Good to have a cup of tea with once in a while

books:


	• The Writing Life Annie Dillard Harper Perennial, 1990 - 128 pages average customer review:based on 37 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Gem of a Book

This book is a gem - the best book I have yet had the privilege of reading about the craft of writing. When finished, you are left with a sense of many aspects of being a writer - the mystery, the satisfaction, the needed humility, the sublimity... and most of all, the work and the waiting.

Though it may seem at times that Dillard makes the craft of writing too ethereal, too abstract, this is counterbalanced by austere sensibility. Her voice, though exceptionally beautiful and intelligent, is surprisingly conversational. One feels as though she is not writing artificially.

My favorite quote from The Writing Life has to be, "Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case" (68). Though Dillard does not write from a noticeably Christian perspective, this rings true for me in so many ways, including spiritually. She says, "Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed?" (72).

And just when you think she is becoming too sublime, she says something like, "It is no less difficult to write sentences in a recipe than sentences in Moby-Dick. So you might as well write Moby-Dick" (71). She has an enviable power to say things in simple, precise, but imaginative terms. Her analogies are strong and brilliant - biting at one moment, dazzling at the next. She is a master at showing instead of telling.

Full of personal anecdotes, colorful imagery, and striking insights, The Writing Life is the perfect companion for anyone who cares about giving voice to his or her way of looking at the world.

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Hollow inspiration

While this book is sometimes inspiration, as I would hope it to be, it also wanders off subject in ways that are only distracting. Any book on the craft of writing is liable to have lofty portions that make great analogies between the craft and other things, but Dillard stretches things much too far while spending much too much time on it. Hearing the details of a writer's life, their quirks and struggles, is heartening and it is in this that Dillard enlightens, but I also expect a book on craft to spend more time on craft. While I want to hear how hard it was to find time to write and how priorities shift when in the throes of creative vision, but I also want to consider the details. I want to hear what other writers think about the use of first person, on whether or not one must like or at least sympathize with a protagonist. The Writing Life did none of these things. It left me feeling pretty hollow. At least it is a thin little book.

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Dangerously Engaging

I recently received this book in the mail.

I opened the package and sat at my desk in my college dorm room; I had no idea what was about to happen.

The clock read 11:46 pm as I started into this short read, and I seemingly did not take a breath until I was finished with the last page over an hour later. Annie Dillard once again captured every exciting aspect of writing in one of her works, and she managed to contain it all in little over a hundred pages.

Dillard is one of the best American writers of our time, and this book proves it. It is worth ten times what you will pay for it.

If you have any passion for writing, you will love this book.
If you would like to get inside the head of the great Annie Dillard, you will love this book.

Buy it, check it out, borrow it; read it somehow.

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One writer's practice and wisdom

The 'Paris Review Interviews' which were started by George Plimpton interviewed over at least two decades scores of writers on questions of their writing habits and practices. Hemingway sharpened dozens of pencils before beginning the day's work, and Faulkner told us about how he read no contemporary authors but only returned again and again to the eternal favorites to Shakespeare and Cervantes. In her essay here Annie Dillard discusses her own unique habits as a writer, and tells how she thinks about it, and practices her craft. She discusses the difficulties for her of the writing life, and the intense and painful practice of bringing work to the level she finds right. A longtime reader and interpreter of Thoreau she has something of his devotion to nature, and his solitary reflectiveness. She hears her own drummer and has beaten a path to the heart of many readers.
But every writer has of course to find their own way. So not the whole of the story but some hint or suggestion along the way might well prove useful to the many aspiring writers who might read this work.

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Good to have a cup of tea with once in a while

This is a charming little book--honest, somewhat lucid, and, at times, helpful. "The Writing Life" is Dillard's reflections on her writing life, written in a way that is quite conversational. For those of you who are finding your way through your own writing life, and, as I do, often need a little encouragement, then this is a neat little book to have on your nightstand. Relax, pour yourself a cup of tea, and read a chapter or two; perhaps then take a little nap--you'll feel better in no time.

My only caution is that this 'genre' of writing is growing in strength, summoning forth both astute and sophomoric writers to join its ranks. You'll find yourself spending more and more precious time reading about the 'theory' of writing, rather than working through the pain of your own creative process. Hence, I'd suggest only engaging in this type of writing once in a while; and perhaps have only two or so of these books in your library. I recommend both this one, and a little gem by the great Canadian writer, Margaret Atwood, entitled, "Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing".

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Annie Dillard has written eleven books, including the memoir of her parents, An American Childhood; the Northwest pioneer epic The Living; and the nonfiction narrative Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. A gregarious recluse, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

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