For the Time Being, Annie Dillard
For the Time Being, Annie Dillard
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For the Time Being

Author: Annie Dillard

Narrator: Tavia Gilbert

Unabridged: 5 hr 3 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/18/2011

Synopsis

From Annie Dillard, the Pulitzer Prizewinning author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and one of the most compelling writers of our time, comes For the Time Being, her most profound narrative to date. With her keen eye, penchant for paradox, and yearning for truth, Dillard renews our ability to discover wonder in lifes smallestand often darkestcorners. Why do we exist? Where did we come from? How can one person matter? Dillard searches for answers in a powerful array of images: pictures of birdheaded dwarfs in the standard reference of human birth defects; ten thousand terracotta figures fashioned for a Chinese emperor in place of the human court that might have followed him into death; the paleontologist and theologian Teilhard de Chardin crossing the Gobi Desert; the dizzying variety of clouds. Vivid, eloquent, and haunting, For the Time Being evokes no less than the terrifying grandeur of all that remains tantalizingly and troublingly beyond our understanding.

About Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, An American Childhood, The Writing Life, The Living and The Maytrees. 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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by JES on May 12, 2013

About 20 years ago, I met a guy -- a writer whose opinions I respected, even admired -- whose response to Annie Dillard's writing took me completely by surprise. He hated it. As I recall, he used words like "pretentious," "overrated," and "pretty" (that last may have had quotation marks of its own a......more

Goodreads review by Stephanie on April 11, 2021

This is the March 2021 selection of South Austin Spiritual Book Group. This was a tough read to endure, but about three-quarters the way through I began to latch onto a few ideas and names that made it slightly easier to hang on. The book acts like an abstract painting in that it throws down big idea......more

Goodreads review by Maureen on December 27, 2015

Annie Dillard takes on the biggest questions of our existence. Why do we exist? How can one person matter? Dillard approaches these questions, not so much to fnd the answer as to explore what it means to exist and matter. Whether she is exploring the genetic slip-ups of human malformations or Teilha......more

Goodreads review by Richard on June 19, 2015

In this audacious little book Annie Dillard ponders God, the holiness of newborns, and any individual’s insignificance in geologic time. Her prose is astringent, with wry appreciation for the brilliant and for the genuine among us; with a barely controlled horror at our animal fates and our capacity......more

Goodreads review by Paul, on October 26, 2012

Annie Dillard is another in a long, long, long line of writers that examine what death and suffering mean, particularly its implications for the existence and characteristics of God. I enjoyed Dillard's style of writing, and I thought some of her metaphors were telling. Overall, I thought this book......more

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