This blog is a forum for discussion of literature, rhetoric and composition for Ms. Parrish's AP Language and Composition class

Sunday, January 3, 2010

An American Childhood- Annie Dillard

An American Childhood is Annie Dillard's memoir of growing up in Pittsburgh in the 1950's. I read this book because I had been rampant in thought and engrossed and emotionally invested in Catcher and its themes, and had loved the discussion- I didn't feel ready and simply did not want to leave Catcher in the dust. Here I found a novel that promised a complete and reliable account of growing up (she explores every phase- beginning at 5 and ending when she is getting ready to leave Pittsburgh at 17) that was sure to touch on Catcher ideas ( becoming awake, truth, illusion, leaving childhood etc.) and also come from a truly remarkable and insightful voice, as Annie Dillard's work has always seemed to me.

Dillard tells the story of her childhood "interior life" through a sharp and observant lens that combines her childhood personality and perspective of the time with ominous insight that comes from looking back as an adult. The experiences she recalls are perhaps universal and unremarkable in terms of what childhood is (filling the gaping holes of boredom with imagination: inventing games and ideas, playing in the woods, being with friends, being alone, reading and learning and exploring that knowledge in the real world- She was more intelligent than I am now in many ways at only 9 years old, reading books about insects and birds and rocks and butterflies and adventuring to explore them in the real world, identify them, collect them, explain them as an expert...) but she somehow takes the ordinary and turns all of her experiences into remarkable comments on life. Ultimately, (although it may sound cheesy or cliche) I think the novel celebrates just living life, curiosity, and the wonders of the world- what life has to offer- how we perceive those possibilities as we are young and when we become older, what nature and history and the world can be, the vastness of exploration. She is close to concluding the novel when she writes, "And still I break up through the skin of awareness a thousand times a day" (250). The novel begins when she is 5 and bewildered and entranced by life, and I think it ends in the same way.

I love this book and I know I will revisit it frequently. I do think it is the kind of novel that you can read again and again and at different times discover something new and extraordinary in every read (I feel that I have only absorbed a mere fraction of the books depth in this week), or just purely enjoy it every time, if only to put it down marveling at Annie Dillard as an author herself. While the childhood stories she tells may seem light and unremarkable, the ideas and the insight that come with them seemed to me as profound and heavy, and at times I had to put it down in order to really absorb what she was saying and consider what I thought of it. If anything, her prose give you everything to think about.

Annie Dillard's language in this book is so beautiful and spirited that I found myself reading slower and slower as I went. Her story is the "American Childhood" and I think that most everyone will see a piece of their childhood reflected in hers, or a piece of her anywhere from innocence to adolescence inherent in themselves. The New York Times comments on this book, Annie Dillard is one of those people who seem to be more fully alive than most of us, more nearly wide awake than a human being generally gets to be". This is exactly what the book is like. If nothing else, I would genuinely want to read any and every book that entails being told a story from a like perspective.

Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/American-Childhood-Annie-Dillard/dp/0060915188

5 comments:

  1. Grace, I love Annie Dillard, as I've told you, both as a writer and as a human being. I think she manages to combine compassion and brilliance in a way you don't see often. Although I remember very little specifically about An American Childhood (I read it in high school, too) I do remember the tone... I'm not sure if this is a scene that really exists or if it's a combination of scenes, but I have this vivid image of Dillard in her attic, discovering the world of humans through her fascination with the world of bugs. You should read The Writing Life (also by Dillard)--it's short and I have a copy if you want to borrow it.

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  2. I gave The Writing Life to maggie for christmas! It's on my list to read soon. I just read her "The Death of A Moth" essay and then the other essay "How and Why I wrote Death of a Moth" that came with it (all thanks to err Ms. Hiltons summer packet that I found cleaning out my desk...) and (surprise) really really liked it. I was eager to read it when I found it because there is a vivid description of a moth's life in American Childhood that I thought played a huge role, especially when I think now about what stands out in the novel as a whole. And like the novel, I haven't absorbed the essays I'm sure, but loved it and was fascinated by her descriptions of these splintered and fragmented moth skeletons that she describes as laying dead on her bathroom floor and then burning in a flame when she's camping. I love how she creates these incredibly vivid images of things that people (or I) would naturally overlook, and ties them as if inhered to something unique and profound; in this essay the moths address (I think) the writer, what it takes, who they are, what it's like....

    I loved the second essay even more, at the end of it (have you read this?) she talks about the authors purpose in writing (Like ms. Huntington had asked the playwright actually, now that I'm thinking about it) whether it is/should be for himself as an individual or for the reader. She's firm that she writes for her reader, that prose are clouded when they are for the artists satisfaction and with the artists opinion. Her take is distinct and interesting and got me thinking (I can't decide wether I fully agree or not), and if you haven't read it you should (it's very short), and anyone who is reading this right now should go and read it (you won't be sorry) and then I can have someone to talk about it with (or if you've already read it).

    And, funny, that attic scene with the bugs is very vivid to me too, if there's one thing I absorbed. I think it happened over the course of a few chapters; it was casually mentioned when she comes home from school or something. I think her intense probing during those bug observations craft the outstanding role of curiosity and wonder and intensity that isn't just for a moment, I think it all remains at the core of the novel.
    I love this book!

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  3. Grace, I have read both essays. I love the moth essay and when I read the second one (it has been awhile) about how only one person (a professor at Yale, right?) understood it and he understood it "perfectly" I found myself wondering how much I really understood it. Something about her description of the moth sacrificing (deliberately or not) itself to the flame to allow the candle to burn longer reminds me of Rilke and his questions about if we MUST write, and his commandment to go into ourselves if we really must write. Greg read these essays over the summer, so I will make him talk about them with us.

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  4. I don't think I fully understand the essay at all either. But I feel like her writing is so dense in the sense that it is a constantly intense and sincerely profound voice (which I think is like you said, unusual and peculiar, the way she writes), that it will always be hard to absorb. I don't know if anyone can truly grasp what she is saying entirely, or atleast I can't. Almost like Housekeeping in a way, I don't feel like I have absorbed that book in the least, and yet I still love it and will continue reading it.

    It does remind me of Rilke, I didn't think of that at all, but the moth is supposed to represent the question he explores, after all.

    And I don't have the one about the lecture at yale? Is that a part of the Why and How I Wrote the Moth Essay or something different? It's not in Hilton's summer packet atleast, I can't find it online either without paying.

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  5. I just realized it's in The Writing Life... I'll bring my copy in tomorrow and see if I can find that chapter pretty quickly.

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