For the Time Being [Hardcover]

Annie Dillard (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Random House Trade; 1St Edition edition (March 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0676549543
• ISBN-13: 978-0676549546
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (78 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,474,130 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Annie Dillard is the author of ten books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winner Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, as well as An American Childhood, The Living, and Mornings Like This. 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. Born in 1945 in Pittsburgh, Dillard attended Hollins College in Virginia. After living for five years in the Pacific Northwest, she returned to the East Coast, where she lives with her family.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Breath-taking, October 16, 2001

By 

Cathy (Fort Bragg, CA, United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: For the Time Being (Paperback)

This is the most profoundly spiritual book I've ever read. I don't know if that's what she intended, but that was the affect it had on me. I was just stunned with the breadth and the depth of it. I'm not a previous fan of Dillard's work -- this is the first book of hers I've ever read, and I didn't come to it with any preconceptions. She writes of the hard things along with the beautiful, writes as a mystic-observer in love with ALL that is. A faith as true and deep as Job's (though not a Christian one), and an eye much keener. One on a short list of life-changing books for me.

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Broad and deep, but don't expect Dillard to do all the work!, July 20, 2006

By 

Meredith K. Askey "crafty, singing reader wit... (South Central Pennsylvania, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: For the Time Being (Paperback)

This is my first Dillard book, after a failed attempt to read "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" at age 16. I am now 23; I have a very different worldview than I did at 16, and although I am still relatively young and inexperienced, and make no claims to be more intelligent or intellectually gifted than other reviewers, I must take issue with the two reviewers below who gave only one star. I love this book, and I believe two of my fellow reviewers have missed some important points. One Robert Michael accuses Dillard of providing "no analysis" of her "only one very general theme"; I say, he was expecting Dillard to do all the work for him, but her goal was to relate her musings and leave the detailed analysis to the reader. I find this a very effective and gratifying method: Dillard trusts her readers to come to their own conclusions, which may or may not match her conclusions from the thought trails she is following. Her observations are profound, unique, beautiful, and moving, and even more so when I let them take my mind on its own thoughtful journey.
Another reviewer, Hortensia "massageprop," accuses Dillard of "[assuming] that Jews and Christians have all the answers to fundamental questions about existence," but I am POSITIVE that Dillard's point is exactly the opposite: she finds little meaning in either, or in any organized religion, and is wondering how people have fooled themselves into finding so much meaning in these belief systems for so long, shutting themselves off from other modes of thought. She acknowledges that it is possible to find some meaning in religion, but no more meaning than in any other belief systems including nature worship, or atheistic or agnostic philosophy; further, she shows us that although it is impossible to ever completely satisfy our thirst for fulfillment and meaning, we would be shortchanging ourselves if we limited ourselves to only one belief system - they all deserve attention and exploration because each has unique gifts. All of Dillard's musings on religion seem to me filled with spirituality at a first glance of their thin surfaces, but are really meant to emphasize the emptiness beneath the façade of religious tradition and ritual. Each of these reviewers needs to take a second look at this book, and expect to do more work and listen a bit harder: Dillard's style is subtlety, and the extra work she requires from her reader leads to a much richer and more deeply meaningful reading experience.

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars God's sword, October 31, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: For the Time Being (Hardcover)

As a writer trapped in the box of the hortatory and homiletic by publishers' demands, I look upon Annie Dillard as something close to God -- both for what she says and the way she gets to say it. This book is pure metaphor. You can never quite grasp it, and in its elusiveness it transcends thought and moves to poetry. Damn, she's good. "Think I'll light a cigarette and think." What a way to live. I'll still take Holy the Firm over this, though. Never have searing holiness and outrage at God been so beautifully intermixed. Still, I'd throw away the best of most everyone else's work to read the worst of hers. What an intellectual and spiritual treasure.