Other ReiAt Cosmoetica, Eiseley’s essays exerted an ongoing influence on Dan Schneider.
The way humans inflect themselves into the world & attach themselves to things in an attempt to create metaphor unconsciously is something Loren Eiseley is both at peace with, & at marvel of.
Despite Eiseley’s effect on him as an impressionable youth, it was the autobiographical All the Strange Hours that moved Schneider the most.
Far more so than his brilliant essays (yet agleam through the strewn cobwebs of early surmise), & infinitely more so than his rather pedestrian poetry, this book touched me like only 3 other books had done so previously.
Schneider is perhaps suspicious of essay-writing that he terms “Covert Inner Essay,” or essays which use a topic as a vehicle for personal opinion. He feels such work is “persuasion.” That said, Schneider is clearly moved by this autobiographical effort. Eiseley’s personal slant has a direct, if anguished appeal for this reader.
