One part mad, one part brilliant, and tough to say which part is larger. There are gems to be sure, but it wasn't one of my favorites.

3 Stars.

😴

The Writing Life is a short book where Annie Dillard recounts, in elegant prose, a few autobiographical anecdotes. And, since she is a writer, some of these reminiscences incidentally or metaphorically provide insights about her craft: writing as mining, sailing, painting, chopping wood or aerobatics; writing like an inchworm or like a strand of fibreoptic… This book abounds in such analogies.

Although ironic, Annie Dillard’s meditations are sometimes a bit harsh and disheartening: “Why not shoot yourself, actually, rather than finish one more excellent manuscript on which to gag the world?” On other occasions, however, she offers powerful, humorous and comforting bits of wisdom on the writing trade:

Out of a human population on earth of 4.5 billion, perhaps 20 people can write a serious book in a year. Some people lift cars, too. Some people enter week-long sled-dog races, go over Niagara Falls in barrels, fly planes through the Arc de Triomphe. Some people feel no pain in childbirth. Some people eat cars. There is no call to take human extremes as norms. […] These truths comfort the anguished. They do not mean, by any means, that faster-written books are worse books. They just mean that most writers might well stop berating themselves for writing at a normal, slow pace.

So much for [a:Stephen King|3389|Stephen King|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1362814142p2/3389.jpg] or [a:Michael Crichton|5194|Michael Crichton|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1359042651p2/5194.jpg]’s Stakhanovist daily word counts.

I didn't like the writing style. It was too poetic!

If King's "On Writing" is overly long but highly applicable, Dillard's "The Writing Life" is overly short but highly unpractical. "The Writing Life" is not a book on the craft of writing, it is a book attempting to paint a portrait of what writing feels like (at least to Dillard).

Dillard's style shows through clearly, her metaphysical ramblings and poignant metaphors sometimes obscuring and sometimes perfectly capturing her point. Overall, this book came across as a mixed bag to me. Half burst with encouragement and efforts to romanticize the art, the other half filled with vague allusions to spirituality and not a few rambling stories about this or that cabin or loveable local. Its saving grace, however, is its length. "The Writing Life" is succinct. So even if the reader finds themselves put out by whatever the author is focusing on, don't worry, it'll be over shortly.

I will definitely be revisiting this work later. So thank you, Annie.


4/5 Stars