An American Childhood is the electrifying memoir of the wide-eyed and unconventional upbringing that influenced the lifetime love of nature and the stunning writing career of Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Dillard. From her mother's boundless energy to her father's low-budget horror movies, jokes and lonesome river trips down to New Orleans to get away, the events of Dillard's 1950s Pittsburgh childhood loom larger than life.
An American Childhood fizzes with the playful observations and sparkling prose of this American master, illuminating the seemingly ordinary and yet always thrilling, dizzying moments of a childhood and adolescence lived fearlessly.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
A remarkable work . . . Exceptional * * New York Times * * Loving and lyrical, nostalgic without being wistful, this is a book about the capacity for joy * * Los Angeles Times * * Dillard's style is spirited and gale-force. She raps out her opinions; lyrical, gleeful, cymbal-clashing, peppery. The best thing is her glee, a pied-piperish glee at being in the world, which she evokes better than anyone else -- ROBERT MACFARLANE The trouble with hasty people like me is that we charge through our time on earth without noticing it. It was Annie Dillard who got me, before it was too late, to pay attention to where I was before I lost it. So I did. What abundance! -- RICHARD HOLLOWAY Annie Dillard is among the greatest nature writers who have ever lived. Like Thoreau, like Gilbert White, she combines a naturalist's sharp eye with a philosopher's curiosity and a poet's magical gift for language. Keen, urgent and impassioned, her subject is life itself, in all its teeming and marvellous forms -- OLIVIA LAING Annie Dillard's words are the outpouring of a brilliant mind tempered by a pleading heart. Her distinctive voice and incandescent imagery lifts us to heights few writers can ever hope to aspire to. I came to Annie's work through her Pulitzer winning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and have hung on every word she has written ever since. This anthology is the perfect introduction to her luminous prose, her insightful wisdom and her powerful engagement with nature and the human spirit -- JOHN LISTER-KAYE Wry, provocative and sometimes breathtaking . . . A work marked by exquisite insight * * Boston Globe * * Annie Dillard is one of those people who seem to be more fully alive than most of us, more nearly wide-awake than human beings generally get to be * * New York Times * * 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 * * Chicago Tribune * * A charming and delightful reminiscence that helps cement Annie Dillard's reputation as one of our major writers * * San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle * * A catalogue of loves lovingly told * * Washington Post * * Dillard archingly transcends all other writers of our day in all the simple, intimate and beautiful ways of the natural master -- BUCKMINSTER FULLER Dillard opens our eyes to the world and to new ways of articulating what we see -- GEOFF DYER
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ISBN-13
978-1-78211-776-6 (9781782117766)
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
Annie Dillard was born in 1945 in Pennsylvania. She is a much-celebrated poet, novelist and essayist and author of thirteen books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. She is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters and has received fellowship grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She was awarded the 2014 National Humanities Medal for her work deepening the understanding of the human experience.
