Hungry For Fingertips

Here are today’s Wonderful Words:

Every one of these machines looked and sounded hungry for fingertips.

A Place of My Own, Michael Pollan, page 242

Background

This sentence follows a detailed description of the woodworking machines used to transform wood into window sills. It’s from a chapter on windows in a book about an author-turned-carpenter building himself a writing room.

What makes it wonderful?

If you’ve spent any time in a wood shop—or around people who work with their hands, you probably know someone who donated digits to a table saw.

My 8th grade shop teacher operated half a finger short of a full set. Actually, it was half a thumb. The stub he had left was short and misshapen from a fight with a table saw. (Isn’t it interesting that the word mishap is hiding inside misshapen?)

My brother in law—one of the handiest people I know—barely hung on to a fingertip tattooed by the teeth of a table saw.

So when I hear a woodworking tool described as hungry for fingertips, it’s not an abstract account. It’s a reminder of reality.

This is what good descriptions do. They trigger your memory like a scent or a song and send you back in time to a specific moment.

Great writers relate to their readers in ways they know will resonate. Maybe you don’t know anyone who fell victim to a machine hungry for fingertips. But readers of A Place of My Own probably do.

Let's get technical

Pollan uses personification in this passage to add character and familiarity to the lifeless machines he’s describing.

Personification is a kind of metaphor where you describe a non-human in human terms.

Machines don’t literally get hungry, but imagining them that way makes for a better description. Can you picture the band saw rubbing its belly with hunger while watching a finger inch closer to its blade?

It seems silly, but it’s more interesting than describing the machines as dangerous.

Caution and danger are words best saved for warning labels. Hungry for fingertips—now that’s worthy of a place on the page.

A recurring theme in these emails is relatability. It keeps your readers engaged. It makes them feel like you’re sharing a spicy secret rather than a drab detail. Relatability is your goal as a writer. Personification is one more way to achieve it.

Happy writing,

Joe