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Nature's Kindred Spirits: Aldo Leopold, Joseph Wood Krutch, Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard, and Gary Snyder
In Nature's Kindred Spirits James McClintock shows how their mystical experiences with the wild led to dramatic conversions in their thinking and behavior. By embracing the ecstasy of nature, they reject modern alienation and spiritual confusion.
From Aldo Leopold, America's most important conservationist and author of the classic A Sand County Almanac, to Pulitzer Prize winners Annie Dillard and Gary Snyder and defenders of the desert Joseph Wood Krutch and Edward Abbey, these writers share a common vision that harkens back to Henry David Thoreau and John Muir. To nineteenth-century Romantic ideals, they add the authority of modern ecological science. Collectively they have elevated nature's importance in American culture, shaping the growth of the environmental movement and influencing American environmental policies.
Widely admired among educated readers but relatively neglected by the literary establishment, these writers unite the experiential with the metaphysical, the ordinary with the sacred, the personal with the public, and the natural with the social. Using ecology as a touchstone, McClintock further draws connections among science, politics, religion, and philosophy to create an enlightening overview of the work of these "kindred spirits."
From Aldo Leopold, America's most important conservationist and author of the classic A Sand County Almanac, to Pulitzer Prize winners Annie Dillard and Gary Snyder and defenders of the desert Joseph Wood Krutch and Edward Abbey, these writers share a common vision that harkens back to Henry David Thoreau and John Muir. To nineteenth-century Romantic ideals, they add the authority of modern ecological science. Collectively they have elevated nature's importance in American culture, shaping the growth of the environmental movement and influencing American environmental policies.
Widely admired among educated readers but relatively neglected by the literary establishment, these writers unite the experiential with the metaphysical, the ordinary with the sacred, the personal with the public, and the natural with the social. Using ecology as a touchstone, McClintock further draws connections among science, politics, religion, and philosophy to create an enlightening overview of the work of these "kindred spirits."
- GenresNatureNonfiction
200 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1994
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 6, 2007
It was reading this book that I knew I wanted to be a nature writer.
August 4, 2016
James I. McClintock is an emeritus professor of English at Michigan State University, and his work on Nature's Kindred Spirits: Aldo Leopold, Joseph Wood Krutch, Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard, And Gary Snyder reveals not only excellent research but a writing style that honors his topic.
All five of the naturalist/philosopher authors he chose have that same sensibility--a deep reverence for the natural world AND for the written word. This is not a book to be read lightly; I've allowed myself several months to let this work have the attention it deserves. The rhythms of his sentences need time for today's hurried brains to adjust.
His very first sentence reads: "One way to think about Aldo Leopold, Joseph Wood Krutch, Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard, and Gary Snyder as a group is that they have integrated Thoreauvian Romanticism and twentieth-century ecological biology." And my college English major "ears" perked up, knowing I was headed on a journey that immediately expected the reader to know Thoreau and the Romantic movement, as well something about 20th century biology.
At a personal level, this book touches my heart, since I have identified myself as a pantheist--and this one quotation shows both McClintock's intricate writing style plus his grasp of the basic ideas of pantheism:
"Leopold didn't believe in a personal God. He believed in a 'mystical supreme power that guided the universe...akin to the laws of nature.' His son Luna concluded that 'he, like many of the rest of us, was kind of pantheistic.' His religious feeling was closer to that caught in Joseph Wood Krutch's phrase, 'we are in this together' and to Albert Schweitzer's 'reverence for life' with which Rachel Carson so identified that she dedicated Silent Spring to him."
This quotation by Walt Whitman is used to link all these incredible writers:
from the preface to LEAVES OF GRASS
http://www.bartleby.com/39/45.html
"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem..."
So much of this book is "holy" to me--so I'll end this review here and simply recommend it to anyone who loves Thoreau and his beliefs.
All five of the naturalist/philosopher authors he chose have that same sensibility--a deep reverence for the natural world AND for the written word. This is not a book to be read lightly; I've allowed myself several months to let this work have the attention it deserves. The rhythms of his sentences need time for today's hurried brains to adjust.
His very first sentence reads: "One way to think about Aldo Leopold, Joseph Wood Krutch, Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard, and Gary Snyder as a group is that they have integrated Thoreauvian Romanticism and twentieth-century ecological biology." And my college English major "ears" perked up, knowing I was headed on a journey that immediately expected the reader to know Thoreau and the Romantic movement, as well something about 20th century biology.
At a personal level, this book touches my heart, since I have identified myself as a pantheist--and this one quotation shows both McClintock's intricate writing style plus his grasp of the basic ideas of pantheism:
"Leopold didn't believe in a personal God. He believed in a 'mystical supreme power that guided the universe...akin to the laws of nature.' His son Luna concluded that 'he, like many of the rest of us, was kind of pantheistic.' His religious feeling was closer to that caught in Joseph Wood Krutch's phrase, 'we are in this together' and to Albert Schweitzer's 'reverence for life' with which Rachel Carson so identified that she dedicated Silent Spring to him."
This quotation by Walt Whitman is used to link all these incredible writers:
from the preface to LEAVES OF GRASS
http://www.bartleby.com/39/45.html
"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem..."
So much of this book is "holy" to me--so I'll end this review here and simply recommend it to anyone who loves Thoreau and his beliefs.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews