I want to share the woman I consider one of the greatest living writers, and certainly who I believe is one of the greatest thinkers of this age. Annie Dillard is an American writer known most for her essays and book-length narratives. She won the Pulitzer for her first book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), which spanned the year she spent living alone near said creek in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The book, divided into each of the four seasons, offers forth contemplations on nature and life, as well as the days she spent exploring the woods and fields around her. A self-described "book of theology," the book explores Dillard's thoughts on nature, writing, theodicy and the problem of evil in the natural world. Her journeys, it ought to be noted, rarely venture from the home she occupied outside Roanoke; rather, the book is a metaphysical chronicle.
Holy the Firm (1977) is a meditation on the problem of suffering in the world, and her 1982 collection of essays, Teaching a Stone to Talk, ranges from contrasting Dillard's observation of a total solar eclipse to the mundanity and ludicrousness of a contemporary church service to her recounting the slaughter of a doe and a trip she took to the Galapagos.
Her two novels, The Living (1992) and The Maytrees (2007), depict the struggle of pioneers settling the Pacific Northwest at the end of the 19th century and the tumultuous marriage of a bohemian couple in Cape Cod, respectively. These novels are infused with lyricism and metaphor, and are, in my opinion, exceptionally well-written.
Who else has the courage--the audacity, even--to write so fearlessly on matters with which men of all faiths and sciences have wrestled for millenia: birth, life, death, evil, the human condition and God? Dillard engages the fortunate reader through her unique and enduring fascination with the natural world, science and religion. I wrestle with writing a fitting description of Dillard--I have nearly unspeakable admiration for her and the books she's written are among that which I most cherish. She is never pushy with her beliefs; in fact, it is very difficult to determine just what Dillard believes, but ultimately that is irrelevant: she merely poses questions.
Dillard's other books include a meditation on the art of writing, The Writing Life (1989); a book of found poetry, Mornings Like This (1995); and For the Time Being (1999).
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