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Title: Teaching a Stone to Talk : Expeditions and Encounters by Annie Dillard ISBN: 0-06-091541-2 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 September, 1988 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (12 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Seeing Life With Her Eyes Open
Comment: A couple of months ago, I happened upon the wholly enchanting For the Time Being by Annie Dillard. Following up on that, I just read this Teaching a Stone to Talk, and I will certainly be continuing to explore the work of this amazing author.
Teaching a Stone to Talk is a collection of essays that contains some true masterpieces. My personal favorite is the first, "Living Like Weasels," in which Dillard encourages us, and points for us the way, to remember how to live. Others are almost equal. "An Expedition to the Pole" cleverly and poignantly compares the journeys of arctic and antarctic explorers with the goings on in a tiny church congregation searching for God. In "God in the Doorway," Dillard expounds on an encounter with a woman and uses it to illuminate on the nature of God's love.
Teaching a Stone to Talk is a truly amazing work. Whether she is writing about nature, an eclipse, or about a conversation with a small boy, Dillard manages to mesmerize the reader with her words and humor, and she blows the reader away with her wisdom and insight.
Rating: 5
Summary: Contains some of her finest essays
Comment: I remember a paradoxical statement about the Bible that I heard attributed to Karl Barth: "The Bible is not the word of God, but it contains the word of God." Well, TEACHING A STONE TO TALK is not Annie Dillard's finest book (that distinction belongs to either PILGRIM AT TINKERS CREEK or AN AMERICAN CHILDHOOD), but it contains her best work, i.e., some essays that are as good as anything that she has ever written. Almost inevitably, as in most collections, some of the essays aren't nearly as strong as the best, but the good ones make this slender volume essential reading for any fan of Ms. Dillard.
My personal favorite among the fourteen comprising this book is also the longest, "An Expedition to the Pole." I consider myself to be a deeply religious person, but I also find church services to be almost unbearable (much like one of my literary heroes, Samuel Johnson). In this essay, Dillard contrasts her experiences in an utterly dreadful church service with many of the attempts in the nineteenth century to mount expeditions to reach the North Pole. The attempts of those adventurers are simultaneously tragic and laughable, in that their goal was so vastly beyond their means. The implication is that the same is true in worship: we attempt to worship god, but our efforts are clumsy and fall far short of the mark. There is nobility in both, and certainly Dillard doesn't want to imply that worship is futile. But the parallels are there. It is a brilliant essay.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Luminescent Feast for the Sentient
Comment: Her Pilgrim at Tinker Creek won the Pulitzer for non-fiction in 1974, establishing her reputation for magical writing and eyes that see the world in a special way that open ours when she describes what she is seeing. In this 5th book she continues her exploration of the world and translating it into human terms and meanings. Don't dismiss Dillard's narratives as simple excursions into nature with lessons or morals tacked on. Dillard's descriptions are powerful. You not only see the total eclipse she watches from a Washington hillside; you feel its aura, shudder in the morning chill, sense the mixture of awe, wonder and even momentary fear as the crowd screams.
Annie Dillard writes with an eye for splendor and for suffering, with a sense of amazement and of loss. She witnesses events: the sun eclipses, a deer struggles at the end of a rope, a weasel meets her eye. There is a man burnt, a flight of wild swans circling, a young girl who vows never to change, a band of polar explorers who drift on ice floes. Annie Dillard is an explorer, in the world and on the page.
Teaching A Stone To Talk: Expeditions and Encounters is a collection of stunning personal narratives that stretch from eastern woods and farmlands to the Pacific northwest coast, to tropical islands and rivers.
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Title: Holy the Firm by Annie Dillard ISBN: 0060915439 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 September, 1988 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard ISBN: 0060953020 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 28 October, 1998 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: For the Time Being by Annie Dillard ISBN: 0375703470 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 08 February, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Three by Annie Dillard : The Writing Life, An American Childhood, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard ISBN: 0060920645 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 21 November, 1990 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: The Writing Life by Annie Dillard ISBN: 0060919884 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 26 September, 1990 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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