American Childhood (23 page)

A
NNIE
D
ILLARD
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.

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“Casts a golden glow on family life…Reading [Annie Dillard] can be as exciting as reading a thriller—though the only ‘plot’ lies in her unfolding of a child’s entry into consciousness…. Her book is a celebration of being alive.”

—
New Woman

“This sunny memoir…reminds one of an Impressionist painting, her memories shimmer on the page.”

—Cyra McFadden,
Los Angeles Times

“[Annie Dillard] is one of those people who seem to be more fully alive than most of us, more nearly wide-awake than human beings generally get to be.”

—Noel Perrin,
New York Times

“As I read
An American Childhood
, I [had] the astonishing experience of seeing my neighborhood, my very childhood, unroll before my eyes in the pages of someone else’s book.”

—
USA Today

“Annie Dillard has been twice-blessed—by literate and prosperous parents, who gave her unconditional love and freedom of mind and person, and by her own extraordinary gifts of observation and language. The reader of
An American Childhood
reaps the fruit of these blessings.”

—Hilma Wolitzer,
Newsday

“A catalogue of loves lovingly told…This delighted exploration of the world of books is by far the most enjoyable thing in
An American Childhood
and, in its modest way, a classic love story.”

—
Washington Post

“Marvelous.”

—
Kansas City Star

“
An American Childhood
might be described as a metaphysical memoir—closer in spirit to Rousseau or St. Augustine than to most contemporary memoirists…. Her writing celebrates and revels in its surprising loops and leaps of insight the value of the scrupulously examined life.”

—
Providence Journal

“Dillard is a natural stylist with a flair and keen love for words. We’ve seen it in her
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Living by Fiction
, and now this, her most luminous work….
An American Childhood’s
penultimate chapter is literature on high beam. Her memories rush and bubble up, a kind of waterfall of language and feeling, in summation…. Annie Dillard’s
An American Childhood
is a glorious, exultant book. You must read it.”

—
Columbus Dispatch

“A rare treat, an autobiography you’ll want to read more than once…When she…reawaken[s] your own joy, you can’t help but be grateful.”

—
San Jose Mercury-News

Encounters with Chinese Writers

Teaching a Stone to Talk

Living by Fiction

Holy the Firm

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Tickets for a Prayer Wheel

AN AMERICAN CHILDHOOD
. Copyright © 1987 by Annie Dillard. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition © JULY 2007 ISBN: 9780061843136

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