Customer Reviews

Holy the Firm

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I don't like using words like "perfect" but I think it is warranted here. This is an incredibly literate piece of work, in which not one single word has been wasted. Each time I read it I come away exhililrated & humbled by Dillard's mastery of language & the enormous depth of scholarship that lies behind every line and every metaphor. This is writing by someone drunk on language & learning, try not to stuff it into any pre-conceived notions of literature -this is music. Dillard has crafted a classical symphony for us in which certain movements come back over and over in variations of harmony and melody that will sweep you away. Now, that being said, I must also say that it seems that half my best students love Dillard & half hate her. Very little in between. Yesterday one of my brightest (who loves Dillard) threw up her hands and said "Now I hate her, I will have to spend seven years reading to know what she is saying". Yes, of course! but the joy of Dillard's immersion in Anglo-American theology and literature is that she draws you along -it isn't name dropping, thesefolks have been useful to her & she wants us to come too. Read Holy The Firm with Eliot's Four Quartets in the other hand, then you can have a go at Johnson, Martin Luther.... AND YOU WILL!

Annie Dillard is one of those writers who is all or nothing. Many people don't "get" her and find her bewildering. But to some of us, she speaks to some unspoken hunger in our souls that we never knew we had. The year after a personal tragedy I read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Holy the Firm incessantly, finding in Dillard's thoughts and imagery a necessary verbalization of my pain and spiritual confusion. She is able to capture in one short phrase the complex muddle of emotions found at certain times in one's life and the reader knows that she's been there. To filch a line from another book: "When one walks in the shadow of insanity, the finding of another footstep on the sand is something close to a blessed event." I do not exaggerate when I say Holy the Firm saved my mind.

This is not to say that Dillard is all gloom-and-doom. Many of her lines are extremely witty and can make you burst out laughing with her insight and sardonic humor.

Either she clicks with you or she doesn't. But for those of us with whom she does, Dillard is wonderful.

Dillard's work is poetic, but her conclusions troubling. She tries to form a redemptive narrative of material that cannot be answered by this simplistic approach. For example, she addresses a young girl who has been badly burned, telling the girl that she has become a nun in her suffering, that she will learn something, that it won't take this young girl as long to come to the same realizations that she, Dillard herself, has reached. This seems a hubris of the most disturbing kind, to use the suffering of another to say "now you'll know what I've known," when it's entirely questionable whether or not Dillard can claim this kind of suffering. Or, even if she can, that she attempts to instruct another in the realm of what lies beyond instruction. Dillard's thoughts are worth reading, but they also require a careful questioning, as her assumptions are sometimes highly problematic.

This is definitely not work that I would usually read for pleasure. However, it was entirely pleasurable. Beautiful images, words, skill, observation, and construction. I both laughed and, unexpectedly, cried. Perfect contemplative reading.

Someone has compared Dillard to Thoreau. They were right. The way this author fashions her words leaves me wordless. Poetic, poignant, evocative, smelling of life and love and tragedy... just buy it and see for yourself.

Pulitzer-Prize winning author Annie Dillard's Holy the Firm transcends the genres of poetry and essay as fluidly as it does the disciplines of philosophy and religion. Her writing is lucid and inspiring and this tiny volume contains more insight and wisdom than virtually any other modern text I've encountered. I'd highly recommend this book to any reader, in hopes that Dillard's unique writing style and her spirited intellect can bring to others the same inspiration they have brought me.

A rare book like "Holy the Firm" comes once in a while to lead us to our inner selves. With rich and vivid imagery written in lyrical perfection, Annie Dillard shares with us her musings and meditations on nature, life, God. She writes, "Who are we to demand explanations of God? (And what monsters of perfection should we be if we did not?)." And yet, this isn't all about heavy stuff. Through her words, we see the wonders of nature; you can feel the air, touch the moths, take in the view of the bay. Her writing stirs your own questions within, and while she doesn't provide answers, only answers to her own questions, she takes you on the road to the search for Truth and Life.

Amazing. I read this book for my AP comp. class
(independant reading) and was swept away by Dilliard's
imagery. She not only describes elaborate pictures of the
interworkings of life, but paints pictures with words of
emotion. She basis this book on the tragedy of a little
girl, who was in an airplane crash--her personal torment at
hearing about this helpless little girl, is expressed throughout the book and
fills the reader with a sense of pure and exposed emotions.
Raw. This book is no novel, but the length should not fool
you--each page is packed with amazing analogies,
metaphors, and awesome syntax. Each sentence is so well
constructed, that whole paragraphs leave the reader tingling
from description, and epiphanies. I would recommend this
book to anyone who was willing to try to see a different
view of life. Especially if you question people's thoughts
and societies norms and general beliefs--throughout this
Dilliard ponders the existance of God. And anyone who loves
Nature should definately look into this!