cover image The Lost Notebooks of Loren Eiseley

The Lost Notebooks of Loren Eiseley

Loren G. Eiseley. Little Brown and Company, $22.95 (260pp) ISBN 978-0-316-35921-4

At the time of his death in 1977, Eiseley left an unfinished novel, nature jottings, notebooks that contained ideas for speeches and articles, poetry and short stories from his schooldays. Heuer, who edited many of Eiseley's books, has sifted through this vast trove, organizing the material chronologically to trace the development of a writer and thinker. From Eiseley's early years the selections include poetry, tapes of hoboing during the Depression and stories of archeological digs that border on the supernatural. The middle section presents the author of The Immense Journey, with reflections on nature and mankind. In the last decade of his life, Eiseley was widely recognized both for his prose and poetry; the final section includes representative examples of both, plus his observations on the world of nature around him. As this posthumous collection verifies, Eiseley has rightly been called ""the modern Thoreau.'' Nature Book Society alternate. (September 22)