Annie Dillard is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, An American Childhood, The Writing Life, The Living and The Maytrees. 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.
"[An American Childhood] combines the child's sense of wonder with the adult's intelligence and is written in some of the finest prose that exists in contemporary America. It is a special sort of memoir that is entirely successful...This new book is [Annie Dillard's] best, a joyous ode to her own happy childhood." -- Chicago Tribune"A vivid and thoughtful evocation of particular personal experiences that have an exuberantly timeless appeal." -- Chicago Sun-Times"An American Childhood does all this so consummately with Annie Dillard's 50s childhood in Pittsburgh that it more than takes the reader's breath away. It consumes you as you consume it, so that, when you have put down this book, you're a different person, one who has virtually experiences another childhood." -- Chicago Tribune"An American Childhood shimmers with the same rich detail, the same keen and often wry observations as her first book [Pilgrim at Tinker Creek]." -- Charlotte Observer"By turns wry, provocative and sometimes breathtaking...This is a work marked by exquisite insight." -- Boston Globe"Every paragraph Dillard writes is full of information, presenting the mundane with inventive freshness and offering exotic surprises as dessert...[Annie Dillard] is one of nature's prize wonders herself--an example of sentient homo sapiens pushing the limits of the creative imagination. She deserves our close attentions." -- Chicago Tribune"Loving and lyrical, nostalgic without being wistful, this is a book about the capacity for joy." -- Los Angeles Times"The reader who can't find something to whoop about is not alive. An American Childhood is perhaps the best American autobiography since Russell Baker's Growing Up." -- Philadelphia Inquirer"A remarkable work...an exceptionally interesting account." -- New York Times
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. (September)
Dillard's account of her childhood until her entrance into Hollins College is delightful, fast-paced, and full of action. Written in three parts, with a prologue about her father's brief sea venture when she was eight and an epilogue about her own children, the book reads like a play: there is excellent character development, and the vivid descriptions make the reader almost a witness to the events. Dillard fans will especially appreciate the insight she offers into her early consciousness and development, while others will enjoy this picture of growing up in the 1950s or simply the humor and sensitivity of the writing. Highly recommended. Carolyn M. Craft, English, Philosophy & Modern Languages Dept., Longwood Coll., Farmville, Va.
"[An American Childhood] combines the child's sense of wonder with the adult's intelligence and is written in some of the finest prose that exists in contemporary America. It is a special sort of memoir that is entirely successful...This new book is [Annie Dillard's] best, a joyous ode to her own happy childhood." -- Chicago Tribune"A vivid and thoughtful evocation of particular personal experiences that have an exuberantly timeless appeal." -- Chicago Sun-Times"An American Childhood does all this so consummately with Annie Dillard's 50s childhood in Pittsburgh that it more than takes the reader's breath away. It consumes you as you consume it, so that, when you have put down this book, you're a different person, one who has virtually experiences another childhood." -- Chicago Tribune"An American Childhood shimmers with the same rich detail, the same keen and often wry observations as her first book [Pilgrim at Tinker Creek]." -- Charlotte Observer"By turns wry, provocative and sometimes breathtaking...This is a work marked by exquisite insight." -- Boston Globe"Every paragraph Dillard writes is full of information, presenting the mundane with inventive freshness and offering exotic surprises as dessert...[Annie Dillard] is one of nature's prize wonders herself--an example of sentient homo sapiens pushing the limits of the creative imagination. She deserves our close attentions." -- Chicago Tribune"Loving and lyrical, nostalgic without being wistful, this is a book about the capacity for joy." -- Los Angeles Times"The reader who can't find something to whoop about is not alive. An American Childhood is perhaps the best American autobiography since Russell Baker's Growing Up." -- Philadelphia Inquirer"A remarkable work...an exceptionally interesting account." -- New York Times
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