The Writing Life (Paperback)
Staff Reviews
I'm in love with Annie Dillard and I refuse to be embarrassed about it. Embarrassment is such a wildly discordant and useless reaction toward things I'm inclined to love, but all the same, it's been a chronically paralyzing force. This book is not a writing how-to guide, and does not offer tips on style or structure. Instead, Dillard, in not exactly a gentle way, writes of the life writing demands, a life if not free of embarrassment, then at least of enough ferocity (and low-level insanity) to muscle past it. She writes of the sensations of writing, at its worst and, with a poetry and lucidity so characteristic of her, its best. And how mobilizing this is! Like a naked jump into icy water, or whatever gets you there.
— From Madison's Picks!"For nonwriters, it is a glimpse into the trials and satisfactions of a life spent with words. For writers, it is a warm, rambling, conversation with a stimulating and extraordinarily talented colleague." — Chicago Tribune
From Pulitzer Prize-winning Annie Dillard, a collection that illuminates the dedication and daring that characterizes a writer's life.
In these short essays, Annie Dillard—the author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and An American Childhood—illuminates the dedication, absurdity, and daring that characterize the existence of a writer. A moving account of Dillard’s own experiences while writing her works, The Writing Life offers deep insight into one of the most mysterious professions.
Annie Dillard is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, An American Childhood, The Writing Life, The Living and The Maytrees. She is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters and has received fellowship grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
"A kind of spiritual Strunk White, a small and brilliant guidebook to the landscape of a writer's task...Dillard brings the same passion and connective intelligence to this narrative as she has to her other work." — Boston Globe
"For her book is...scattered with pearl. Each reader will be attracted to different bright parts...Gracefully and simply told, these little stories illuminate the writing life...Her advice to writers is encouraging and invigorating." — Cleveland Plain Dealer
"For nonwriters, it is a glimpse into the tirals and satisfactions of a life spent with words. For writers, it is a warm, rambling, conversation with a stimulating and extraordinarily talented colleague." — Chicago Tribune
"The Writing Life is a spare volume...that has the power and force of a detonating bomb...A book bursting with metaphors and prose bristling with incident." — Detroit News