Fox at the Wood's Edge: A Biography of Loren Eiseley

by Gale E. Christianson

Loren Eiseley challenges us to this day with his uneasy interpretation of humanity's place in the world. The haunting melancholy that pervades much of Eiseley's work grew out of a loveless childhood in which he spent much time alone in the natural world. His mother was mentally ill and his father, a singularly unsuccessful traveling salesman, spent little time at home. Perhaps in an effort to compensate, Eiseley drove himself relentlessly to succeed. Gale E. Christian-son's biography offers an unexpurgated evaluation of a man whose difficult past helped shape the brilliant essays that continue to dazzle new audiences.

Genres: Biography

518 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Gale E. Christianson is retired from Indiana State University, where he served as Distinguished Professor of the College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of History. He is a Guggenheim Fellow, a Huntington Library Fellow, and the recipient of numerous other grants and awards. Christianson lives in Terre Haute, where he continues to research and write.

Reviews

[Chrisl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Christianson begins with a quote:

"Unpublished Beginning of Autobiography

"It is the ruse of the fox; I learned it long ago. In the pages which follow I will show you fear, I will show you terror. But huntsman, let us have one thing clear: I am a man, in flight. Though I am an archaeologist by profession, there are tombs that for my life I would not enter, vaults through whose doorways I would not descend, silence that on my deathbed I will not break. Though I sit in a warm room beneath a light and compose these lines, they are all of night, of outer darkness, and inner terrors. They are the annals of a long and uncompleted running. I set them down lest the end come on me unaware, as it does upon all fugitives. There is a shadow on the wall before me. It is my own. I write in a borrowed room at midnight. Tomorrow the shadow on the wall will be that of another. Very well, huntsman, let the hunt begin."

Loren Eiseley
June 20, 1963

***

If you know little about Eiseley, this is a comprehensive, er, over-detailed. Perhaps somewhat academic, with index.
I suggest, instead, you obtain his bio, "All the Strange Hours."
All the Strange Hours

[Raymonds009 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having read "The Immense Journey" in my college days--so many years ago, this was a supreme pleasure. The author was an unlikely academic who transformed our understanding of anthropology. He did this following his instincts.

Eiseley also, stood firm in his belief that the sciences were enhanced by literary expression while all around him many of his critics said that his writings were too poetic for the science student and those in the arts could not understand the general public's overwhelming positive response to his works. Although he had no interest in the beats or the early hippie culture they took to him like moths to a flame. He even struck cords where he didn't care to find compatriots.

[Deb · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. A fine biography of a great writer and interesting and troubled man.

[Richard Fulgham · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found little sympathy for Dr. Eiseley in this otherwise factual biography. It's coldness made me suspect the author chose Eiseley to write about because he was so popular when she was in graduate school. this may have been her dissertation, the way it so drily gives the details of his life. Do I need an example. Well, she says (not implies) that Dr. Eiseley turned down a trip to Oldavai Gorge in Africa with Dr. Leaky and Dr. Raymond Dart because he feared "being exposed as a writer pretending to be a great anthropoogist". She bases this assertion of the fact that Dr. Eiseley was not required to write a PhD dissertation because he was offered an early job as a professor of anthropolgy at Penn State, which Eiseley went on to make world famous for its anthrology department and its "Museum of Man". So thumbs down on this cold writer with no heart and no understanding of her subject.

[Catherine]

An interesting, well-paced, and mostly sympathetic biography of an interesting man and a transcendent writer.

[Rpinet]

I stopped after a false start