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Title: For the Time Being by Annie Dillard ISBN: 0-375-70347-0 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 08 February, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.1 (62 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Mystery
Comment: For the Time Being is one of my favorite books. Annie Dillard, as always, is taking on the Big questions. She's asking the questions that we all have to ask (whether we realize it or not), and she does so in the most honest, most innovative, and most insightful ways possible.
In For the Time Being, Dillard is exploring the problem of evil. She discusses such horrors as birth defects, torture, and mass murders, and she cries out to God, "What's with all the bird-headed dwarfs!" She's referring to a debilitating birth defect. She's asking how does God allow such atrocities? Is there a God if this type of world exists?
Dillard reviews the traditional arguments about the problem of evil. Her conclusion: "I don't know beans about God." She quotes Augustine, "We're talking about God. What wonder is it you do not understand? If you do understand, then it is not God." But though she doesn't understand God, she still does decide to live in a universe for love. Love (=God) is still worth living for, and that's her message, I think. Delve into the mystery that is God and that is love.
I can't do justice to this book. It is one of those that I love a bit too much. Just read it. It's an experience like no other.
Rating: 5
Summary: How does she DO this stuff?
Comment: I wish I could THINK like Annie Dillard does, let alone WRITE like she does. How does she do it?
The great theological question of God's existence seems to be at the heart of everything she writes about, whether it's bugs or babies, glaciers or galaxies, politics or polecats, leaf mold or love letters. She takes such great risks with her writing, letting the subject matter soar on the finest of threads way out into space, far from the central point at which she began - but then, just when you think she's truly gone off course and over into some abyss from which she'll never return, she finds her way home within the writing and ends up with a gorgeous piece of writing that hangs perfectly together. I ask again: how does she do this?
I know, actually: She's a whole lot brighter than most of the rest of us, and thank God she uses her vast curiosity and even more vast intelligence to share her thoughts with us as she ruminates on the eternal questions of God, Life, Death, and the Human Predicament.
Essentially a collection of loosely woven disparate essays, For the Time Being, like all of Dillard's books, is written with lyricism, erudition, intelligence, and humor. If you like her other books, don't miss this one.
Rating: 4
Summary: for the time being
Comment: For the Time Being by Annie Dillard is an oddity as far as modern literature is concerned. In a day when the only rule is there are no rules, Dillard takes every advantage of that in her book. Probing, asking, and speculating about God, death, and life is what the book is all about, but in an often obscure way. Without warning Dillard will spit out a random fact or change the subject on hand to something more jadded than the one before. None of this seems to make any sense until her final chapter where it all comes together with one natural motive. Dillard brings her points into perspective through examples of the unnoticed, such as the short lives of clouds, or tragic and strange birth defects, never ceasing to illude her underlying theme that now is our time for being. By examining her own experiences and the sometimes odd experiences of others, Dillard constructs an awe inspiring book digging into some of the deepest questions of man about life and death, and the existence of God. I believe this book to be a treat for anyone who reads it and I recomend it to everyone and anyone. If I were to describe Dillard's work in one word the most appropriate word would be melting-pot. Dillard combines several ingredients (none of which seem to have anything in common with the other) and creates a delicious and enlightening peice of literature, surely filling to any reader.
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Title: Teaching a Stone to Talk : Expeditions and Encounters by Annie Dillard ISBN: 0060915412 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 September, 1988 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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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: The Writing Life by Annie Dillard ISBN: 0060919884 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 26 September, 1990 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: Living by Fiction by Annie Dillard ISBN: 0060915447 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 September, 1988 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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