For the Time Being: Essays by annie dillard

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

July 15,2025

Utterly lifechanging.

If you haven't read Annie Dillard, it's like imagining that Mary Oliver, with her beautiful and profound poetry, somehow got a PhD in theology. The brilliance of Dillard's mind truly dazzles.

This collection of essays is a remarkable literary experience. They seem to weave around you, much like a complex and intricate web. As you progress through the book, the essays pull tighter and tighter, drawing you in deeper and deeper. They glance off various themes and ideas, sometimes in a seemingly random way, but always with a purpose.

And then, at certain moments, they land ecstatically in their own center, revealing a truth or a perspective that is both profound and moving. It's as if Dillard is leading you on a journey of discovery, one that challenges your assumptions and expands your understanding of the world.

Reading this collection is not just an intellectual exercise; it's a transformative experience that can change the way you see and think about life.

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lzsncr

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

July 15,2025

The miracle of this book lies in the remarkable way Dillard manages to access the universally significant truths, which are nothing short of the fundamental aspects of our lives. She accomplishes this through the use of highly specific and captivating stories, examples, and juxtapositions of information.

Rather than simply telling us the truths, she shows them to us, often revealing them in ways that can be quite horrifying. Astonishingly, despite the absence of a single illustration, the book is as visually detailed as any I've come across in a long time.

This book was recommended to me by an artist friend, and I'm truly savoring every page. I find myself rereading passages as I progress, allowing the profound insights to sink in as deeply as possible. It's a literary gem that continues to amaze and inspire with each turn of the page.

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WindChange

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

July 15,2025

I'm truly not yet prepared to pen down my thoughts about this profoundly revelatory little book. For now, let me just say that I borrowed it from the library, and by page 7, I was certain that I had to have my own copy to mark, and mark, and mark again, making it truly mine. I have a hunch that I'll be returning to this book for years to come.

Dillard states that there were no heroic eras of the past, nor was there a generation that was once pure. It's just us here, and it has always been so: a people who are busy, powerful, knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful, and self-aware. A people who scheme, promote, deceive, and conquer, yet also pray for their loved ones and long to escape misery and avoid death. The idea that rural people once knew God intimately, or even knew selflessness, courage, or literature, but that it's too late for us, is a weakening and fading concept. In fact, the absolute is accessible to everyone in every age. There has never been a more holy age than ours, nor a less holy one.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit archeologist who serves as one of the touchstones for the text, said that throughout his entire life, every minute of it, the world has been gradually brightening and blazing before his eyes until it has come to surround him, completely illuminated from within.

Dillard also says that ecstasy, in her opinion, is a soul's response to the waves of holiness as it approaches.

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Kauandal

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

July 15,2025

This is the rare book that has managed to reach the top echelon of my favorite Creative Non Fiction texts. Alongside just a very few others, it is a definite contender for being one of my most beloved books of all time, without a doubt.

I have now read this book twice. The second reading was even more enjoyable than the first, although being aware of much of what was coming diminished the shock impact of certain passages. She weaves several themes throughout the book. Each theme is powerfully explored on its own, but at times there is an easy flow from one to another. This is interspersed with the occasional abrupt and surprising transition that seems to freeze one to another. Additionally, there are the occasional seemingly non-sequitur facts, such as regarding the numbers of human beings who have died throughout time compared to the living. All of this is sprinkled with the exposition of detailed observations, of things given to us by nature or made by our own hands, whether modern or ancient.

I listened to an interview with Ms. Dillard on a recent anniversary of Pilgrim at Tinker Crink. It was amusing to me, having just read For The Time Being twice in the last year and a half, that she preferred to talk about For The Time Being. She asserted that most of the people she knew or heard from who were writers themselves considered this book her very best work.

To attempt to say what this book is about is to do an automatic injustice to the act of reading it. The book expresses what it is about in its dialogical way. Because I always felt, when reading it, that I was engaged in a strange conversation with a wise and delightful woman, not just a passive listener to another's words.

Nevertheless, it can be said that it is an intensely accurate series of ways of discussing what it means to be human. It explores what it is to look out into the world and see what we see, hear what we hear. It delves into what it is to have some relationship with Creation, suffering, horror, and magnificence.

Even if one finds the way the book begins challenging, do not stop there! You will almost certainly not regret having spent the time engaging with the author's text and with all that it provokes within and around you during and for several days after completing it.

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Arilayna

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

July 15,2025

I'm awarding this particular work three stars. The reason being that for such a concise book, it is extremely dense. Admittedly, I'm not a huge fan of philosophy. However, even so, I found the material quite challenging to engage with for the most part. I highly doubt that I would have persisted with the print version.

Thankfully, Tavia Gilbert's enthusiasm in the audio version was so palpable that it managed to draw me in and carry me along. People who have an interest in well-written contemplations regarding the nature of human existence should definitely find this one to be a real gem! It offers profound insights and thought-provoking ideas that are sure to stimulate the mind and encourage further reflection on the meaning and purpose of our lives.

Overall, despite its initial difficulties, this book has the potential to be a truly rewarding read (or listen) for those who are willing to invest the time and effort to explore its depths.

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zephyr_13

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

July 15,2025

First experience with Dillard; strange, but (imho) worth it:

On the dry Laetoli plain of northern Tanzania, Mary Leakey made a remarkable discovery. She found a trail of hominid footprints. The three barefoot individuals, likely a short man, a woman, and a child Australopithecus, walked closely together. They traversed the moist volcanic tuff and ash. We have a precious record of those few seconds from a day approximately 3.6 million years ago, long before hominids even began to chip stone tools. More ash blanketed the footprints and hardened like plaster. The ash also preserved the pockmarks of the raindrops that fell beside the three walkers; it was a rainy day. We have nearly ninety feet of the three's steady footprints intact.

However, we are left with many questions. We do not know where they were headed or the reason for their journey. We also do not know why the woman paused and turned left briefly before continuing. 'A remote ancestor,' Leakey said, 'experienced a moment of doubt.' Perhaps they witnessed the eruption of the Sadiman volcano or took a final look before departing. What we do know is that we cannot create anything as enduring as these three barefoot individuals did. Their footprints are a testament to a distant past and a reminder of the mysteries that still lie within our evolutionary history.

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Kanna_Chan29

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

July 15,2025

This was yet another book that I had the opportunity to read for a class.

Initially, my impression of this book was far from favorable. There was a distinct lack of a proper introduction, which left me somewhat disoriented. Moreover, I found the subject matter to be needlessly disheartening. However, as I delved deeper into the text and continued reading, I began to realize that this sad but true topic - infants born with severe physical disabilities - had ignited a profound and far-reaching conversation within the author.

Throughout the course of the book, the author endeavors to answer the thought-provoking questions that are presented in the opening few pages. What exactly are humans? Why do we possess the characteristics and qualities that we do? Does our existence hold any inherent meaning? What is the nature of religion? Is there a single, true religion? Does God exist? Is God omnipotent? If God is all-powerful, then why do bad things occur? In a similar vein, what is the essence of morality? It was truly captivating to observe how one idea seamlessly flowed into the next, as well as the diverse range of sources that Dillard employed in an attempt to make sense of our place, both within this vast universe and beyond it.

Not only were the questions themselves intrinsically interesting, but the manner in which Dillard explored these ideas was highly effective. Each chapter is divided into headings, and each heading more or less picks up where the previous chapter's heading left off. This means that each heading is not only connected to its own chapter but also to sections of a story that span across every chapter of the book. Undoubtedly, this must have been an extremely challenging feat to accomplish while writing: ensuring that each chapter remained coherent without sacrificing the different questions or themes that each heading consistently addressed. Additionally, I firmly believe that the headings play a crucial role in giving the book a sense of rhythm and organization, preventing it from devolving into an incomprehensible stream-of-consciousness mess. It is all too easy to overlook the importance of the book's organization, but in my opinion, it is the very thread that holds the entire narrative together. This serves to showcase Dillard's remarkable skill as an author, as she is able to deftly weave together several seemingly paradoxical ideas into one captivating and engaging narrative.

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silver_saber

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

July 15,2025

I admit, I was indeed wrong about Annie Dillard. In the past, I harbored an unnecessary hatred for her writing. The reason was simple: I could never get past the first chapter. However, after delving into two of her books, I've come to a realization. My inability to fully engage with her work was likely due to my lack of extensive theoretical knowledge, which is exponentially more challenging. Also, I couldn't handle her penchant for "doing too much all the time." But now, I see that the problem was within me.

In C.S. Lewis's novel, An Experiment in Criticism, he posits that it is the reader's responsibility to extract meaning from literature, not the author's. This couldn't be more accurate. My previous attempts to read Annie Dillard's work were no fault of hers. It was my own lack of attention and intention while reading that hindered my understanding.
The truth is, Annie Dillard is doing so much simultaneously because she knows exactly what she's doing. She is incredibly refined and experimental in her craft. For the Time Being is a prime example. The book is composed of ten seemingly disparate strands covering various topics such as birth, death, clouds, archeology, history, religion, and more. Her writing is both expansive and detailed. With continued reading and patience, one begins to recognize that these topics are converging. Is it surprising? Exciting? Impressive? It's all of the above. Personally, I now see Dillard's tendency to immerse readers in a whirlwind of information as intentional. It helps us witness the interconnectedness of our human life, the beautiful world we inhabit, and the sweeping history from which we are born.
I am left pondering this particular passage: "Ours is a planet sown in beings. Our generations overlap like shingles. We don't fall in rows like hay, but we fall. Once we get here, we spend forever on the globe, most of it tucked under. While we breathe, we open time like a path in the grass. We open time as a boat's stem slits the crest of the present" (Dillard 201).
As a writer and a reader, I am humbled and inspired by what Dillard offers. I am reminded that even in a state of disorientation, it is still crucial for us to witness good writing and wonder about it. And besides, we often pick up more than we think we do.

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