海角大神

What a gift Annie Dillard鈥檚 The Abundance: New and Selected Essays, is. Over her 40-year career, Dillard has proven herself one of America鈥檚 most accomplished stylists and one of its most mesmerizing sensibilities. Her natural descriptions equal those of Thoreau, and her soul is as theological as Marilynne Robinson鈥檚. Her books rival those of Anne Carson in their prickly beauties, and her mind is as geologically curious as John McPhee鈥檚. "The Abundance" collects Dillard鈥檚 writing from across her eight books of non-fiction, displaying her brilliance in, well, abundance. It鈥檚 true, there isn鈥檛 much new here: the most recent piece is more than a decade old. But that is a small complaint to make about such an exquisite collection.

In 1974, Dillard published her first book, "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" 鈥� a "Walden"-like account of Dillard鈥檚 time spent in Virginia鈥檚 Roanoke Valley. It remains one of the best works of American non-fiction ever written. Emersonian in its restlessness, "Pilgrim at Tinker" Creek is equal parts nature writing and theodicy, attentive to 鈥渢he inrush of power and light鈥� that nature provides us but also unafraid of looking at 鈥渘othingness, those sickening reaches of time in either direction.鈥�

These interests 鈥� nature and god, plenitude and emptiness 鈥� run throughout "The Abundance." From "For the Time Being" (1999), we get meditations on time, geology, and the Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin; from "Teaching a Stone to Talk" (1982), thoughts on the Catholic mass and Arctic exploration; from "An American Childhood" (1987), a sense for the ecstatic egoism of adolescence and its relation to adult death-in-life: 鈥淧erhaps their own selves eclipsed the sun for so many years the world shriveled around them, and when at least their inescapable orbits had passed through these dark egoistic years, it was too late; they had adjusted.鈥�

Dillard鈥檚 vision is both dizzyingly cosmic and microscopically local. She wants to show us 鈥渁n ordinary bit of what is real, the infinite fabric of time that eternity shoots through, and time鈥檚 soft-skinned people working and dying under slowly shifting stars.鈥� And yet Dillard also loves to goof around, even and especially about the theologically serious. (鈥淗ow often,鈥� she wonders, 鈥渉ow shockingly often, have I exhausted myself in church from the effort to keep from laughing out loud?鈥�) She has a lovely chapter on her family鈥檚 love of jokes, complete with a few corny howlers: 鈥淔ellow comes into a lumberyard 鈥︹��

In a selection from "The Writing Life," Dillard relates an anecdote. One day, she tells us, 鈥淎 well-known writer got collared by a university student who asked, 鈥楧o you think I could be a writer鈥欌��? The famous writer responded, 鈥溾�業 don鈥檛 know.鈥� Do you like sentences?鈥欌�� to which the student reacted with 鈥渁mazement. Sentences? Do I like sentences? I am twenty years old, and do I like sentences?鈥�

Dillard鈥檚 sympathies are, of course, with the well-known writer. Dillard believes that you don鈥檛 write for fame or riches (those likely won鈥檛 come from the pursuit anyway), and you don鈥檛 write because you fancy the author鈥檚 life. You write because you love sentences 鈥� extravagant and visionary sentences, chiseled and lucid sentences, shocking sentences and comic sentences.

As "The Abundance" makes clear, Annie Dillard writes better sentences than just about anyone alive. Take this description of Puget Sound: 鈥淗ere is the fringey edge where elements meet and realms mingle, where time and eternity spatter each other with foam.鈥� Or this perfect observation: 鈥淲hen you see fog move against a backdrop of deep pines, it鈥檚 not the fog itself you see, but streaks of clearness floating across the air in shreds.鈥� Or this memory of childhood perception: 鈥淎dults had misshapen, knuckly hands loose in their skin like bones; it was a wonder they could open jars. They were loose in their skin all over, except at the wrists and ankles, like rabbits.鈥�

I wish that I had the space to quote more. That last detail, 鈥渓ike rabbits,鈥� is so typical of Dillard鈥檚 prose: it asks us, indeed forces us, to see the world with more clarity and wonder than we ordinarily do.

For Dillard, seeing is a holy act, one that can be cultivated by the seer (鈥淚 must maintain in my head a running description of the present鈥�) but one that also can come unbidden, like the thunderclap of grace. Of this second, grace-filled seeing, Dillard writes, 鈥淚t was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance.鈥� Dillard鈥檚 prose has the same effect. Readers of "The Abundance" will recognize Dillard鈥檚 description of what it鈥檚 like to see, truly and fully, as if for the first time: 鈥淚 had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.鈥�

Anthony Domestico is an assistant professor at Purchase College, SUNY and a columnist for Commonweal.