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My ultimate takeaway is quite clear: I'm going to put an end to reading literature penned by poets. I do have a penchant for poetry, and when the mood strikes, I indulge in it. However, attempting to cram it into the realm of literature often results in a laborious reading experience like this one. Dillard indeed has a profound love for language and a certain way with it. I relish a book that compels me to look up words, and parts of this book were truly satisfying (thus the 2 stars). When the words managed to conjure up vivid, full-color feelings, moods, pictures, and scenes, it was quite remarkable. But ultimately, it gave off an air of pomposity and self-servingness. I can't seem to get rid of the feeling that the author seemingly needed me to be aware that she was well-versed in every aspect of philosophy, literature, poetry, and art. She did this by peppering references to Greek and Russian literature, Aristotelian logic, art techniques, or arcane tidbits on almost every other page, all in an effort to showcase her depth of knowledge. Regrettably, none of this added much substance to the book. Instead, it merely served as ornamental decoration on a rather flimsy story that seemed to exist solely to demonstrate how clever the author must be. To make matters worse, the choppy sentence fragments and rhetorical questions, along with the lack of quotation marks (which, for me, is a definite sign of possible pretension), all contributed to my decision to give this book a hard pass. Edit: As I perused other reviews to see if I was off the mark, I noticed that those who gave this book 4 and 5 stars had a tendency to lecture about philistines who supposedly don't know enough to appreciate how intelligent Dillard (and by extension, the reviewer) is. In a strange way, they ended up strengthening my argument. It's a hard pass for me.
