Trending claims

Annie Dillard's book contains many excerpts from authors such as Thoreau, Fabre, and Darwin.

Fact: In "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek," the author and a boy pass each other on a one-brick-wide wall during a flood by clasping hands and leaning out over the water.

Fact: "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" includes an account of the migration of monarch butterflies.

Fact: In her book, Annie Dillard describes a flood on Tinker Creek, which she says looked "like a blacksnake caught in a kitchen drawer."

Fact: According to the reviewer, Annie Dillard is substantially the only person in her book, with no other human speech included.

Fact: "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" contains an account of a polyphemus moth emerging from its cocoon in the presence of schoolchildren.

Statement: Annie Dillard describes herself in her book as "a poet and a walker with a background in theology and a penchant for quirky facts," not a scientist.

Fact: Annie Dillard's book "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" is described as offering "a meteorological journal of the mind," a phrase attributed to Thoreau.

Statement: Annie Dillard defines innocence in her book as "the spirit's unself-conscious state at any moment of pure devotion to any object."

Fact: The narrative of "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" involves Annie Dillard tramping the Roanoke creek banks and the Blue Ridge mountainside.

Fact: Annie Dillard's book recounts a story of a formerly blind child who, after cataract surgery, saw "the tree with lights in it."

The narrator claims to have once broken a framed painting over a pedestrian's skull.

The typewriter was invented in various forms starting in 1867 and was in common use by 1900.

The author found a joke about a fireplace cooling a room in Werner Heisenberg's book 'Physics and Beyond'.

The narrator states they are almost six feet tall, give or take a few inches.

Werner Heisenberg's book 'Physics and Beyond' attributes a remark about a fireplace acting as a cooling device to Niels Bohr.

There is a famous case of a Tennessee mountain hermit who, in the 1930s, claimed to have invented the typewriter.

Julia A. Moore was known by the nickname 'the sweet singer of Michigan'.

Annie Dillard's memoir 'An American Childhood' is about her growing up in Pittsburgh.

One of Annie Dillard's essays published in the magazine ends with the line, 'Possible books abound; I’d rather write an impossible page.'