Annie Dillard Libros

La autora, una incansable exploradora, es un referente fundamental de la 'nature writing' que ha recibido varios premios. Heredera de la obra de Thoreau, John Muir o Aldo Leopold, pero a la vez dinamitando el estereotipo masculino del hombre de la frontera y de su relación con la naturaleza salvaje. Esta obra es una recopilación de ensayos sobre la naturaleza (nos habla de un viaje a las Galápagos, a la Antártida o a las colinas que la rodean) que a través de sus ojos ve las grietas por las que el mundo se hilvana y se reteje, donde los fenómenos más dispares encuentran su vínculo

"[This] is a book of great richness, beauty and power and thus very difficult to do justice to in a brief review. . . . The violence is sometimes unbearable, the language rarely less than superb. Dillard's description of the moth's death makes Virginia Woolf's go dim and Edwardian. . . . Nature seen so clear and hard that the eyes tear. . . . A rare and precious book." — Frederick Buechner,  New York Times Book Review From Pulitzer Prize-winning Annie Dillard, a book about the grace, beauty, and terror of the natural world.  In the mid 1970s, Annie Dillard spent two years on an island in Puget Sound in a room with a solitary window, a cat, and a spider for company, asking herself questions about memory, time, sacrifice, reality, death, and God. Holy the Firm , the diary-like collection of her thoughts, feelings, and ruminations during this time, is a lyrical gift to any reader who have ever wondered how best to live with grace and wonder in the natural world.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is the story of a dramatic year in Virginia's Blue Ridge valley. Annie Dillard sets out to see what she can see. What she sees are astonishing incidents of "mystery, death, beauty, violence."

" An American Childhood more than takes the reader's breath away. It consumes you as you consume it, so that, when you have put down this book, you're a different person, one who has virtually experienced another childhood. " —  Chicago Tribune A book that instantly captured the hearts of readers across the country,  An American Childhood  is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard's poignant, vivid memoir of growing up in Pittsburgh in the 1950s and 60s.  Dedicated to her parents—from whom she learned a love of language and the importance of following your deepest passions—Dillard's brilliant memoir will resonate with anyone who has ever recalled with longing playing baseball on an endless summer afternoon, caring for a pristine rock collection, or knowing in your heart that a book was written just for you. 

In Modern American Memoirs, two very discerning writers and readers have selected samples from 35 of the finest memoirs written in this century, including contributions by such diverse writers as Margaret Mead, Malcolm X, Maxine Hong Kingston, Loren Eisely, and Zora Neale Hurston. Chosen for their value as excellent examples of the art of biography as well as for their superb writing, the excerpts present a broad range of American life, and offer vivid insight into the real-life events that shaped their authors. Here, readers can learn about the time when Harry Crews, playing as a boy, fell into a vat of boiling water with a dead hog; Chris Offutt joined the circus and watched a tattooed woman swallow a fluorescent light; and Frank Conroy practiced yo-yo tricks.

Ninety miles north of Seattle on the Washington coast lies Bellingham Bay, where a rough settlement founded in the 1850s would become the town of Whatcom. Here, the Lummi and Nooksack Indian people fish and farm, hermits pay their debts in sockeye salmon, and miners track gold-bearing streams.Here, too, is the intimate, murderous tale of three men. Clare Fishburn believes that greatness lies in store for him. John Ireland Sharp, an educated orphan, abandons hope when he sees socialists expel the Chinese workers from the region. Beal Obenchain, who lives in a cedar stump, threatens Clare Fishburn's life. A killer lashes a Chinese worker to a wharf piling at low tide. Settlers pour in to catch the boom the railroads bring. People give birth, drown, burn, inherit rich legacies, and commit expensive larcenies. All this takes place a hundred years ago, when these vital, ruddy men and women were ''the living.''

In 1940s Provincetown, on the tip of Cape Cod, poet Toby Maytree falls in love with Lou Bigelow at first sight. His slow courtship gradually wins her over, and so begins a love story that lasts decades. But when a friend comes between them, they must each renegotiate what it means to love.

In diesem Band von Essays, die zugleich Erzählungen sind, gilt Annie Dillards unvergleichlicher Blick einer Vielzahl verschiedener Begegnungen und Entdeckungen: Egal, ob sie eine totale Sonnenfinsternis im Osten Washingtons erlebt, einen Dschungel Ecuadors besucht, einem wilden Wiesel in die Augen schaut, bei einem Gottesdienstbesuch entbehrungsreiche Polarexpeditonen rekapituliert oder von einem Mann erzählt, der allein mit einem Stein in einer Hütte lebt, um ihm das Sprechen beizubringen, stets fängt Dillard die großen und kleinen Wunder unseres Universums ein: »Wir sind nur einmal hier auf dem Planeten, und es lohnt sich vielleicht, ein Gefühl dafür zu entwickeln, wo wir sind. Es lohnt sich vielleicht, ein Gefühl für die Randgebiete und Nischen zu entwickeln, in denen das Leben stattfindet.« Dillards Weg vom Alltäglichen zu den letzten Dingen ist dabei oft atemberaubend kurz und ihr Geist und Stil so unerschrocken, das Erhabene ebenso zu zelebrieren wie das Lächerliche. Eine Welt, die durch Entzauberung verstummt zu sein schein, bringt Dillard mit ihrer kraftvollen Poetik und ihrem scharfsinnigen Witz wieder zum Klingen und Sprechen. Einen Stein zum Sprechen bringen ist eine Sammlung von Meditationen wie geschliffene Steine: offen für das Mysterium, hartgesotten, makellos – und unvergleichlich darin, der natürlichen Welt tiefere Resonanzen zu verleihen.