The Abundance
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
Annie Dillard has spent a lifetime examining the world around her with eyes wide open, drinking in all things intensely and relentlessly. Whether observing a sublime lunar eclipse or a moth consumed in a candle flame, the trembling of lily pads on a pond or hundreds of red-winged blackbirds taking flight, Dillard's awe at the fragility of the natural world rejuvenates and inspires pleasure and heartache. Precise in language and deeply meditative in spirit, this is a landmark collection from one of America's masters.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Whether she’s describing watching a total eclipse or discovering a mess of shrivelled moth carcasses in her home, Annie Dillard has an uncanny gift for bringing you into the startling, iconoclastic crevices of her mind. Dillard writes about nature, but in doing so, she makes profoundly beautiful and affecting observations about human life. The collected essays that make up The Abundance—written between the ‘70s and today—are absolutely mesmerising, origami puzzles to be admired from many different angles.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This collection gathers together many of Pulitzer-winner Dillard's best-known writings, drawn from eight of her books, as well as one piece previously published in Harper's Magazine. After witnessing a total eclipse early one morning, Dillard meditates on the human awe at, and wariness of, natural spectacle: "From the depths of mystery, and even from the heights of splendor, we bounce back and hurry for the latitudes of home." Without being awake and attentive, Dillard warns, we'll miss the wondrous details of the world around us and the nuances of our own lives: "I would like to live as I should, as the weasel lives as he should: open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will." On writing, Dillard declares: "Don't hoard what seems good for another book... anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you." Fans of Dillard will find nothing new, but this collection serves as a bracing introduction for readers unfamiliar with her work.
