The Abundance
Narrative Essays Old and New
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
In recognition of her long and lauded career as a master essayist, a landmark collection including her most beloved pieces and some rarely seen work, rigorously curated by the Pulitzer-Prize winning author herself
“A writer who never seems tired, who has never plodded her way through a page or sentence, Dillard can only be enjoyed by a wide-awake reader,” warns Geoff Dyer in his introduction to this stellar collection. Carefully culled from her past work, The Abundance is quintessential Annie Dillard, delivered in her fierce and undeniably singular voice, filled with fascinating detail and metaphysical fact. The pieces within will exhilarate both admiring fans and a new generation of readers, having been “re-framed and re-hung,” with fresh editing and reordering by the author, to situate these now seminal works within her larger canon.
The Abundance reminds us that Dillard’s brand of “novelized nonfiction” pioneered the form long before it came to be widely appreciated. Intense, vivid, and fearless, her work endows the true and seemingly ordinary aspects of life—a commuter chases snowball-throwing children through neighborhood streets, a teenager memorizes Rimbaud’s poetry—with beauty and irony, inviting readers onto sweeping landscapes, to join her in exploring the complexities of time and death, with a sense of humor: on one page, an eagle falls from the sky with a weasel attached to its throat; on another, a man walks into a bar.
Including such classic essays as "Total Eclipse," "A Writer in the World" and "On Foot in Virginia's Roanoke Valley," The Abundance exquisitely showcases Annie Dillard’s enigmatic, enduring genius, as Dillard herself wishes it to be marked.
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.