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Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

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This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I plan to bring it to FAC sometime in the next month. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is a highly notable work of non-fiction, and one of my personal favorites. The article has already been promoted to GA, and I believe that it covers the book in a fair amount of detail. Suggestions/comments as to how it fulfills the FA criteria would be much appreciated. Thanks! María (yllosubmarine) 19:59, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]


Brianboulton comments: An excellent piece of work. I note that it received a very thorough GA review in Dececeber, and it looks to me to be nearly FAC-ready. My comments are in the main of a minor, stylistic nature:-

Background and publication
  • "it instructed one on the study and collection of plants and insects". Sounds rather arch; perhaps drop the "one"?
  • Could we have dates of attendance and graduation at Hollins College?
  • Any reason why Dillard briefly becomes "Annie"?
  • It's in a quote, but "bolding"? Did he mean "boldly"? ("to make clear, and to state bolding, what it was [she] was up to,")
Summary
  • "point-of-view" is not normally a hyphenated term. Personally I think "perspective" would be a better word.
  • It may help to clarify the construction of the book if you could indicate how the fifteen chapters are organised in the four sections. Are the sections named? Also, the final paragraph of this section refers to the book being in two halves.
  • The second half ends with the chapter "Northing", but the list shows another chapter after this.
Style and genre
  • I think a comma is required after "Although the two works are often compared" (although there are differences in punc styles between AmEng and BritEng).
  • I am struggling with this: "Dillard herself later referred to the "invisible narrator" in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and the book's narrator—while referring to the "infinite power" of God—asserts that "invisibility is the all-time great 'cover'". Could this be rephrased for greater clarity (and perhaps lose "herself")?
  • Yeesh, this whole thing needed to be rewritten; now it reads: "Dillard seemingly refers to the idea of an "invisible narrator" in the sixth chapter of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek; while referring to the "infinite power" of God, the narrator notes that "invisibility is the all-time great 'cover'"." María (yllosubmarine) 20:46, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • In the third paragraph, two mdash interpolations in rapid succession fracture the prose flow. I suggest: "Nancy C. Parrish, author of the 1998 book Lee Smith, Annie Dillard, and the Hollins Group: A Genesis of Writers notes that despite its having been written in the first person, Pilgrim is not necessarily autobiographical.
  • That book title alerts me to the possible existence of a "Hollins Group" of writers. Was there such a recognised group? There appears to be no other references to it in the article.
  • Not officially, no. Parrish creates a connection between a small group of women writers that came out of Hollins in the late-sixties. Smith and Dillard were friends, but she didn't have any impact on Pilgrim as far as I can tell. María (yllosubmarine) 20:46, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Seeing and awareness
  • Remove stray comma in first line, after "natural world"
  • Second paragraph: I would omit the first five words and begin "In the book..."
  • I'd also remove the "seeing" repetition, thus: "Pilgrim's second chapter defines two types of seeing: as "verbalization" (active) and as "letting go" (passive)."
  • However, this distinction does not seem to be followed up in the quotations which dominate the remainder of the section.
  • The statement "Furthermore, the structure of the book itself leads to an epiphany of self-awareness" seems somewhat declarative, unless it can be related directly to what the critic Sandra Johnson has said.
Reception and awards
  • I'm a bit surprised to read that "Pilgrim received very little critical attention until more than five years after its publication", bearing in mind that its 29-year-old author won a Pulitzer Prize – surely something that drew attention to the work? Also you follow this statement with quotations from te critics of three national publications, so maybe "very little" is an overstatement.
  • The title of Slovic's book is so long that it's hard to get the sense of the sentence. Is it necessary to give the whole title in the text, since it's given in the sources? Thus: "In his 1992 book the critic Scott Slovic wrote..."

I wonder if it might be worth asking User:Wadewitz for some further comments? She doesn't seem to have much WP time at present, but will do the occassional review, and this is very much in her area of interest. Please let me know when the article is at FAC (although I prowl around there quite often and will probably notice it). Brianboulton (talk) 12:56, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks so much for the great review, Brian! I would love for Wadewitz to review, but I know how incredibly busy she is. I believe I asked last year if she had any interest in reviewing The Red Badge of Courage when it was at FAC, but didn't receive a reply. No worries, though. :) Thanks again! María (yllosubmarine) 20:46, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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