The Writing Life (UCP)

It begins roughly. It ends magnificently. It is sweetly and simply “for BOB.” It is odd and personal, unexpectedly helpful and poetic, beautiful and spiritual; it is The Writing Life, and it is Annie Dillard. At the end of Chapter One, I felt muddled by the random examples Dillard chose to describe I’m-not-sure-what. Though she is clearly learned and spares much attention to details, such as when she describes the movement and progress of an inchworm, Dillard’s bizarre examples proved that she was an extremely strange woman; though some of her ideas are inspiring and I smiled often as I read them, Dillard’s reputation as a notable author was still questionable; and even though her sentences were composed well and written with an impressive use of imagery and word choice—“Your work is to keep cranking the flywheel that turns the gears that spin the belt in the engine of belief that keeps you and your desk in midair” (11)—I could not connect with Annie Dillard, as a woman, an author, or a writer. Then I read on. And Annie blossomed! In my mind she became a strong woman who connects with every person, place, and thing in her world, such as an air show pilot or a pine shed on Cape Cod or a piece of wood on a chopping block; an imaginative author who feels deeply and expresses herself clearly; and a superb writer who simultaneously loves the writing life, notices its humor and wonder, understands its difficulties, and grasps its reality. Dillard writes in Chapter Five:“Every book has an intrinsic impossibility…[The writer] writes it in spite of that. He finds ways to minimize the difficulty; he strengthens other virtues; he cantilevers the whole narrative out into thin air, and it holds. And if it can be done, then he can do it, and only he. For there is nothing in the material for this book that suggests to anyone but him alone its possibilities for meaning and feeling” (72).This passage illustrates Dillard’s genius; she expresses the truth of writing simply, yet writes it stunningly. A writer writes because she alone comprehends her thoughts, and in her personal process of writing, writing’s own impossibilities are overcome. The challenge and fulfillment of Dillard’s view are her reasons for writing. Annie Dillard searches for the tiniest and least significant details in her life, which she then, with genuine respect, describes brilliantly. Dillard, in The Writing Life, hands pearls to her readers: her candid opinions and applicable advice; her ideas which, though not openly stated as spiritual, are unmistakably from a higher stream of thought; and her absolutely gorgeous sentences which can only be described as amazing.“The page, the page, that eternal blankness, the blankness of eternity which you cover slowly, affirming time’s scrawl as a right and your daring as a necessity;…the page, which you cover slowly with the crabbed thread of your gut; the page in the purity of its possibilities; the page of your death, against which you pit such flawed excellences as you can muster with all your life’s strength: that page will teach you to write” (59).One does not have to be a writer to see the flawless and glorious beauty of this sentence. Annie Dillard comprehends the art of writing, and she gracefully masters its aspects, both challenging and rewarding. The Writing Life is a testament of Dillard’s power as a writer as witnessed in my and every reader’s reaction to her observations and dreams.