Book Review: The Writing Life

I've been meaning to write this for over a week, but life has been extremely hectic (week long mission trip, quitting my job, and planning a massive 30th birthday extravaganza, among other things). But without further ado, I give you...another book review.

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The Writing Life is typical Dillard. How so? Every line is a gem, but not in an easily definable, cliched way. She does not reduce life's complexity into naive, simplistic answers, and the same can be said for her description of the writing life in particular. The truth is, I am writing this review not because I want to review the book, but so I can convince you to literally read every single book Annie Dillard has ever written. If I had to read only one person's writings for my entire life, it would be hers. She is that good. If you have not read her already, you need to leave your computer right now and buy or check-out one of her books right now. If you have already read her, you know what I'm talking about.

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Here's a couple of my favorite parts of this offering:

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How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing... There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet. Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading - that is a good life.

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Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our hearts? Can the writer renew our hope for literary forms? Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does death catch us so by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking. We should amass half dressed in long lines like tribesmen and shake gourds at each other, to wake up; instead we watch television and miss the show... And if we are reading for these things, why would anyone read books with advertising slogans and brand names in them? Why would anyone write such books? Commercial intrusion has overrun and crushed, like the last glaciation, a humane landscape. The new landscape and its climate put metaphysics on the run.

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Peace,

Matt