And his The Night Country is one of the refuges from the human-haunted world I prefer above all.
In one of the essays collected herein, Eiseley describes himself as "a little bone man," i.e., an archaeological and paleontological scientist who never managed to find a treasure-trove of fossils of the sort that would have made him famous and rich forever, such as are found by "big bone men." But that's not true. As Eiseley says, today science neglects the spiritual in its chase after the objective, which is a serious mistake. Our cultural heritage and inner life contribute at least as much to what we are as do our genes, gives shape to us at least as much as our bodies do. Eiseley, a careful searcher after hidden truths in human artifacts and literature, uncovers fossils of enormous importance to an understanding of ourselves in the collective unconscious and in our relationship with nature, such as it is. His books present his collections of such fossils and his analysis of the spiritual and psychological meaning they have for us.
But these essays are also concerned with our relationship to the rest of the living world, and the increasingly rapid impoverishment of our lives as we usurp more and more of our living world in our frantic need to exploit it all to feed, clothe, and house our teeming billions. Someday, the works of Eiseley and those like him may be the only means by which our descendants can know the wealth of life that once graced the Earth, and the ways in which their ancestors fit into and were part of that life.
Eiseley is not science's enemy -- indeed, he calls himself a scientist, which he is, without evident irony or shame. But he points out that neither should science be the enemy of the arts and other humanistic pursuits. For science cannot by itself fathom or give meaning to the deepest and most powerful aspects of our nature; it can tells us something of whither we have come, but never with any surety where we are bound. Its quarrel with religion -- like religion's quarrel with it -- is based on a dangerous error of perception concerning the nature of truth and the needs of humanity. Eiseley recalls us to our True Selves: the Selves that laugh and weep, gaze in awe on the Cosmos, love and hate, lust and flee in repulsion. That is where we live; that is where our truest nature is. And it is only out of that nature that we can appreciate the very real gifts the sciences have to give us -- without that nature, science itself becomes devoid of meaning and value.
This is a book for insomniacs haunted by the night, who need to give shape and meaning to their suffering. Eiseley, an insomniac himself, who wrote most of his best-loved essays in the middle of the night during bouts of insomnia, provides a cogent and often-tender remedy for that suffering.
It may be a tenebrous peace, in the crepuscular dimming of the world just after sunset, but it is always peace. And his The Night Country is one of the refuges from the human-haunted world I prefer above all.
In one of the essays collected herein, Eiseley describes himself as "a little bone man," i.e., an archaeological and paleontological scientist who never managed to find a treasure-trove of fossils of the sort that would have made him famous and rich forever, such as are found by "big bone men." But that's not true. As Eiseley says, today science neglects the spiritual in its chase after the objective, which is a serious mistake. Our cultural heritage and inner life contribute at least as much to what we are as do our genes, gives shape to us at least as much as our bodies do. Eiseley, a careful searcher after hidden truths in human artifacts and literature, uncovers fossils of enormous importance to an understanding of ourselves in the collective unconscious and in our relationship with nature, such as it is. His books present his collections of such fossils and his analysis of the spiritual and psychological meaning they have for us.
But these essays are also concerned with our relationship to the rest of the living world, and the increasingly rapid impoverishment of our lives as we usurp more and more of our living world in our frantic need to exploit it all to feed, clothe, and house our teeming billions. Someday, the works of Eiseley and those like him may be the only means by which our descendants can know the wealth of life that once graced the Earth, and the ways in which their ancestors fit into and were part of that life.
Eiseley is not science's enemy -- indeed, he calls himself a scientist, which he is, without evident irony or shame. But he points out that neither should science be the enemy of the arts and other humanistic pursuits. For science cannot by itself fathom or give meaning to the deepest and most powerful aspects of our nature; it can tells us something of whither we have come, but never with any surety where we are bound. Its quarrel with religion -- like religion's quarrel with it -- is based on a dangerous error of perception concerning the nature of truth and the needs of humanity. Eiseley recalls us to our True Selves: the Selves that laugh and weep, gaze in awe on the Cosmos, love and hate, lust and flee in repulsion. That is where we live; that is where our truest nature is. And it is only out of that nature that we can appreciate the very real gifts the sciences have to give us -- without that nature, science itself becomes devoid of meaning and value.
This is a book for insomniacs haunted by the night, who need to give shape and meaning to their suffering. Eiseley, an insomniac himself, who wrote most of his best-loved essays in the middle of the night during bouts of insomnia, provides a cogent and often-tender remedy for that suffering.
May 28, 2018
Reading this book was like having a conversation with an extremely intelligent man. You get most of what he's telling you, knowing that some of it is over your head, but listening anyway because it's so beautifully stated. You don't want to interrupt with your own opinions on the subject because you recognize that you may be in the presence of a special intellect who may inadvertently hand you the secrets of the universe.
Being in this man's head for the time it took me to read this book was quite an experience. It's not everyday that the world produces a scientist who is also a philosopher and an incredible writer. And, oh yeah, this book filled me with peace.
Being in this man's head for the time it took me to read this book was quite an experience. It's not everyday that the world produces a scientist who is also a philosopher and an incredible writer. And, oh yeah, this book filled me with peace.
September 7, 2017
No civilization professes openly to be unable to declare its destination. In an age like our own, however, there comes a time when individuals in increasing numbers unconsciously seek direction and taste despair. It is then that dead men give back answers and the sense of confusion grows. Soothsayers, like flies, multiply in periods of social chaos. Moreover, let us not confuse ourselves with archaic words. In an age of science the scientist may emerge as a soothsayer.
I'm fortunate enough to live near several outlets in which, thanks to the proximity of a large university, a great number of course texts and academic books accumulate, allowing me to peruse them and purchase a few which then find their way into my possession for a time. Night Country was tucked away in a dusty block of heavily outlined and dog-eared books of poetry; much of Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot, 'Best of' and highlight collections, along with a smattering of local authors, and obscure modernist poets. It has been several years since I picked it up.
I had no expectations in approaching The Night Country this year, other than to complete it after having seen its spine gazing at me for far too long. Truthfully, I didn't quite know what to expect. Having flipped through a few of the pages before purchasing, I hoped to enjoy the writing and wanderings of his mind as he explored his childhood and history as an anthropologist. The experience of reading was just that, and turned out to be a very enjoyable philosophical examination of his perspectives on science, the progression of accumulation of data, and the regression of our wonder of the world.
While written by a man who spent a great deal of his life searching the dust, dirt, and rocks of the Earth in search of humanity’s history, this is far from a science-jargon laced series of essays on the evolutionary process, or the origins of man. It is, however, an eloquent and emotionally charged collection of thoughts set down in beautifully presented and thoughtful manner. Each of the essays has a current of prose that carries Eiseley’s memories and speculations along on a descriptive torrent of awe and imagination of the sheer glory that lies before us in nature, and of man’s place in it. He covers the influencing factors that made him a traveler of the ‘Night Country’, both as the mapping of his mind when insomnia sets in and he’s only able to navigate by pen, and as someone who searches the dark parts of the world for the bones of the past. Eiseley found a certain satisfying solitude in the recesses where light held back its revealing power, allowing him to explore further into its subterranean landscape discovering more about humanity’s past as well as his own.
I met nothing living now except small twisted pines. Boulders swelled up from the turf like huge white puff balls, and there was a flash of lightning off to the south that lit for one blue, glistening instant a hundred miles of churning, shifting, landscape. I have thought since that each stone, each tree, each ravine and crevice echoing and re-echoing with thunder tells us more at such an instant than any daytime vision of the road we travel. The flash hangs like an immortal magnification in the brain, and suddenly you know the kind of country you pass over, and the powers abroad in it.
His prose really is exquisite, leaving you with wondrous imagery heightened by the minimalist black and white illustrations of Gale Christianson. It’s utterly refreshing to read the viewpoint of a man who wishes to express scientific examination through the medium of story and art. Eiseley, himself, expressed his distaste for those who lose their awe and appreciation of our universe, instead turning it into nothing more than raw data and numbers to be examined, manipulated, and seized upon for human consumption and progression. He expresses how the gradual seeping of certainty and exactness inherent in the modern scientific approach has overtaken other aspects of our lives gradually eating away at our own inherent awe our place in the universe.
If we banish this act of contemplation and contrition from our midst, then even now we are dead men and the future dead with us. For the endurable future is a product not solely of the experimental method, or of outward knowledge alone. It is born of compassion. It is born of inward seeing. The unknown one called it simply “All,” and he added that it was not in a bodily manner to be wrought.
This is as close to anything I’ve read of a master at work, presenting his personal misgivings and longings born of the loss of man’s majesty for the unexplained and the scope of life itself. There is something of Thoreau present here, the naturalist prose writer expounding on the philosophical flaws of man when faced with the might of nature. He shares many stories and experiences he’s had: discoveries he’s made; those he could have made but did not have the courage to; colleagues that found his approach unfitting for a man of his education and station; and the many unique people he’s encountered as a working anthropologist. There is a cruelty and fallibility to science that he could never quite come to grow comfortable with; to exchange the unexpected marvel of life with the lifeless extraction of its parts was to give rise to an entity that sought to steal the wonder from his pursuit, and one that he knew many of his colleagues and fellows missed by working as its catalyst. Not only did they miss it in the data, they ignored it as it applied to the modern day; an ignored mortality in pursuit of an immortality the bones could never grant them.
I have said that the ruins of every civilization are the marks of men trying to express themselves, to leave an impression upon the earth. We in the modern world have turned more stones, listened to more buried voices, than any culture before us. There should be a kind of pity that comes with time, when one grows truly conscious and looks behind as well as forward, aware he is a shadow. Nothing is more brutally savage than the man who is not aware he is a shadow. Nothing is more real than the real; and that is why it is well for men to hurt themselves with the past – it is one road to tolerance.
The Night Country is a remarkable read, one of my greatest surprise finds, and certainly one of the best I’ve read so far in 2017. It’s autobiographical, philosophical, speculative, poetic, and thoughtful. It captures the silent meditations of a man who has spent much of his life exploring the darkness, mapping his journey through that vivid land without color, from which he sends us his discoveries and musings. Highly recommended for those who enjoy Walden as well as other works by Thoreau, Emerson, and beautifully written philosophical treatises.
A great river of stars spilled southward over the low hills, and a cold wind began to race me onward. Bone hunters were lonely people, I thought briefly, as I turned on the car heat for comfort. It had something to do with time. Perhaps, in the end, we did not know where we belonged.
I'm fortunate enough to live near several outlets in which, thanks to the proximity of a large university, a great number of course texts and academic books accumulate, allowing me to peruse them and purchase a few which then find their way into my possession for a time. Night Country was tucked away in a dusty block of heavily outlined and dog-eared books of poetry; much of Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot, 'Best of' and highlight collections, along with a smattering of local authors, and obscure modernist poets. It has been several years since I picked it up.
I had no expectations in approaching The Night Country this year, other than to complete it after having seen its spine gazing at me for far too long. Truthfully, I didn't quite know what to expect. Having flipped through a few of the pages before purchasing, I hoped to enjoy the writing and wanderings of his mind as he explored his childhood and history as an anthropologist. The experience of reading was just that, and turned out to be a very enjoyable philosophical examination of his perspectives on science, the progression of accumulation of data, and the regression of our wonder of the world.
While written by a man who spent a great deal of his life searching the dust, dirt, and rocks of the Earth in search of humanity’s history, this is far from a science-jargon laced series of essays on the evolutionary process, or the origins of man. It is, however, an eloquent and emotionally charged collection of thoughts set down in beautifully presented and thoughtful manner. Each of the essays has a current of prose that carries Eiseley’s memories and speculations along on a descriptive torrent of awe and imagination of the sheer glory that lies before us in nature, and of man’s place in it. He covers the influencing factors that made him a traveler of the ‘Night Country’, both as the mapping of his mind when insomnia sets in and he’s only able to navigate by pen, and as someone who searches the dark parts of the world for the bones of the past. Eiseley found a certain satisfying solitude in the recesses where light held back its revealing power, allowing him to explore further into its subterranean landscape discovering more about humanity’s past as well as his own.
I met nothing living now except small twisted pines. Boulders swelled up from the turf like huge white puff balls, and there was a flash of lightning off to the south that lit for one blue, glistening instant a hundred miles of churning, shifting, landscape. I have thought since that each stone, each tree, each ravine and crevice echoing and re-echoing with thunder tells us more at such an instant than any daytime vision of the road we travel. The flash hangs like an immortal magnification in the brain, and suddenly you know the kind of country you pass over, and the powers abroad in it.
His prose really is exquisite, leaving you with wondrous imagery heightened by the minimalist black and white illustrations of Gale Christianson. It’s utterly refreshing to read the viewpoint of a man who wishes to express scientific examination through the medium of story and art. Eiseley, himself, expressed his distaste for those who lose their awe and appreciation of our universe, instead turning it into nothing more than raw data and numbers to be examined, manipulated, and seized upon for human consumption and progression. He expresses how the gradual seeping of certainty and exactness inherent in the modern scientific approach has overtaken other aspects of our lives gradually eating away at our own inherent awe our place in the universe.
If we banish this act of contemplation and contrition from our midst, then even now we are dead men and the future dead with us. For the endurable future is a product not solely of the experimental method, or of outward knowledge alone. It is born of compassion. It is born of inward seeing. The unknown one called it simply “All,” and he added that it was not in a bodily manner to be wrought.
This is as close to anything I’ve read of a master at work, presenting his personal misgivings and longings born of the loss of man’s majesty for the unexplained and the scope of life itself. There is something of Thoreau present here, the naturalist prose writer expounding on the philosophical flaws of man when faced with the might of nature. He shares many stories and experiences he’s had: discoveries he’s made; those he could have made but did not have the courage to; colleagues that found his approach unfitting for a man of his education and station; and the many unique people he’s encountered as a working anthropologist. There is a cruelty and fallibility to science that he could never quite come to grow comfortable with; to exchange the unexpected marvel of life with the lifeless extraction of its parts was to give rise to an entity that sought to steal the wonder from his pursuit, and one that he knew many of his colleagues and fellows missed by working as its catalyst. Not only did they miss it in the data, they ignored it as it applied to the modern day; an ignored mortality in pursuit of an immortality the bones could never grant them.
I have said that the ruins of every civilization are the marks of men trying to express themselves, to leave an impression upon the earth. We in the modern world have turned more stones, listened to more buried voices, than any culture before us. There should be a kind of pity that comes with time, when one grows truly conscious and looks behind as well as forward, aware he is a shadow. Nothing is more brutally savage than the man who is not aware he is a shadow. Nothing is more real than the real; and that is why it is well for men to hurt themselves with the past – it is one road to tolerance.
The Night Country is a remarkable read, one of my greatest surprise finds, and certainly one of the best I’ve read so far in 2017. It’s autobiographical, philosophical, speculative, poetic, and thoughtful. It captures the silent meditations of a man who has spent much of his life exploring the darkness, mapping his journey through that vivid land without color, from which he sends us his discoveries and musings. Highly recommended for those who enjoy Walden as well as other works by Thoreau, Emerson, and beautifully written philosophical treatises.
A great river of stars spilled southward over the low hills, and a cold wind began to race me onward. Bone hunters were lonely people, I thought briefly, as I turned on the car heat for comfort. It had something to do with time. Perhaps, in the end, we did not know where we belonged.
January 16, 2024
This was a curious book that seemed to suffer from a case of confused personality.
The first few chapters had me assuming that the book was about night, darkness and all things nocturnal, which I was really enjoying. Then we skipped to some semi-theological discussion, hmm not so great, then to completely random subjects that seemed to have no bearing on the previous topic. I get that the title is "Reflections..." but these reflections seemed to follow no structure or theme.
From a pure enjoyment, my enthusiasm fizzled out to a mild tolerance before evaporating completely to a bored indifference.
A shame really as the beginning showed real promise. Never mind. Onward and upwards.
The first few chapters had me assuming that the book was about night, darkness and all things nocturnal, which I was really enjoying. Then we skipped to some semi-theological discussion, hmm not so great, then to completely random subjects that seemed to have no bearing on the previous topic. I get that the title is "Reflections..." but these reflections seemed to follow no structure or theme.
From a pure enjoyment, my enthusiasm fizzled out to a mild tolerance before evaporating completely to a bored indifference.
A shame really as the beginning showed real promise. Never mind. Onward and upwards.
November 7, 2014
This book was very disappointing to me. I'm not sure what I expected, but what I found in this publication was an author merely bordering on success. There were moments of great insight and wisdom, but overall the book failed to come together in a cohesive way. Unfortunately his attempt to mix themes of anthropology with existential philosophy doesn't lead the reader anywhere. I imagine Loren Eiseley fancied himself a great thinker. Several times in the book he points out that he doesn't sleep much at night but stays up reading books and pondering things. The most annoying parts were when his recollections of past events were dripping with sentimentality and nostalgia. We get the feeling that we are listening to a very old man ruminate about the good old days. Frankly, I'm surprised this book has such high reviews.
October 3, 2013
Although Loren Eiseley has this to say about nature writers such as Gilbert White, Richard Jefferies, and W. H. Hudson, the words apply equally to himself: "Even though they were not discoverers in the objective sense, one feels at times that the great nature essayists had more individual perception than their scientific contemporaries. Theirs was a different contribution. They opened the minds of men by the sheer power of their thought. The world of nature, once seen through the eye of genius, is never seen in quite the same manner afterward. A dimension has been added, something that lies beyond the careful analyses of professional biology."
Eiseley's writing is lyrical, deeply reflective, even melancholic. The essays in this book defy a simple description. Are they examples of nature writing? Memoir? Reflections on archaeology and anthropology? Ruminations on the external and internal worlds of the human? Essays on education and what it means to be a teacher? The essays are drawn from all this, gain synergy, become something larger and memorable. It is rare, I feel, to find emerging from the pen of a scientist, educator, and thinker, prose of such grace and humility.
Still, there are those who would complain of such writing, flay his ornamentation of ideas, rubbish his reflection as mysticism. It is difficult to imagine Eiseley himself being able to publish some of these essays in the literary and nature magazines of the present day. Where are the details? the editors may ask. The specifics, the hook, the motif, thread, conflict, and denouement? Or they might return his manuscript, advising him as one of his colleagues did, in all seriousness, to 'explain himself', perhaps 'confess' the state of his mind and internal world in the pages of a scientific journal. In Eiseley's words again: "No one need object to the elucidation of scientific principles in clear, unornamental prose. What concerns us is the fact that there exists a new class of highly skilled barbarians--not representing the very great in science--who would confine men entirely to this diet." Fortunately, Eiseley does not join the ranks of the barbarians, even as he admits in "Obituary of a bone hunter", with due humility, that his own scientific career is marked by "no great discoveries", that his is but a life "dedicated to the folly of doubt, the life of a small bone hunter."
Eiseley's writing is lyrical, deeply reflective, even melancholic. The essays in this book defy a simple description. Are they examples of nature writing? Memoir? Reflections on archaeology and anthropology? Ruminations on the external and internal worlds of the human? Essays on education and what it means to be a teacher? The essays are drawn from all this, gain synergy, become something larger and memorable. It is rare, I feel, to find emerging from the pen of a scientist, educator, and thinker, prose of such grace and humility.
Still, there are those who would complain of such writing, flay his ornamentation of ideas, rubbish his reflection as mysticism. It is difficult to imagine Eiseley himself being able to publish some of these essays in the literary and nature magazines of the present day. Where are the details? the editors may ask. The specifics, the hook, the motif, thread, conflict, and denouement? Or they might return his manuscript, advising him as one of his colleagues did, in all seriousness, to 'explain himself', perhaps 'confess' the state of his mind and internal world in the pages of a scientific journal. In Eiseley's words again: "No one need object to the elucidation of scientific principles in clear, unornamental prose. What concerns us is the fact that there exists a new class of highly skilled barbarians--not representing the very great in science--who would confine men entirely to this diet." Fortunately, Eiseley does not join the ranks of the barbarians, even as he admits in "Obituary of a bone hunter", with due humility, that his own scientific career is marked by "no great discoveries", that his is but a life "dedicated to the folly of doubt, the life of a small bone hunter."
February 6, 2017
I’m still getting familiar with Eiseley, but I’m so glad to have found him. I feel like I’ve discovered an unexpected teacher, a kindred spirit. How often do you come across a scientist who can quote Sir Thomas Browne, Robert Louis Stevenson, Shakespeare, and the anonymous medieval author of The Cloud of Unknowing while discussing evolutionary theory and paleontology? His work is a bridge spanning the gap that opened in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries between science and philosophy, between experiment and the creative spirit.
“The world of nature, once seen through the eye of genius, is never quite seen in the same manner afterward,” Eiseley writes, and he’s referring to people like Gilbert White and Henry David Thoreau, but we can apply the words to Eiseley himself with as much justice.
This later collection of essays doesn’t cast the same sort of spell as The Immense Journey does. It turns inward as a means of turning outward. It is more personal and literary than that first book, but The Night Country is no less rewarding. My favorite essays here include the memoir pieces ‘The Gold Wheel,’ ‘The Places Below,’ ‘The Relic Men’ and ‘The Brown Wasps.’ Eiseley’s essays on the history and philosophy of science are penetrating and thoughtful, too. ‘Strangeness in the Proportion’ and ‘The Mind as Nature’ are particularly good.
“The world of nature, once seen through the eye of genius, is never quite seen in the same manner afterward,” Eiseley writes, and he’s referring to people like Gilbert White and Henry David Thoreau, but we can apply the words to Eiseley himself with as much justice.
This later collection of essays doesn’t cast the same sort of spell as The Immense Journey does. It turns inward as a means of turning outward. It is more personal and literary than that first book, but The Night Country is no less rewarding. My favorite essays here include the memoir pieces ‘The Gold Wheel,’ ‘The Places Below,’ ‘The Relic Men’ and ‘The Brown Wasps.’ Eiseley’s essays on the history and philosophy of science are penetrating and thoughtful, too. ‘Strangeness in the Proportion’ and ‘The Mind as Nature’ are particularly good.
February 2, 2018
Rating of each essay:
The Gold Wheel - 3/5
The Places Below - 4/5
Big Eyes Small Eyes - 5/5
Instruments of Darkness - 3/5
The Chresmologue - 3/5
Paw Marks and Buried Towns - 3/5
Barbed Wire and Brown Skulls - 4/5
The Relic Men - 5/5 (FAVORITE)
Strangeness in Proportion - 4/5
The Creature from the Marsh - 4/5
One Night's Dying - 3/5
Obituary of a Bone Hunter - 5/5
The Mind as Nature - 3/5
The Brown Wasps - 3/5
The Gold Wheel - 3/5
The Places Below - 4/5
Big Eyes Small Eyes - 5/5
Instruments of Darkness - 3/5
The Chresmologue - 3/5
Paw Marks and Buried Towns - 3/5
Barbed Wire and Brown Skulls - 4/5
The Relic Men - 5/5 (FAVORITE)
Strangeness in Proportion - 4/5
The Creature from the Marsh - 4/5
One Night's Dying - 3/5
Obituary of a Bone Hunter - 5/5
The Mind as Nature - 3/5
The Brown Wasps - 3/5
July 6, 2017
One of the best books I randomly came across. An amazing discovery for those that aren't familiar with Loren. The cross section of astronomy, philosophy, anthropology, and amazing literature.
June 9, 2018
Loren Eiseley is a kindred spirit, but my kin are all a bit much.
February 13, 2026
This is the Bison Books ( University of Nebraska) 1997 printing of the original 1971 edition of this book of essays from 1947 to 1966, by Loren Eiseley ( 1907-1977). Eiseley was an anthropologist, educator, philosopher, and natural science writer. At his death, he was ( the first) Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and History of Science at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
I give this outstanding book of essays 4.5 stars rounded up to 5. My favorite book of his is "The Immense Journey," his first and most popular book, published in 1957 ( which I reviewed in Goodreads some years ago and gave a full 5 stars). This book seems like a follow-up to that earlier book to me. As stated in the excellent Introduction written by Gale E. Christianson, this work was described by the author as an "interim book," made up of his older essays and uncollected pieces requested by his readers.
The title, "The Night Country," seems to refer to Eiseley's habit of going into a room filled with his books at night and writing "at an old desk in the glow of a feeble lamp" ( according to the Introduction). This was due to his insomnia and, working alone at night, he could "claim a time and make it forever his own."
It's beautiful prose writing. It's autobiographical, as it muses about the mystery of evolution, the surprises presented by nature. I get a strong sense of melancholy from his writing, which perhaps is natural for a man writing in "the small hours" while the world slept. He writes in his "The Obituary of a Bone Hunter" : "I have crawled in many caverns, stooped with infinite aching patience over the bones of many men. I have made no great discoveries." I get the sense that he regrets not achieving what he most wanted in his profession ( as an anthropologist)- to make a great discovery- and I think I can understand that. However, I also feel that he accomplished the greatest achievement of all--to have lived a life in which he could pursue his passion, and, moreover, was able to transmit his thoughts on that lifelong pursuit through his writings to the world ( and to the future, such as now, in the year 2026, almost a half century after his death).
I give this outstanding book of essays 4.5 stars rounded up to 5. My favorite book of his is "The Immense Journey," his first and most popular book, published in 1957 ( which I reviewed in Goodreads some years ago and gave a full 5 stars). This book seems like a follow-up to that earlier book to me. As stated in the excellent Introduction written by Gale E. Christianson, this work was described by the author as an "interim book," made up of his older essays and uncollected pieces requested by his readers.
The title, "The Night Country," seems to refer to Eiseley's habit of going into a room filled with his books at night and writing "at an old desk in the glow of a feeble lamp" ( according to the Introduction). This was due to his insomnia and, working alone at night, he could "claim a time and make it forever his own."
It's beautiful prose writing. It's autobiographical, as it muses about the mystery of evolution, the surprises presented by nature. I get a strong sense of melancholy from his writing, which perhaps is natural for a man writing in "the small hours" while the world slept. He writes in his "The Obituary of a Bone Hunter" : "I have crawled in many caverns, stooped with infinite aching patience over the bones of many men. I have made no great discoveries." I get the sense that he regrets not achieving what he most wanted in his profession ( as an anthropologist)- to make a great discovery- and I think I can understand that. However, I also feel that he accomplished the greatest achievement of all--to have lived a life in which he could pursue his passion, and, moreover, was able to transmit his thoughts on that lifelong pursuit through his writings to the world ( and to the future, such as now, in the year 2026, almost a half century after his death).
January 1, 2026
الضجيج هو الخارج ؛ ذلك المتنمر في الحي المجاور الذي كان عليك المرور بمنزله في الطريق إلى المدرسة. الضجيج هو كل ما لم ترغب بفعله. هو الألعاب التي تعرضت فيها للضرب من قبل أطفال آخرين أكبر منك سناً، هو أصوات الكبار الحادة والمتطلبة الذين يخطفون كتبك ويرمونها أرضا. الضجيج هو النهار ومن ضوء الشمس الخافت هذا ، ولد لك هدف واحد: الهروب. قليلون من لديهم مثل هذه الدوافع في طفولتهم.
وقفت على أعتاب حقل واسع مسطح عند غروب الشمس. لا بد أنني هربت ولعبت وحدي حتى وصلت إلى أطراف المدينة. لم يمكن هناك سوى من هم أكبر مني سنا؛ اللذين يعرفون من أين أتوا وكيف يعودون.
لم يكونوا عائدين إلى ديارهم، بل كانوا ذاهبين إلى مكان يُدعى "الوادي الأخضر" جاؤوا من ناحية المدينة الأخرى، وكانت ملابسهم خشنة وعيونهم دنيوية وماكرة. كان الأمر أشبه بطفل يتبع العفاريت إلى منازلهم عند حلول الظلام، لكن لم ينهرني أحد. كنت صغيرا جدا ... لم أعرف طريق العودة، فتبعتهم.
وصلنا بعد قليل إلى بعض الصخور. كان المكان يحمل اسما مناسبًا: بركة ضخمة في حوض من الحجر الرملي خضراء داكنة، يخيم عليها المساء، والأشجار تميل خفية فوق الماء.
فجأة، بينما كنت واقفًا هناك صغيرًا ، مرتبكًا، خائفًا، وقف قزم متسخ ملطخ بالدماء، كان ينحني فوق السلحفاة، وفي يده حجر نظر إلي، وتسللت إلى تلك المجموعة الصغيرة دوافع شريرة وغريبة. شعرت بها وتراجعت ...لم يكونوا بشرا ... كنتُ وحدي هناك، ولم أرى الموت من قبل ... لا أعرف من رمى الحجر أولاً، ومن رشني بالماء، ومن ضربني أولاً، أو حتى من في النهاية أنزلني على ركبتي، وجرني إلى جانب الطريق، وأشار قائلا بفظاظة" : هذا طريقك يا صغير، اتبع مصابيح الشوارع ... سيأخذونك إلى المنزل.
سرت - لأني اضطررت - على ذلك الطريق، والريح تهب في الحقول . سرتُ ببطء من بقعة ضوء إلى أخرى، وبين الحين والآخر كنتُ أفكر بما يفكر به أي طفل، فلم أتوقف عند أي منزل، ولم أطلب المساعدة من أحد حتى وصلت إلى الشوارع المضيئة.
لقد اكتشفت الشر ... كانت معرفةً وحشية مفسدة. لم أستطع إخبار الكبار بها، لأنها شرور الطفولة التي لا يؤمن بها أحد. كنت وحدي معها في الظلام ... وفي الظلام منذ ذلك الحين ، فصاعدا، بطريقة ما، كان مُقدّرًا لي أن أبقى.
.
Loren Eiseley
The Night Country
Translated By #Maher_Razouk
وقفت على أعتاب حقل واسع مسطح عند غروب الشمس. لا بد أنني هربت ولعبت وحدي حتى وصلت إلى أطراف المدينة. لم يمكن هناك سوى من هم أكبر مني سنا؛ اللذين يعرفون من أين أتوا وكيف يعودون.
لم يكونوا عائدين إلى ديارهم، بل كانوا ذاهبين إلى مكان يُدعى "الوادي الأخضر" جاؤوا من ناحية المدينة الأخرى، وكانت ملابسهم خشنة وعيونهم دنيوية وماكرة. كان الأمر أشبه بطفل يتبع العفاريت إلى منازلهم عند حلول الظلام، لكن لم ينهرني أحد. كنت صغيرا جدا ... لم أعرف طريق العودة، فتبعتهم.
وصلنا بعد قليل إلى بعض الصخور. كان المكان يحمل اسما مناسبًا: بركة ضخمة في حوض من الحجر الرملي خضراء داكنة، يخيم عليها المساء، والأشجار تميل خفية فوق الماء.
فجأة، بينما كنت واقفًا هناك صغيرًا ، مرتبكًا، خائفًا، وقف قزم متسخ ملطخ بالدماء، كان ينحني فوق السلحفاة، وفي يده حجر نظر إلي، وتسللت إلى تلك المجموعة الصغيرة دوافع شريرة وغريبة. شعرت بها وتراجعت ...لم يكونوا بشرا ... كنتُ وحدي هناك، ولم أرى الموت من قبل ... لا أعرف من رمى الحجر أولاً، ومن رشني بالماء، ومن ضربني أولاً، أو حتى من في النهاية أنزلني على ركبتي، وجرني إلى جانب الطريق، وأشار قائلا بفظاظة" : هذا طريقك يا صغير، اتبع مصابيح الشوارع ... سيأخذونك إلى المنزل.
سرت - لأني اضطررت - على ذلك الطريق، والريح تهب في الحقول . سرتُ ببطء من بقعة ضوء إلى أخرى، وبين الحين والآخر كنتُ أفكر بما يفكر به أي طفل، فلم أتوقف عند أي منزل، ولم أطلب المساعدة من أحد حتى وصلت إلى الشوارع المضيئة.
لقد اكتشفت الشر ... كانت معرفةً وحشية مفسدة. لم أستطع إخبار الكبار بها، لأنها شرور الطفولة التي لا يؤمن بها أحد. كنت وحدي معها في الظلام ... وفي الظلام منذ ذلك الحين ، فصاعدا، بطريقة ما، كان مُقدّرًا لي أن أبقى.
.
Loren Eiseley
The Night Country
Translated By #Maher_Razouk
February 27, 2024
I remember you.
February 4, 2025
Loren Eiseley writes in a way that feels like he is telling YOU his story. It feels very personal and frank. As in his other works, in this one he also tells anecdotes from his life and shares his thoughts surrounding those experiences. It can be thoughtful, funny, interesting, dark, nostalgic, earnest and nerdy, which is great. I loved reading his personal reflections on several matters.
But there are also stretches that are quite long and dull. I feel that he sometimes writes things longer and more complicated than they need to be. He also writes very lyrically, which can be beautiful, but it’s not always easy to understand what he is trying to say.
I generally enjoyed reading these essays. Like with his other works, there are essays I really enjoy and essays I’m never able to get into. I might reread this collection again some day.
But there are also stretches that are quite long and dull. I feel that he sometimes writes things longer and more complicated than they need to be. He also writes very lyrically, which can be beautiful, but it’s not always easy to understand what he is trying to say.
I generally enjoyed reading these essays. Like with his other works, there are essays I really enjoy and essays I’m never able to get into. I might reread this collection again some day.
April 14, 2021
Another profound and beautiful collection of essays from Mr. Eiseley. A dark tangled beauty that's difficult to describe, but deeply enriching and perspective-opening, especially about nature, the history of humanity, and what it means to be alive. A thinker and stylist of the first order. If you haven't read Eiseley, this book or The Unexpected Universe would be a great place to start. Highly recommended.
May 29, 2018
I had Eiseley recommended to me some time ago, but this is the first book of his that I've read. I don't know if this was the place for me to start. These essays, loosely connected with one another by events in Eiseley's past and an affiliation with some sort of darkness (whether that be real or imagined or personal), did not elicit the effect on me that it seemed the author was aiming for. Judging from other reviews, that appears to be a contrarian view.
It may just be that my capacity for personal essays has reached its limit. There's something about them that strikes me as cloying, as sickly-sweet. This started with a collection of Anne Fadiman's essays (At Large and at Small: Familiar Essays, which I finished, and reached it's height with Scott Russell Sanders (Secrets of the Universe: Essays on Family, Community, Spirit, and Place), which I couldn't. It's important to say up front that Fadiman and Sanders are talented, and a lot of people do and will enjoy their writing. Eiseley is, I think, better than either--not nearly as clever (thank goodness) or trivial as Fadiman's, nor as righteous as Sanders'--but there was a level of sentimentality to Eiseley's that reminded me of both.
It's hard for me to put into words what it was about Eiseley's essays that turned me off--sentiment, yes, but not that entirely. Even sentimental writing has its place. I think what it is that bothers me most about this sort of essays is the feeling that the author is assuming a role--that he or she is posing as a fellow traveler on a journey with the reader, and that the destination is as much a surprise to the author as anyone, when in reality the author is leading us toward his preconceived notions. Eiseley is nowhere as egregious in this as Sanders, but I felt constantly as if Eiseley was bombarding me with passages designed to elicit a feeling of awe and wonder about the universe and man's consciousness of it and of himself. He seems to be trying to lead me there, and perhaps it is my natural oppositional attitude, but I don't like being directed anywhere.
Eiseley is much better (or at least I find him much more interesting) when he leaves off illustrating the ineffable and talks about concrete things--his essay Obituary of a Bone-Hunter, where the author describes three incidents of his archeological career, was, to my mind, the most enjoyable of the book, and, oddly enough, more indicative to me of the awesomeness of life than all his ruminations.
Favorable opinion is too high on this collection to pass over it--whether you are already a fan of Eiseley or not--based on one or two bad reviews. I'll read more Eiseley at some point myself. But had I known the overall thrust of this collection, it's quite likely that, at this period of my life, I would have started with something different.
It may just be that my capacity for personal essays has reached its limit. There's something about them that strikes me as cloying, as sickly-sweet. This started with a collection of Anne Fadiman's essays (At Large and at Small: Familiar Essays, which I finished, and reached it's height with Scott Russell Sanders (Secrets of the Universe: Essays on Family, Community, Spirit, and Place), which I couldn't. It's important to say up front that Fadiman and Sanders are talented, and a lot of people do and will enjoy their writing. Eiseley is, I think, better than either--not nearly as clever (thank goodness) or trivial as Fadiman's, nor as righteous as Sanders'--but there was a level of sentimentality to Eiseley's that reminded me of both.
It's hard for me to put into words what it was about Eiseley's essays that turned me off--sentiment, yes, but not that entirely. Even sentimental writing has its place. I think what it is that bothers me most about this sort of essays is the feeling that the author is assuming a role--that he or she is posing as a fellow traveler on a journey with the reader, and that the destination is as much a surprise to the author as anyone, when in reality the author is leading us toward his preconceived notions. Eiseley is nowhere as egregious in this as Sanders, but I felt constantly as if Eiseley was bombarding me with passages designed to elicit a feeling of awe and wonder about the universe and man's consciousness of it and of himself. He seems to be trying to lead me there, and perhaps it is my natural oppositional attitude, but I don't like being directed anywhere.
Eiseley is much better (or at least I find him much more interesting) when he leaves off illustrating the ineffable and talks about concrete things--his essay Obituary of a Bone-Hunter, where the author describes three incidents of his archeological career, was, to my mind, the most enjoyable of the book, and, oddly enough, more indicative to me of the awesomeness of life than all his ruminations.
Favorable opinion is too high on this collection to pass over it--whether you are already a fan of Eiseley or not--based on one or two bad reviews. I'll read more Eiseley at some point myself. But had I known the overall thrust of this collection, it's quite likely that, at this period of my life, I would have started with something different.
April 20, 2018
I would call this human sciences but it's so much more than that. Amazing quality of writing that captures the pain of childhood with its gangs and bullies, as well as its joy of discovery of nature and the environment. Plus adult perspective on archaeology, collections of skulls, and other scientific musings in comparison to literature. Fascinating essays, all of them, that show the range of interests in a man's life. I would invite this guy to a dinner party for conversation if I could! Or bring this book to a desert island....
May 22, 2017
I found a few of the stories really captivating, namely: the one about him as a boy exploring the sewers, big-bone hunting in the desert, and the cave with rising water. I liked these for the narrative arc with just the right amount of introspection. Some of the stories were too philosophic for my taste.
January 4, 2008
Love Loren Eiseley. His short essay's and stories are the best. A great American thinker, poet (and I don't mean his poetry which I'm not to into), and scientist. Read him by yourself at night or with others out loud. He will introduce you to thoughts and things you have not yet dreamed of.
August 15, 2008
As an educator, I found some amazing insights into the role of education in here. Something about the natural world and education go hand in hand, and I question our industrial approach to schooling. He doesn't indict any of that, but my thoughts ranged down that path as I read this book.
January 25, 2023
This is what I search for: a scientist who writes like a mystic. Loren is that old fantastical duke of dark corners, ruminating on life and death, time and eternity. A student of human nature, caught in the double-world of his sense of isolation and separateness, and yet highly attuned to the social history of humanity. His style is grand; some might call it over-written but if so it's in exactly the way that I like. He's a capital-R Romantic, the wanderer above the sea of fog, and if you have felt that then search for what Eiseley has to offer you.
Fisher's illustrations with each chapter are a perfect match for the tone and study of these essays, these shadowy images of the psyche that seem Jungian in nature, taken from a part of the mind that works in half-formed images and that mean beyond their meanings. In contrast, Eiseley creats richly-coloured scenes over and over, so that you hardly realise he's doing it. I have watched these episodes from his life, have actually stood there beside him.
Particular favourite essays were "The Places Below," that subterranean exploration of the underworld that seems unreal, like it could've been a dream, that the Rat could not have been a real boy, until Eiseley abruptly grounds us again in saying: "A few weeks later he was dead—dead of some casual childhood illness." That word, 'casual,' the stark materiality of death. Wonderfully rendered. And "The Relic Men" was another fantastic essay. I must read more.
Fisher's illustrations with each chapter are a perfect match for the tone and study of these essays, these shadowy images of the psyche that seem Jungian in nature, taken from a part of the mind that works in half-formed images and that mean beyond their meanings. In contrast, Eiseley creats richly-coloured scenes over and over, so that you hardly realise he's doing it. I have watched these episodes from his life, have actually stood there beside him.
Particular favourite essays were "The Places Below," that subterranean exploration of the underworld that seems unreal, like it could've been a dream, that the Rat could not have been a real boy, until Eiseley abruptly grounds us again in saying: "A few weeks later he was dead—dead of some casual childhood illness." That word, 'casual,' the stark materiality of death. Wonderfully rendered. And "The Relic Men" was another fantastic essay. I must read more.
July 26, 2020
Another author I'd love to have beers with, but whose other books I probably won't read. Called "a modern Thoreau", Eiseley writes without a ton of concern about how the reader will be able to absorb it. Some passages are incredible, as enlightened and deep as it gets.
November 19, 2018
I have all the books the Library of America has published but have only dabbled in reading them (they do look great on my shelves!). A few weeks ago LOA put two e-books, authored by Loren Eiseley, on sale at Amazon for 99 cents each. With Non-fiction November approaching, I thought, why not and purchased them both, even though I knew nothing about Eiseley or the books. The 14 essays in this book were well worth the price and then some!
This is a collection to be savored rather than devoured. I mostly would read one and then do something else, reading no more than three or four in one day. Some were easier to read than others and some were more interesting than others, although not always the same ones. These essay make you think. While Eiseley never references him, the essays made me think of Alexander von Humboldt, whose biography was the first of the non-fiction books I read this November. Eiseley often references Thoreau, who view of nature was influenced by Humboldt's work. And Eiseley, like Humboldt, encourages scientists not to specialize but to see the world more broadly. Eiseley would likely be even more aghast at the continuing narrowing of science into smaller and smaller subspecialties.
One essay is called "The Chresmologue." I had never heard of a chresmologue and the Kindle dictionary had no definition of it and I was not connected to WiFi on my initial read so could not explore further. When I was later online, I searched for a definition and all that came up was "chronicler of oracles." That was not the only word in that essay I had to look up. Another was "palimpsest" in describing man as he exists in nature. A Palimpsest is "a manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remains." Eiseley goes on to look at "modern man" whom Eiseley says "lives increasingly in the future and neglects the present." Eiseley is an archeologist who is work is to examine the past. He notes that he finds that
the American public is rarely troubled about these antiquarian matters. Instead, people invariable ask, What will man be like a million years from now?--frequently leaning back with complacent confidence as though they already knew the answer but felt that the rituals of our society demanded an equally ritualistic response from a specialist. Or they inquire, as a corollary, what the scientists' views may be upon the colonization of outer space. In short, the cry goes up, Prophesy!
Eiseley however doesn't take the bait. Instead, he cautions:
In an age like our own, however, there comes a time when individuals in increasing numbers unconsciously seek direction and taste despair. It is then that dead men give back answers and the sense of confusion grows. Soothsayers, like flies, multiply in times of social chaos. Moreover, let us not confuse ourselves with archaic words. In an age of science the scientist may emerge as a soothsayer.
Now that is prophesy! He does address this looking to the future, saying: [T]he human future … is made of stuff more immediate and inescapable--ourselves. If our thought runs solely outward and away upon the clever vehicles of science, just so will there be in that future the sure intellectual impoverishment and opportunism which flight and anonymity so readily induce. It will be, and this is the difficult obstacle of our semantics, not a future come upon by accident with all its lights and shadows, guiltless, as in a foreign sea. It will be instead the product of our errors, hesitations, and escapes, returning inexorably as the future which we wished only to come upon like a geographical discoverer, but to have taken no responsibility in shaping.
In short, if you like to be challenged, these are essays to read. You will find no answers but the questions and the thinking are illuminating.
This is a collection to be savored rather than devoured. I mostly would read one and then do something else, reading no more than three or four in one day. Some were easier to read than others and some were more interesting than others, although not always the same ones. These essay make you think. While Eiseley never references him, the essays made me think of Alexander von Humboldt, whose biography was the first of the non-fiction books I read this November. Eiseley often references Thoreau, who view of nature was influenced by Humboldt's work. And Eiseley, like Humboldt, encourages scientists not to specialize but to see the world more broadly. Eiseley would likely be even more aghast at the continuing narrowing of science into smaller and smaller subspecialties.
One essay is called "The Chresmologue." I had never heard of a chresmologue and the Kindle dictionary had no definition of it and I was not connected to WiFi on my initial read so could not explore further. When I was later online, I searched for a definition and all that came up was "chronicler of oracles." That was not the only word in that essay I had to look up. Another was "palimpsest" in describing man as he exists in nature. A Palimpsest is "a manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remains." Eiseley goes on to look at "modern man" whom Eiseley says "lives increasingly in the future and neglects the present." Eiseley is an archeologist who is work is to examine the past. He notes that he finds that
the American public is rarely troubled about these antiquarian matters. Instead, people invariable ask, What will man be like a million years from now?--frequently leaning back with complacent confidence as though they already knew the answer but felt that the rituals of our society demanded an equally ritualistic response from a specialist. Or they inquire, as a corollary, what the scientists' views may be upon the colonization of outer space. In short, the cry goes up, Prophesy!
Eiseley however doesn't take the bait. Instead, he cautions:
In an age like our own, however, there comes a time when individuals in increasing numbers unconsciously seek direction and taste despair. It is then that dead men give back answers and the sense of confusion grows. Soothsayers, like flies, multiply in times of social chaos. Moreover, let us not confuse ourselves with archaic words. In an age of science the scientist may emerge as a soothsayer.
Now that is prophesy! He does address this looking to the future, saying: [T]he human future … is made of stuff more immediate and inescapable--ourselves. If our thought runs solely outward and away upon the clever vehicles of science, just so will there be in that future the sure intellectual impoverishment and opportunism which flight and anonymity so readily induce. It will be, and this is the difficult obstacle of our semantics, not a future come upon by accident with all its lights and shadows, guiltless, as in a foreign sea. It will be instead the product of our errors, hesitations, and escapes, returning inexorably as the future which we wished only to come upon like a geographical discoverer, but to have taken no responsibility in shaping.
In short, if you like to be challenged, these are essays to read. You will find no answers but the questions and the thinking are illuminating.
August 7, 2025
i picked this up at a used bookstore solely because of the cover. there was no blurb and i went in entirely blind assuming it was a sci-fi book. i’m not sure how to describe what it actually was other than a pleasant reminiscing with a man who has seen plenty of life
February 17, 2023
The darkness and light that resides within and outside each of us is the subject of Loren Eisley's essays. Anecdotal, and often personal , scientific, and socially exploratory, Eisley take us to the depths of our humanity.
January 25, 2026
I stumbled into Eiseley's writings in a round-about sort of way. He's an archaeologist famous for his natural science writing specifically his 1957 "The Immense Journey" which is a collection of essays about the history of humanity (I hope to read this soon!). It was extremely popular and Eiseley became well known for his ability to write about science with words that sounded like poetry. I, however, saved this book to my "Want to Read List" years ago while browsing a list of popular memoirs.
"The Night Country" is part archaeology, part memoir, part Eisley's profound and contemplative musings. Very different than his earlier works in terms of subject matter, but the beauty of his writing still takes center stage. It's incredible, how strikingly he can put his thoughts and observations about the world into words. Here's one of my favorite passages from the book, one of Eisley's musings on life and death as his gazes upon a fossil on his desk:
"In the past there has been armor, there have been bellowings out of throats like iron furnaces, there have been phantom lights in the dark forest and toothed reptiles winging through the air. It has all been carbon and its compounds, the black stain running perpetually across the stone."
"But though the elements are known, nothing in all those shapes is now returnable. No living chemist can shape a dinosaur; no living hand can start the dreaming tentacular extensions that characterize the life of the simplest ameboid cell. Finally, as the greatest mystery of all, I who write these words on paper, cannot establish my own reality. I am, by any reasonable and considered logic, dead. This may be a matter of concern, or even a secret, but if it is any consolation, I can assure you that all men are as dead as I. For on my office desk, to prove my words, is the fossil out of the stone, and there is the carbon of life stained black on the ancient rock."
"There is no life in the fossil. There is no life in the carbon in my body. As the idea strikes me, and it comes as a profound shock, I run down the list of elements. There is no life in the iron, there is no life in the phosphorus, the nitrogen does not contain me, the water that soaks my tissues is not I. What am I then? I pinch my body in a kind of sudden desperation. My heart knocks, my fingers close around the pen. There is, it seems, a semblance of life here."
"But the minute I start breaking this strange body down into its constituents, it is dead. It does not know me. Carbon does not speak, calcium does not remember, iron does not weep. Even if I hastily reconstitute their combinations in my mind, rebuild my arteries, and let oxygen in the grip of hemoglobin go hurrying through a thousand conduits, I have a kind of machine, but where in all this array of pipes and hurried flotsam is the dweller?"
"From whence, out of what steaming pools or boiling cloudbursts, did he first arise? What forces can we find which brought him up the shore, scaled his body into an antique, reptilian shape and then cracked it like an egg to let a soft-furred animal with a warmer heart emerge? And we? Would it not be a good thing if man were tapped gentle like a fertile egg to see what might creep out? I sometimes think of this as I handle the thick-walled skulls of the animal men who preceded us or ponder over those remote splay-footed creatures whose bones line deep in the world's wastelands at the very bottom of time."
"With the glooms and night terrors of those vast cemeteries I have been long familiar. A precisely similar gloom enwraps the individual life of each of us. There are moments, in my bed at midnight, or watching the play of moonlight on the ceiling, when this ghostliness of myself comes home to me with appalling force, when I lie tense, listening as if removed, far off, to the footfalls of my own heart, ore seeing my own head on the pillows turning restlessly with the round staring eyes of a gigantic owl. I whisper "Who?" to no one but myself in the silent, sleeping house - the living house gone back to sleep with the sleeping stones, the eternally sleeping chair, the picture that sleeps forever on the bureau, the dead, also sleeping, though they walk in my drams. In the midst of all this dark, this void, this emptiness, I, more ghostly than a ghost, cry "Who?" "Who? to no answer, aware only of other smaller ghosts like the bats sweeping by the window or the dog who, in repeating a bit of his own lost history, turns restlessly among nonexistent grasses before he subsides again upon the floor."
I think his writing his best spoken aloud. I had a magical experience reading this book while camping during a gentle rainstorm. My partner read one of his less contemplative, more adventuresome chapters, "Obituary of a Bone Hunter" to me as we sheltered in the tent under the pitter patter of the rain. He spoke of almosts, the times Eisley almost struck it bit on a dig site, almost found an incredible specimen in a cave, but didn't and all the other things (caves with ceilings covered in spiders, birds' nests with eggs from near-extinct species, eyes reflecting the light of his flashlight back at him) he found a lot the way.
A great read, but only if you're in the mood for it. A sort of contemplative, not-quite-tethered to the real world type of mood is best for this book. I can't wait to read some of his other works.
"The Night Country" is part archaeology, part memoir, part Eisley's profound and contemplative musings. Very different than his earlier works in terms of subject matter, but the beauty of his writing still takes center stage. It's incredible, how strikingly he can put his thoughts and observations about the world into words. Here's one of my favorite passages from the book, one of Eisley's musings on life and death as his gazes upon a fossil on his desk:
"In the past there has been armor, there have been bellowings out of throats like iron furnaces, there have been phantom lights in the dark forest and toothed reptiles winging through the air. It has all been carbon and its compounds, the black stain running perpetually across the stone."
"But though the elements are known, nothing in all those shapes is now returnable. No living chemist can shape a dinosaur; no living hand can start the dreaming tentacular extensions that characterize the life of the simplest ameboid cell. Finally, as the greatest mystery of all, I who write these words on paper, cannot establish my own reality. I am, by any reasonable and considered logic, dead. This may be a matter of concern, or even a secret, but if it is any consolation, I can assure you that all men are as dead as I. For on my office desk, to prove my words, is the fossil out of the stone, and there is the carbon of life stained black on the ancient rock."
"There is no life in the fossil. There is no life in the carbon in my body. As the idea strikes me, and it comes as a profound shock, I run down the list of elements. There is no life in the iron, there is no life in the phosphorus, the nitrogen does not contain me, the water that soaks my tissues is not I. What am I then? I pinch my body in a kind of sudden desperation. My heart knocks, my fingers close around the pen. There is, it seems, a semblance of life here."
"But the minute I start breaking this strange body down into its constituents, it is dead. It does not know me. Carbon does not speak, calcium does not remember, iron does not weep. Even if I hastily reconstitute their combinations in my mind, rebuild my arteries, and let oxygen in the grip of hemoglobin go hurrying through a thousand conduits, I have a kind of machine, but where in all this array of pipes and hurried flotsam is the dweller?"
"From whence, out of what steaming pools or boiling cloudbursts, did he first arise? What forces can we find which brought him up the shore, scaled his body into an antique, reptilian shape and then cracked it like an egg to let a soft-furred animal with a warmer heart emerge? And we? Would it not be a good thing if man were tapped gentle like a fertile egg to see what might creep out? I sometimes think of this as I handle the thick-walled skulls of the animal men who preceded us or ponder over those remote splay-footed creatures whose bones line deep in the world's wastelands at the very bottom of time."
"With the glooms and night terrors of those vast cemeteries I have been long familiar. A precisely similar gloom enwraps the individual life of each of us. There are moments, in my bed at midnight, or watching the play of moonlight on the ceiling, when this ghostliness of myself comes home to me with appalling force, when I lie tense, listening as if removed, far off, to the footfalls of my own heart, ore seeing my own head on the pillows turning restlessly with the round staring eyes of a gigantic owl. I whisper "Who?" to no one but myself in the silent, sleeping house - the living house gone back to sleep with the sleeping stones, the eternally sleeping chair, the picture that sleeps forever on the bureau, the dead, also sleeping, though they walk in my drams. In the midst of all this dark, this void, this emptiness, I, more ghostly than a ghost, cry "Who?" "Who? to no answer, aware only of other smaller ghosts like the bats sweeping by the window or the dog who, in repeating a bit of his own lost history, turns restlessly among nonexistent grasses before he subsides again upon the floor."
I think his writing his best spoken aloud. I had a magical experience reading this book while camping during a gentle rainstorm. My partner read one of his less contemplative, more adventuresome chapters, "Obituary of a Bone Hunter" to me as we sheltered in the tent under the pitter patter of the rain. He spoke of almosts, the times Eisley almost struck it bit on a dig site, almost found an incredible specimen in a cave, but didn't and all the other things (caves with ceilings covered in spiders, birds' nests with eggs from near-extinct species, eyes reflecting the light of his flashlight back at him) he found a lot the way.
A great read, but only if you're in the mood for it. A sort of contemplative, not-quite-tethered to the real world type of mood is best for this book. I can't wait to read some of his other works.
October 28, 2024
I found what I thought to be a book on grief of a sort (as this year saw the passing of both of my parents, weeks apart). Looking to find solace and comfort in a literary form of darkness.
Not what I expected to find. Instead, I was introduced to a highly articulate and intelligent writer that spent his formative days alone as a child without siblings, and alone as an adult in the form of an anthropologist.
These short "stories" or essays cover a vast swath of the human condition from his upbringing. From singular child fantasizing as a fox or a rat on a journey, to a learned scholar looking over a proffered skull or hidden fossil, to ultimately our own place in the universe and the inevitable demise that awaits us all.
He shares his lonely adolescent fantasies: The Gold Wheel, The Places Below, Big Eyes Small Eyes (3/5 for each).
Others include:
-Instruments of Darkness (4/5) "It hath been taught us from the primal state That he which is was wished until he were."
-The Chresmologue (3/5) the world view from the historical perspective is intriguing but the daily is ever so slow. To arbitrarily drop random seeds in traveled places where the seeds could never reach, is thought provoking as a prank in archaeology circles, but missed in our lifetime as tedious effort.
Anthropology based:
-Paw Marks and Buried Towns (4/5) his dog Mickey and civilizations passing
-Barbed Wire and Brown Skulls (3/5)
-The Relic Men (5/5) belief and hope of the find in a story, felt it could be something stand alone.
-Strangeness in Proportion (4/5) felt mystical in effort
-The Creature from the Marsh (3/5) No longer looking in the mirror after this one.
-One Night's Dying (3/5)- eh.
Closest connection to the author for me:
-Obituary of a Bone Hunter (5/5) I highly enjoyed his humble take on just missing out on the "Big One" in a few instances.
Then a departure into theoretics:
-The Mind as Nature (3/5) rhapsodic and overly long on elevating genius in every form without knowing from whince it comes. Felt soapbox driven beyond the point intended.
Lastly,
-The Brown Wasps (3/5) Death in repetition of memory of days long past.
Overall, this isn't something one would seek out without knowing Loren had wisdom to impart, certainly not for thrill reading. The inspirations and thoughts provoked were gladly accepted in their entirety, although the roller coaster had its ups and downs.
Highly recommend to all humans, at least once in their lifetime.
Thanks for reading.
Not what I expected to find. Instead, I was introduced to a highly articulate and intelligent writer that spent his formative days alone as a child without siblings, and alone as an adult in the form of an anthropologist.
These short "stories" or essays cover a vast swath of the human condition from his upbringing. From singular child fantasizing as a fox or a rat on a journey, to a learned scholar looking over a proffered skull or hidden fossil, to ultimately our own place in the universe and the inevitable demise that awaits us all.
He shares his lonely adolescent fantasies: The Gold Wheel, The Places Below, Big Eyes Small Eyes (3/5 for each).
Others include:
-Instruments of Darkness (4/5) "It hath been taught us from the primal state That he which is was wished until he were."
-The Chresmologue (3/5) the world view from the historical perspective is intriguing but the daily is ever so slow. To arbitrarily drop random seeds in traveled places where the seeds could never reach, is thought provoking as a prank in archaeology circles, but missed in our lifetime as tedious effort.
Anthropology based:
-Paw Marks and Buried Towns (4/5) his dog Mickey and civilizations passing
-Barbed Wire and Brown Skulls (3/5)
-The Relic Men (5/5) belief and hope of the find in a story, felt it could be something stand alone.
-Strangeness in Proportion (4/5) felt mystical in effort
-The Creature from the Marsh (3/5) No longer looking in the mirror after this one.
-One Night's Dying (3/5)- eh.
Closest connection to the author for me:
-Obituary of a Bone Hunter (5/5) I highly enjoyed his humble take on just missing out on the "Big One" in a few instances.
Then a departure into theoretics:
-The Mind as Nature (3/5) rhapsodic and overly long on elevating genius in every form without knowing from whince it comes. Felt soapbox driven beyond the point intended.
Lastly,
-The Brown Wasps (3/5) Death in repetition of memory of days long past.
Overall, this isn't something one would seek out without knowing Loren had wisdom to impart, certainly not for thrill reading. The inspirations and thoughts provoked were gladly accepted in their entirety, although the roller coaster had its ups and downs.
Highly recommend to all humans, at least once in their lifetime.
Thanks for reading.
July 23, 2023
Emerging from the darkness of an owl-country visitor, Eiseley carries the stories of his childhood, adolescence, and career as an anthropologist.
Ultimately, these essays are deeply personal meditations on humanity. Some veer into the fascinating mid-century work of those Eiseley refers to as bone men, hunting with dynamite, a silver tongue, and care for the natural world for the fossils and specimen that justify their profession. Others characterize early 20th century American life within the genre of scientific personal essays. Others set their course for the philosophy of personality and change, whether considering chance or student's personal development. What unites these manifold concerns is the wise and exploratory whisper of a man staying up too late for decades, thinking his way under the stars.
Perhaps not the place to start with Loren Eiseley, but a beautiful, moving, and deeply thoughtful experience. Highly recommended.
Ultimately, these essays are deeply personal meditations on humanity. Some veer into the fascinating mid-century work of those Eiseley refers to as bone men, hunting with dynamite, a silver tongue, and care for the natural world for the fossils and specimen that justify their profession. Others characterize early 20th century American life within the genre of scientific personal essays. Others set their course for the philosophy of personality and change, whether considering chance or student's personal development. What unites these manifold concerns is the wise and exploratory whisper of a man staying up too late for decades, thinking his way under the stars.
Perhaps not the place to start with Loren Eiseley, but a beautiful, moving, and deeply thoughtful experience. Highly recommended.
August 3, 2010
(My thanks to Dr. Michael Dolzani of Baldwin-Wallace College for the introduction to Eiseley.)
There is a shadow on the wall before me. It is my own; the hour is late. I write in a hotel room at midnight. Tomorrow the shadow on the wall will be that of another.
If you cannot bear the silence and the darkness, do not go there; if you dislike black night and yawning chasms, never make them your profession. If you fear the sound of water hurrying through crevices toward unknown and mysterious destinations, do not consider it. Seek out the sunshine. It is a simple prescription. Avoid the darkness.
It is a simple prescription, but you will not follow it. You will turn immediately to the darkness. You will be drawn to it by cords of fear and longing. You will imagine that you are tired of the sunlight; the waters that unnerve you will tug in the ancient recesses of your mind; the midnight will seem restful—you will end by going down.
Light the lights, I always say, but I have found that even this is no real security—not in the night. Because in the end you may find that the remaining light has only allowed you to see something it would have been better not to see at all.
[…:] I who write these words on paper, cannot establish my own reality. I am, by any reasonable and considered logic, dead. This may be a matter of concern, or even a secret, but if it is any consolation, I can assure you that all men are as dead as I. […:] the minute I start breaking this strange body down into its constituents, it is dead. It does not know me. Carbon does not speak, calcium does not remember, iron does not weep.
Emerson and Thoreau lived close enough to nature to know something still of animal intuition and wisdom. They had not reached that point of utter cynicism, that distrust of self and of the human past which leads finally to total entrapment in that past, “man crystallized,” as Emerson once again was shrewd enough to observe.
The terror that confronts our age is our own conception of ourselves. Above all else this is the potion which the modern Dr. Jekylls have concocted. As Shakespeare foresaw:
“It hath been taught us from the primal state
That he which is was wished until he were.”
This is not the voice of the witches. It is the clear voice of a great poet almost four centuries gone, who saw at the dawn of the scientific age what was to be the darkest problem of man: his conception of himself. The words are quiet, almost cryptic; they do not foretell. They imply a problem in free will. Shakespeare, in this passage, says nothing of starry influences, machinery, beakers, or potions. He says, in essence, one thing only: that what we wish will come.
I submit that this is the deadliest message man will ever encounter in all literature. It thrusts upon him inescapable choices. Shakespeare's is the eternal, the true voice of the divine animal, piercing, as it has always pierced, the complacency of little centuries in which, encamped as in hidden thickets, men have sought to evade self-knowledge by describing themselves as men.
The long history of men, besides its ennobling features, contains also a disrupting malice which continues into the present. Since the rise of the first neolithic cultures, man has hanged, tortured, burned, and impaled his fellow men. He has done so while devoutly professing religions whose founders enjoined the very opposite upon their followers. It is as though we carried with us from some dark tree in a vanished forest, an insatiable thirst for cruelty. Of all the wounds man's bodily organization has suffered in his achievement of a thinking brain, this wound is the most grievous of all, this shadow of madness, which has haunted every human advance since the dawn of history and may well precipitate the final episode in the existence of the race.
It is within the power of great art to shed on nature a light which can be had from no other source than the mind itself.
“The is no Excellent Beauty that hath not some strangeness in the Proportion,” wrote [Francis:] Bacon in his days of insight. Anyone who has picked up shells on a strange beach can confirm his observation. But man, modern man, who has not contemplated his otherness, the multiplicity of other possible men who dwell or might have dwelt in him, has not realized the full terror and responsibility of existence.
It is through our minds alone that man passes like that swaying furious rider of the hayrick, farther and more desperately into the night. He is galloping—this twofold creature whom even Bacon glimpsed—across the storm-filled heath of time, from the dark world of the natural toward some dawn he seeks beyond the horizon.
Across that midnight landscape he rides with his toppling burden of despair and hope, bearing with him the beast's face and the dream, but unable to cast off either or to believe in either. For he is man, the changeling, in whom the sense of goodness has not perished, nor an eye for some supernatural guidepost in the night.
[…:] I believe that in one way or another we mirror in ourselves the universe with all its dark vacuity and also its simultaneous urge to create anew, in each generation, the beauty and the terror of our mortal existence.
[…:] the teacher is a sculptor of the intangible future. There is no more dangerous occupation on the planet, for what we conceive as our masterpiece may appear out of time to mock us—a horrible caricature of ourselves […:] The teacher cannot create, any more than can the sculptor, the stone upon which he exercises his talents [...:]
There is a shadow on the wall before me. It is my own; the hour is late. I write in a hotel room at midnight. Tomorrow the shadow on the wall will be that of another.
If you cannot bear the silence and the darkness, do not go there; if you dislike black night and yawning chasms, never make them your profession. If you fear the sound of water hurrying through crevices toward unknown and mysterious destinations, do not consider it. Seek out the sunshine. It is a simple prescription. Avoid the darkness.
It is a simple prescription, but you will not follow it. You will turn immediately to the darkness. You will be drawn to it by cords of fear and longing. You will imagine that you are tired of the sunlight; the waters that unnerve you will tug in the ancient recesses of your mind; the midnight will seem restful—you will end by going down.
Light the lights, I always say, but I have found that even this is no real security—not in the night. Because in the end you may find that the remaining light has only allowed you to see something it would have been better not to see at all.
[…:] I who write these words on paper, cannot establish my own reality. I am, by any reasonable and considered logic, dead. This may be a matter of concern, or even a secret, but if it is any consolation, I can assure you that all men are as dead as I. […:] the minute I start breaking this strange body down into its constituents, it is dead. It does not know me. Carbon does not speak, calcium does not remember, iron does not weep.
Emerson and Thoreau lived close enough to nature to know something still of animal intuition and wisdom. They had not reached that point of utter cynicism, that distrust of self and of the human past which leads finally to total entrapment in that past, “man crystallized,” as Emerson once again was shrewd enough to observe.
The terror that confronts our age is our own conception of ourselves. Above all else this is the potion which the modern Dr. Jekylls have concocted. As Shakespeare foresaw:
“It hath been taught us from the primal state
That he which is was wished until he were.”
This is not the voice of the witches. It is the clear voice of a great poet almost four centuries gone, who saw at the dawn of the scientific age what was to be the darkest problem of man: his conception of himself. The words are quiet, almost cryptic; they do not foretell. They imply a problem in free will. Shakespeare, in this passage, says nothing of starry influences, machinery, beakers, or potions. He says, in essence, one thing only: that what we wish will come.
I submit that this is the deadliest message man will ever encounter in all literature. It thrusts upon him inescapable choices. Shakespeare's is the eternal, the true voice of the divine animal, piercing, as it has always pierced, the complacency of little centuries in which, encamped as in hidden thickets, men have sought to evade self-knowledge by describing themselves as men.
The long history of men, besides its ennobling features, contains also a disrupting malice which continues into the present. Since the rise of the first neolithic cultures, man has hanged, tortured, burned, and impaled his fellow men. He has done so while devoutly professing religions whose founders enjoined the very opposite upon their followers. It is as though we carried with us from some dark tree in a vanished forest, an insatiable thirst for cruelty. Of all the wounds man's bodily organization has suffered in his achievement of a thinking brain, this wound is the most grievous of all, this shadow of madness, which has haunted every human advance since the dawn of history and may well precipitate the final episode in the existence of the race.
It is within the power of great art to shed on nature a light which can be had from no other source than the mind itself.
“The is no Excellent Beauty that hath not some strangeness in the Proportion,” wrote [Francis:] Bacon in his days of insight. Anyone who has picked up shells on a strange beach can confirm his observation. But man, modern man, who has not contemplated his otherness, the multiplicity of other possible men who dwell or might have dwelt in him, has not realized the full terror and responsibility of existence.
It is through our minds alone that man passes like that swaying furious rider of the hayrick, farther and more desperately into the night. He is galloping—this twofold creature whom even Bacon glimpsed—across the storm-filled heath of time, from the dark world of the natural toward some dawn he seeks beyond the horizon.
Across that midnight landscape he rides with his toppling burden of despair and hope, bearing with him the beast's face and the dream, but unable to cast off either or to believe in either. For he is man, the changeling, in whom the sense of goodness has not perished, nor an eye for some supernatural guidepost in the night.
[…:] I believe that in one way or another we mirror in ourselves the universe with all its dark vacuity and also its simultaneous urge to create anew, in each generation, the beauty and the terror of our mortal existence.
[…:] the teacher is a sculptor of the intangible future. There is no more dangerous occupation on the planet, for what we conceive as our masterpiece may appear out of time to mock us—a horrible caricature of ourselves […:] The teacher cannot create, any more than can the sculptor, the stone upon which he exercises his talents [...:]
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