31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Yesterdays, July 30, 2002
This review is from: All the Strange Hours: The Excavation of a Life (Paperback)
Reading Loren Eiseley, you are a visitor in a world shaped by experiences that seldom have found a voice such as his. An isolated Nebraska childhood in the early decades of the 20th century, and an even more isolating experience riding the rails as a drifter during the Great Depression -- these are not auspicious beginnings for a respected writer or a scholar. His family was poor, and his deaf, deranged mother haunted his life. From early on, he was a loner, with a poet's sensibility, who learned to welcome the gifts of solitude and nature.
On fossil digs on the High Plains during his university summers, he developed a fascination for the evolution of life on planet Earth. He was at ease fathoming the great sweep of millennia in which this present era is hardly more than a brief moment. While very much a scientist of the mid-20th century, he regarded the Ice Age as a recent event. And this perspective colors his thoughts with a sense of wonder that modern day readers are not accustomed to finding in books on any topic.
Eiseley wrote as a scientist, but his vision was always personal, even when he was writing about vast subjects. As a writer, he had a remarkable ability to make his subject matter exciting and accessible to nonscientists. Though he was celebrated as a great nature writer, one of the best since Thoreau, his true subject is Time. In "All the Strange Hours" he looks back over his life of 75 years.
Not quite an autobiography, it is a collection of episodes that were key points in his life. Some are humorous, some poignant, some grimly sad, some angry. There are accounts of recovering his health in the Mojave of California, a trip to Tijuana, where his entire energy is spent keeping a drunken companion out of trouble, a "perfect day" drinking grape pop under a railway water tank with three other drifters.
He writes of academic politics, student unrest in the 60s, losing his hearing, stray dogs, wasps, dancing cranes, a cat that bows and another one that talks, ancient burial chambers, a jail break in a blizzard, and the impact of homo sapiens' discovery of fire. And there are fascinating accounts of dreams. As a writer, Eiseley has a wide ranging knowledge of many subjects, and the connections he makes between them are unpredictable and sometimes breath-taking.
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Terrible Beauty of Existance, January 13, 2003
This review is from: All the Strange Hours: The Excavation of a Life (Paperback)
This is a beautifully written personal meditation on the impermance of life against the passage of time and the attendant sense of loss by a deeply compassionate existentialist who searches for the meaning within the design of nature. There is a palatable sense of both truth and despair. There is also a consistant thread of both awed respect and admiration for the immensity of "the terrible beauty" of existance. If you are looking for a book that balances the invisibly fine line between the light and the dark of insight from the perspective of a honest man who grasps both, this is your book.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
an amazing man, April 19, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: All the Strange Hours: The Excavation of a Life (Paperback)
I read this book after having read several of Eiseley's books, and I gained even more respect for him. Eiseley led a fascinating life. For example, as a young man he rode the rails as a hobo for some time before going to college. Eiseley was a dynamic writer and one of my favorite things about his writing is the way he was able to take seemingly ordinary events and turn them into epiphanies. One extraordinary event in his life, however, was when he temporarily lost his hearing. You will be mesmerized by his account of this episode. I can't recommend this book enough. In my opinion he is one of the truly great men of history.
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