csgvassar's review against another edition
3.0
Annie Dillard is definitely thought-provoking, which I always look for in a book. She is also very artistic in her presentation of ideas. It took me awhile to catch on to her style and there were definitely parts that I just didn't get. In this book, Annie leaves us pondering the big question of the purpose of our existence and questioning whether we're just another speck of sand or something more important. Good stuff to ponder.
Obviously, these are richer if you read the entire book, but here are a few excerpts which caught my attention:
There are 1,198,500,000 people alive now in China. To get a feel for what this means, simply take yourself--in all your singularity, importance, complexity, and love--and multiply by 1,198,500,000. See? Nothing to it.
When a person arrives in the world as a baby, says one Midrash, "his hands are clenched as though to say, 'Everything is mine. I will inherit it all.' When he departs from the world, his hands are open, as though to say, 'I have acquired nothing from the world.'"
"One death is a tragedy; a million deaths are a statistic." Joseph Stalin, that gourmandizer, gave words to this disquieting and possibly universal sentiment.
Why must we suffer losses? Even Meister Eckhart offers the lame apology that God never intended us to regard his gifts as our property and that "in order to impress it on us, he frequently takes away everything, physical and spiritual....Why does God stress this point so much? Because he wants to be ours exclusively."
It is a weakening and discoloring idea, that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time---or even knew selflessness or courage or literature---but that it is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.
An English journalist, observing the Sisters of Charity in Calcutta, reasoned: "Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some the other."
Obviously, these are richer if you read the entire book, but here are a few excerpts which caught my attention:
There are 1,198,500,000 people alive now in China. To get a feel for what this means, simply take yourself--in all your singularity, importance, complexity, and love--and multiply by 1,198,500,000. See? Nothing to it.
When a person arrives in the world as a baby, says one Midrash, "his hands are clenched as though to say, 'Everything is mine. I will inherit it all.' When he departs from the world, his hands are open, as though to say, 'I have acquired nothing from the world.'"
"One death is a tragedy; a million deaths are a statistic." Joseph Stalin, that gourmandizer, gave words to this disquieting and possibly universal sentiment.
Why must we suffer losses? Even Meister Eckhart offers the lame apology that God never intended us to regard his gifts as our property and that "in order to impress it on us, he frequently takes away everything, physical and spiritual....Why does God stress this point so much? Because he wants to be ours exclusively."
It is a weakening and discoloring idea, that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time---or even knew selflessness or courage or literature---but that it is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.
An English journalist, observing the Sisters of Charity in Calcutta, reasoned: "Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some the other."
anneliehyatt's review against another edition
5.0
This book reminds me about what deep reading is all about: not the acquisition of facts, but a journey in complex thought that challenges us to ruminate about mortality, existential meaning, and God as we witness alongside Dillard these stunning, mundane moments of beauty. Perhaps a part of For the Time Being is the boredom and aimlessness one feels in reading it, to realize that perhaps we'll always be searching for meaning and answers in a world that is simply about the pursuit of discovery, not the discovery in itself.
Stylistically, this book is consistently stunning. I enjoyed her use of other people's words, for it combined a multitude of perspectives (including hers) to craft an argument about existence that wouldn't be possible to achieve through the eyes of a single person.
Stylistically, this book is consistently stunning. I enjoyed her use of other people's words, for it combined a multitude of perspectives (including hers) to craft an argument about existence that wouldn't be possible to achieve through the eyes of a single person.
rhaines46's review against another edition
I really enjoy Annie Dillard's writing even though a lot of the time I really don't know what she's on about. Or I do know what she's on about, but I don't know what point she's trying to make about it or if she's trying to make a point at all. This book in particular feels like a mosaic of ideas and quotations and trivia and biography and memoir, like she took every interesting note she had about: holiness & grace & natural history & multitudinous humanity & vastness & time & accident & malformity & prayer & paradox and carefully built a neat little structure out of those notes. It's hard to say what exactly it all adds up to, but also: why aren't more books about everything?
"The Chinese soldiers who breathed air posing for their 7,000 individual clay portraits must have thought it a wonderful difference that workers buried only their simulacra, so their sons could buy their flesh a bit later. One wonders what they did in the months and years they gained. One wonders what one is oneself up to these days."
"The Chinese soldiers who breathed air posing for their 7,000 individual clay portraits must have thought it a wonderful difference that workers buried only their simulacra, so their sons could buy their flesh a bit later. One wonders what they did in the months and years they gained. One wonders what one is oneself up to these days."
kmasullivan's review against another edition
5.0
This was a reread but that's what I needed: Annie Dillard's language dancing in my head.
superdilettante's review against another edition
3.0
There are some really killer bits in this loosely-connected series of essays, but on the whole I found myself bouncing off all the God bits.
elundhansen's review against another edition
4.0
This is the kind of book I'd love to write: meditations and musings on all matter of things, strung into repeating one-word-themed sections ("Birth," "China," "Now," "Evil," "Israel," etc.). Dillard puts words to our deepest wonderings--juxtaposing the menial and the existential and essentially asking if those are one and the same.
This book didn't shake my world in the same way [b:Pilgrim at Tinker Creek|12527|Pilgrim at Tinker Creek|Annie Dillard|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388717988l/12527._SX50_.jpg|2280883] did, but a thought from that book stays with me after this one, too: I want to see like Annie Dillard sees.
This book didn't shake my world in the same way [b:Pilgrim at Tinker Creek|12527|Pilgrim at Tinker Creek|Annie Dillard|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388717988l/12527._SX50_.jpg|2280883] did, but a thought from that book stays with me after this one, too: I want to see like Annie Dillard sees.