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4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
In this short work of non-fiction, Annie Dillard explores the most basic questions that we ask ourselves, "Why are we here?" "Where do we come from?" "Who or what is God and what does he/she expect from us?" The narrative goes on wild rides from China to Israel and focuses on the writings of the Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin and the Hasidic Baal Shem Tov. Subsections start with a single word: now, clouds, sand but my favorite was 'numbers' and the impact of these statistics taken out of time and somehow relevant in the context of that particular section were illuminating. As you can tell, this book is hard to describe and I read it in two sittings, the first on a long plane ride and the second during a quiet afternoon. I recommend reserving one entire day to reading the book so as to enjoy its connecting ideas in one invigorating intellectual journey.
I didn't enjoy this book as much as I wanted to. I've long heard praise of Dillard, but this didn't cut it. I struggled to get into the text, and, though I liked some of the images and facts independently, I wasn't interested in the piece as a whole. I enjoyed the sections on Numbers and Sand more than the other parts, but even these felt stale halfway through. I wondered if maybe it was just too philosophical for my tastes. I figured philosophy students might enjoy it more, but another philosophy student in my class said it was just repeating concepts that already exist without adding anything. So this book may fit best around a crowd of people who are interested in philosophy but haven't yet stepped into literature by canonical philosophers.
Somehow I had missed this book by Dillard, but thank goodness I found it. I spent two days reading then stopping to look something up and then going back to Dillard's writing. This is what I love about Annie Dillard. She introduces me to so many ideas and people that enrich my life - I would never find these without her.
Who else could teach me about sand, Peking man, Jewish thought, babies and clouds? Not only did I learn about these disparate subjects, but Dillard links them so that they don't stay unlinked. Next time I am at the beach, I will be thinking about sand and all the ideas that Dillard introduced me to.
I have written before about Ms Dillard's writing. I am stunned by the beauty, the amazing word choices, by the breath of her reading. I am in awe.
Who else could teach me about sand, Peking man, Jewish thought, babies and clouds? Not only did I learn about these disparate subjects, but Dillard links them so that they don't stay unlinked. Next time I am at the beach, I will be thinking about sand and all the ideas that Dillard introduced me to.
I have written before about Ms Dillard's writing. I am stunned by the beauty, the amazing word choices, by the breath of her reading. I am in awe.
There was an attempt to connect different themes such as numbers, theology (of many religions), archeology, clouds and birth defects. The attempt did not resonate with me; it seemed more random than cohesive.
Her theological conclusion was pretty lackluster as well. According to the author, God needs us to make sense of him. Which is not surprising considering her attempt to synthesize the beliefs of multiple religions.
Buzzword Reading Challenge for February: book with a verb in the title.
Her theological conclusion was pretty lackluster as well. According to the author, God needs us to make sense of him. Which is not surprising considering her attempt to synthesize the beliefs of multiple religions.
Buzzword Reading Challenge for February: book with a verb in the title.
Annie Dillard delivers a series of stark observations here – about people, life, death, God, and anything else related to the mystery of our sentience – by forming a pattern out of scattered thoughts (both her own and other people's). Sometimes her writing reads like it's drawn straight from a notebook, where everything has been documented in short bursts. Sometimes she allows herself to develop longer trains of thought that turn into beautiful vignettes. In both cases, she's a master of clear, concise writing that cuts deep.
If there's a one-line theme I can pick out of the entire book (a difficult feat), it's this: "Many people cannot tolerate living with paradox." And yet, as Dillard so deftly shows in the structure of her own book, paradox is impossible to avoid if we're facing the world and ourselves honestly. We must learn to embrace it and live with the tension.
I love how Dillard weaves in ideas and teachings from philosophers and religious groups around the world – always finding the common thread among them that rings out the same note when plucked. The anecdotes she relates from her experiences visiting the Holy Land (alone) give many sections of the book an eerie, transporting quality.
One of my favorite quotes: "For Tillich, God's activity is by no means interference, but instead divine creativity - the ongoing creation of life with all its greatness and danger. I don't know. I don't know beans about God." That's when I knew I could trust this woman.
If there's a one-line theme I can pick out of the entire book (a difficult feat), it's this: "Many people cannot tolerate living with paradox." And yet, as Dillard so deftly shows in the structure of her own book, paradox is impossible to avoid if we're facing the world and ourselves honestly. We must learn to embrace it and live with the tension.
I love how Dillard weaves in ideas and teachings from philosophers and religious groups around the world – always finding the common thread among them that rings out the same note when plucked. The anecdotes she relates from her experiences visiting the Holy Land (alone) give many sections of the book an eerie, transporting quality.
One of my favorite quotes: "For Tillich, God's activity is by no means interference, but instead divine creativity - the ongoing creation of life with all its greatness and danger. I don't know. I don't know beans about God." That's when I knew I could trust this woman.
challenging
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Annie Dillard is definitely thought-provoking, which I always look for in a book. She is also very artistic in her presentation of ideas. It took me awhile to catch on to her style and there were definitely parts that I just didn't get. In this book, Annie leaves us pondering the big question of the purpose of our existence and questioning whether we're just another speck of sand or something more important. Good stuff to ponder.
Obviously, these are richer if you read the entire book, but here are a few excerpts which caught my attention:
There are 1,198,500,000 people alive now in China. To get a feel for what this means, simply take yourself--in all your singularity, importance, complexity, and love--and multiply by 1,198,500,000. See? Nothing to it.
When a person arrives in the world as a baby, says one Midrash, "his hands are clenched as though to say, 'Everything is mine. I will inherit it all.' When he departs from the world, his hands are open, as though to say, 'I have acquired nothing from the world.'"
"One death is a tragedy; a million deaths are a statistic." Joseph Stalin, that gourmandizer, gave words to this disquieting and possibly universal sentiment.
Why must we suffer losses? Even Meister Eckhart offers the lame apology that God never intended us to regard his gifts as our property and that "in order to impress it on us, he frequently takes away everything, physical and spiritual....Why does God stress this point so much? Because he wants to be ours exclusively."
It is a weakening and discoloring idea, that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time---or even knew selflessness or courage or literature---but that it is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.
An English journalist, observing the Sisters of Charity in Calcutta, reasoned: "Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some the other."
Obviously, these are richer if you read the entire book, but here are a few excerpts which caught my attention:
There are 1,198,500,000 people alive now in China. To get a feel for what this means, simply take yourself--in all your singularity, importance, complexity, and love--and multiply by 1,198,500,000. See? Nothing to it.
When a person arrives in the world as a baby, says one Midrash, "his hands are clenched as though to say, 'Everything is mine. I will inherit it all.' When he departs from the world, his hands are open, as though to say, 'I have acquired nothing from the world.'"
"One death is a tragedy; a million deaths are a statistic." Joseph Stalin, that gourmandizer, gave words to this disquieting and possibly universal sentiment.
Why must we suffer losses? Even Meister Eckhart offers the lame apology that God never intended us to regard his gifts as our property and that "in order to impress it on us, he frequently takes away everything, physical and spiritual....Why does God stress this point so much? Because he wants to be ours exclusively."
It is a weakening and discoloring idea, that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time---or even knew selflessness or courage or literature---but that it is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.
An English journalist, observing the Sisters of Charity in Calcutta, reasoned: "Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some the other."
emotional
informative
reflective
This book reminds me about what deep reading is all about: not the acquisition of facts, but a journey in complex thought that challenges us to ruminate about mortality, existential meaning, and God as we witness alongside Dillard these stunning, mundane moments of beauty. Perhaps a part of For the Time Being is the boredom and aimlessness one feels in reading it, to realize that perhaps we'll always be searching for meaning and answers in a world that is simply about the pursuit of discovery, not the discovery in itself.
Stylistically, this book is consistently stunning. I enjoyed her use of other people's words, for it combined a multitude of perspectives (including hers) to craft an argument about existence that wouldn't be possible to achieve through the eyes of a single person.
Stylistically, this book is consistently stunning. I enjoyed her use of other people's words, for it combined a multitude of perspectives (including hers) to craft an argument about existence that wouldn't be possible to achieve through the eyes of a single person.
I really enjoy Annie Dillard's writing even though a lot of the time I really don't know what she's on about. Or I do know what she's on about, but I don't know what point she's trying to make about it or if she's trying to make a point at all. This book in particular feels like a mosaic of ideas and quotations and trivia and biography and memoir, like she took every interesting note she had about: holiness & grace & natural history & multitudinous humanity & vastness & time & accident & malformity & prayer & paradox and carefully built a neat little structure out of those notes. It's hard to say what exactly it all adds up to, but also: why aren't more books about everything?
"The Chinese soldiers who breathed air posing for their 7,000 individual clay portraits must have thought it a wonderful difference that workers buried only their simulacra, so their sons could buy their flesh a bit later. One wonders what they did in the months and years they gained. One wonders what one is oneself up to these days."
"The Chinese soldiers who breathed air posing for their 7,000 individual clay portraits must have thought it a wonderful difference that workers buried only their simulacra, so their sons could buy their flesh a bit later. One wonders what they did in the months and years they gained. One wonders what one is oneself up to these days."