Guest Post: On Annie Dillard

When I heard how much my colleague Dennis Bacigalupi admired Annie Dillard, I asked if he would write a guest post about his feelings about her work, and I am pleased and honored that he agreed to do so. You can read his thoughts below.

"When I first read her 1975 Pulitzer Prize winning non-fiction narrative “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,” Annie Dillard became a cornerstone of my worldview. Lunging at every new publication since, though few and far between, whether poetry (“Tickets for a Prayer Wheel”), essays (“Holy The Firm”), novels (“The Living," “The Maytrees”), biography (“An American Childhood”), travelogue (“Teaching a Stone to Talk”), or writer’s/reader’s guide/memoirs (“Living by Fiction," “The Writing Life”), Dillard has the ability to transport me to the micro-dimensions of inner-life and to the macro-fantastical nether-reaches of all that is beyond. Dillard uses words to illuminate the invisible and transform the obvious. With her inquisitiveness toward the scientific, awareness of the psychological, experience of human nature, and mastery of the function of words, she guides and pulls readers into a sense of soaring I have come to yearn for. Her seminal “a-ha” moment, famously described as “the tree with the lights in it,” suggests an enlightenment experience reflected in all her literary works. She can describe sailing down Puget Sound in a way that puts one in mind of Twain’s dexterity on the Mississippi (“The Living”), detail unfolding intricacies in a life-long marriage (“The Maytrees”), grippingly compare cultural connections of ancient and modern east/west wordsmiths (“Encounters with Chinese Writers”), or delight in the melange of vegetables used as medium in the portrait hanging on her motel wall (“Teaching a Stone to Talk”). Dillard points to the universe in a drop of water and creates a psychic connection to the Crab Nebula. She can blithely reference the Emperor of Bavaria in 840 C.E. and then the platinum blonde in the lobby: always uplifting, recharging, and leading, encouraging us to wake up and SEE."