In the Afterword of the 1999 edition of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek Dillard writes, “Inexplicably, this difficult book has often strayed into boarding-school and high-school curricula as well as required college courses… Consequently, I suspect, many educated adult who would have enjoyed it, or at least understood it, never opened it—why read a book your kid is toting? And consequently a generation of youth has grown up cursing my name…"
