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I read with sorrow the news that American author and Pulitzer winner Annie Dillard died recently at age 81. She was not long preceded in death by another author I count among my serious literary influences, Kentuckian Wendell Berry, who died two weeks earlier at the age of 92. My love of Wendell Berry and his work have been well documented in our spaces, and many readers reached out to acknowledge his passing, and to share their own tributes. <\/p>\n
This was incredibly kind, and wholly unnecessary. I\u2019ve heard less about the loss of Annie Dillard, and nothing at all from readers, though her influence in this<\/em> reader\u2019s life is just as great, if not greater. The gap may be what made me realize how little I\u2019ve talked about her publicly, though I\u2019ve thought often about her privately. <\/p>\n Annie Dillard came into my life as assigned reading. I was seventeen, and despite being an enthusiastic reader for as far back as I can remember, so much of what I read in senior English\u2014and the writers behind those works\u2014were altogether new to me. My (unverifiable) memory is that the Dillard piece in our Norton Reader was \u201cThe Death of a Moth<\/a><\/strong>,\u201d her essay ostensibly about a moth burning to death in a candle flame. <\/p>\n I can only say the piece caught me: before that time, I hadn\u2019t read much narrative nonfiction, let alone nature writing or idiosyncratic personal essays. I didn\u2019t know it was possible to write like that. But I wanted to read more<\/em> like that. I took myself to the public library (one of the first places I could drive on my own, the thrill!), in search of all the Dillard I could get my hands on. That wasn\u2019t a lot, back then. <\/p>\n Not many months later, I encountered Dillard again in the classroom, this time as a college freshman. Every student in my honors program was required to enroll in a small freshman seminar of their choosing; I homed in on \u201dWriters on Writing,\u201d focused on the works of new-to-me writers like Adrienne Rich, Donald Hall, Eudora Welty, Stephen Jay Gould, and also \u2026 Annie Dillard. We read her three-book compendium<\/a><\/strong> of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek<\/em>, An American Childhood<\/em>, and The Writing Life<\/em>. I was obsessed.<\/p>\n I well remember our rowdy round table seminar discussions about Pilgrim<\/em>. Our little group was split: half found Dillard\u2019s work messy and meandering; half found her brilliant. Give us grace for our pointed opinions\u2014we were all teenagers\u2014but you can guess which camp I landed in. How I loved my plunge into the world of Dillard, and Pilgrim<\/em>, specifically. I spent much time in that work, in that world, for I was tasked with presenting on what made it distinctive to the class. I can still picture my index cards tiled out before me for my presentation, bearing phrases like \u201cvia negativa\u201d and \u201cthe tree with the lights in it\u201d and \u201cthere are seven or eight categories of phenomena in the world that are worth talking about, and one of them is the weather.\u201d <\/strong>(This last one, I still<\/em> reference twice a month in ordinary conversation.)\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n After graduation, she was one of the authors I kept coming back to for my own reading, and kept recommending to friends. I lent out my beat-up copy of Three by Annie Dillard<\/em> so many times that eventually the long-broken spine could no longer anchor the pages, and one of the friends I leant it to took it upon herself to replace my original copy with a thrifted one in better condition. (\u201cBetter\u201d because all the pages held, but how I wish I still had my original copy with my college underlinings!) <\/p>\n Throughout my early adulthood, I kept coming back to Annie Dillard until I was dismayed to realize I\u2019d read everything she\u2019d written. (It\u2019s only in the course of writing this reflection that I realized I\u2019ve long been an Annie Dillard completist<\/a><\/strong>.) The final work I read by her was her 2007 novel The Maytrees<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, but at the time I had no inkling it would be her last published work. I remember strongly disliking this novel at the time, thinking perhaps Annie Dillard and I had grown away from each other, but looking back (almost twenty years now) I suspect I simply didn\u2019t understand it, and perhaps was too young for it, and should give it another shot today.\u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019ve re-read her work occasionally through the years. I\u2019ve read through Pilgrim<\/em> a half-dozen times; every two or three years I pick up The Writing Life<\/em>\u2014often to seek out one specific passage\u2014and then end up reading the whole thing. (As I did again this week.) I find it so dizzyingly wise and quotable, every time. My eternal question: how<\/em> does she write like that? <\/p>\n I first encountered Dillard in the 90s, and her writings continue to be relevant to me, and seem far from saying everything they have to say. I quote her every so often here on MMD<\/em>, or recommend her work on What Should I Read Next?<\/em>. I touch on her oh-so-briefly in I\u2019d Rather Be Reading<\/a><\/strong><\/em> (in my essay \u201cAll the Readers I Have Been\u201d); her words (from The Writing Life<\/em>) serve as an epigraph to Don\u2019t Overthink It<\/strong><\/em>.<\/a> \u00a0<\/p>\n Annie Dillard always felt like an author\u2014perhaps the first\u2014who was mine<\/em>, that I discovered at a pivotal time in my life and reading life. I encountered her work and it stuck, and said something to me I wanted to hear and hadn\u2019t heard before. I\u2019m grateful for her words, and especially grateful that they were generous and flexible enough to teach me not just about the worlds they pointed to but of my own relationship with words. I\u2019m sorry it was her death that prompted this reflection, but I\u2019m grateful for the reflection all the same.<\/p>\n I\u2019m interested in hearing about your experience with Annie Dillard, and perhaps also with the authors who have long felt like yours<\/em>. Would you please share in comments? <\/p>\n P.S. Assigned reading we actually enjoyed.<\/a><\/strong> And more Dillard mentions:What I didn\u2019t know about the writing process<\/a><\/strong> and How do you choose your vacation reads?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n P.P.S. Don\u2019t be fooled, that\u2019s not Tinker Creek in the featured image. But I hoped Dillard might consider another photo I snapped in wild and beautiful nature (specifically: Colorado) to be fitting for this piece. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n