A book that instantly captured the hearts of readers across the country, An American Childhood is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard's poignant, vivid memoir of growing up in Pittsburgh in the 1950s.
American Childhood
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Annie Dillard remembers. She remembers the exhilaration of whipping a snowball at a car and having it hit straight on. She remembers playing with the skin on her mother's knuckles, which "didn't snap back; it lay dead across her knuckle in a yellowish ridge." She remembers the compulsion to spend a whole afternoon (or many whole afternoons) endlessly pitching a ball at a target. In this intoxicating account of her childhood, Dillard climbs back inside her 5-, 10-, and 15-year-old selves with apparent effortlessness. The voracious young Dillard embraces headlong one fascination after another--from drawing to rocks and bugs to the French symbolists. "Everywhere, things snagged me," she writes. "The visible world turned me curious to books; the books propelled me reeling back to the world." From her parents she inherited a love of language--her mother's speech was "an endlessly interesting, swerving path"--and the understanding that "you do what you do out of your private passion for the thing itself," not for anyone else's approval or desire. And one would be mistaken to call the energy Dillard exhibits in An American Childhood merely youthful; "still I break up through the skin of awareness a thousand times a day," she writes, "as dolphins burst through seas, and dive again, and rise, and dive."
From Publishers Weekly
Dillard's luminous prose painlessly captures the pain of growing up in this wonderful evocation of childhood. Her memoir is partly a hymn to Pittsburgh, where orange streetcars ran on Penn Avenue in 1953 when she was eight, and where the Pirates were always in the cellar. Dillard's mother, an unstoppable force, had energies too vast for the bridge games and household chores that stymied her. Her father made low-budget horror movies, loved Dixieland jazz, told endless jokes and sight-gags and took lonesome river trips down to New Orleans to get away. From this slightly odd couple, Dillard (Teaching a Stone to Talk acquired her love of nature and taut sensitivity. The events of childhood often loom larger than life; the magic of Dillard's writing is that she sets down typical childhood happenings with their original immediacy and force.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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THE STORY STARTS BACK IN 1950, when I was five. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
THE STORY STARTS BACK IN 1950, when I was five. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
Format:Paperback
What a wonderful read. I just finished re-reading it, and enjoyed it more the second time around. I recall the first time I was so impressed with it that I wrote a thank you note to Ms. Dillard. To my surprise, she replied!
The book elicited memories from my childhood - not the place - not the people - rather, the in the pit of my stomach feelings, that came back to me, years later.
The book elicited memories from my childhood - not the place - not the people - rather, the in the pit of my stomach feelings, that came back to me, years later.
Format:Paperback
This book is possibly the worst piece of literature that I have ever read in my lifetime. I do realize that the book is an autobiography and is by no means meant to be an adventure fiction novel. However, if you are going to write about your life, please do something interesting. Nobody wants to hear about an average person leading an average life with no specific events to back it up. Dillard tries to make her life seem interesting by filling the book with useless descriptions and seemingly random transitions. I will keep this book by my bed simply because if I am having trouble sleeping, it will put me right out.
Here is a quote to show exactly how disjointed the writing is.
"I was hoping the streets would fill and I could shoot my cap gun at people instead of at mere sparrows. My project was to ride my swing all around, over the top. I bounced a ball against the house..."
Here is a quote to show exactly how disjointed the writing is.
"I was hoping the streets would fill and I could shoot my cap gun at people instead of at mere sparrows. My project was to ride my swing all around, over the top. I bounced a ball against the house..."
By Peggy Vincent
TOP 1000 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
Only the luminous writing of someone as gifted as Annie Dillard could render the coal industry town of Pittsburg so charmingly. In this quintessentially American book, Dillard captures the pain of growing up. Born into family wealth, she led a privileged childhood among large homes, shady streets, very wealthy grandparents, private school - and a very close and loving family.
It's easy to sense that Dillard's mother was the primary force in her childhood, a woman of formidable interests and energies, questing curiosity, and the determination that her 3 daughters would not grow up as nothing more than the narrow-minded results of too much money and pampering. Dillard was certainly brilliant as a young child, focused and single-minded in her interest-du-jour; that her parents provided her the wherewithal to indulge her fascination with art, nature, music, and writing turns out to have been a gift to us all.
But Pittsburg? Yes, Annie Dillard makes it a place I just might look forward to visiting some day - and that, alone, is a testament to her powers.
It's easy to sense that Dillard's mother was the primary force in her childhood, a woman of formidable interests and energies, questing curiosity, and the determination that her 3 daughters would not grow up as nothing more than the narrow-minded results of too much money and pampering. Dillard was certainly brilliant as a young child, focused and single-minded in her interest-du-jour; that her parents provided her the wherewithal to indulge her fascination with art, nature, music, and writing turns out to have been a gift to us all.
But Pittsburg? Yes, Annie Dillard makes it a place I just might look forward to visiting some day - and that, alone, is a testament to her powers.
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3.3 out of 5 stars
Most recent customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
The Autobiographical Equivalent of "Seinfeld" ....
. . . because it fills up space but is really about nothing in particular. Not nearly as funny as "Seinfeld. Read more
Published on July 23 2003 by Kevin Quinley
4.0 out of 5 stars
There's a glory in the mundane.
The furiously curious Annie Dillard! From her very earliest years she has a profound awareness of the mystery of life, nothing is without wonder, everything worthy of further... Read more
Published on May 6 2002 by Cipriano
2.0 out of 5 stars
An American Childhood
If I have ever read a book that I truly, truly didn't like, this would have to be it. The book is filled with overbearing descriptions that have little to do with the actual book,... Read more
Published on Sep 23 2001 by "salinascowgirl"
5.0 out of 5 stars
Like looking through someone's picture window at night
The first time I read An American Childhood I was so thrilled I wanted everyone I knew to read it too. Read more
Published on Mar 10 2001
3.0 out of 5 stars
An American Childhood Review
Annie Dillard is an American author who writes contemporary short stories, poetry, literary criticism, and autobiography. Read more
Published on Jan 16 2001
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Enchantment of the Real
These are sketches of the author's early life, until age 16 or so, that achieve a unity more by the enrichment of themes than by a strict chronology.
[on boys] "... Read more
Published on Jan 4 2001 by James R. Mccall
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautifully Detailed Memories of One's Life
This book wonderfully captures life through the eyes of a child and all the thrills and tumbles it involves. Read more
Published on Sep 17 2000 by "ashies"
3.0 out of 5 stars
RANDOM...
although a very interesting book, Annie Dillard's "An American Childhood" is very (and I mean very) random and boring. Read more
Published on Sep 4 2000 by The Web Junkie
3.0 out of 5 stars
Nice book
This is one of the best books that I have read in recent times.
Published on Jun 21 2000 by srinu
4.0 out of 5 stars
Annie Dillard revisits her childhood.
Annie Dillard is among my favorite writers. With the exceptions of "Tickets for a Prayer Wheel" (which is now apparently out of print) and "The Living," I have... Read more
Published on May 8 2000 by G. Merritt
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