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'For the Time Being'by Annie Dillard (205 pages. Knopf $22.00) Newsweek.com book review, May 28, 1999 Annie Dillard best sums up her exceptional book, "For the Time Being," in the first sentence of her Author's Note: "This is a nonfiction first-person narrative, but it is not intimate, and its narratives keep breaking. Its form is unusual, its scenes are remote, its focus wide, and its tone austere. Its pleasures are almost purely mental." Indeed, the pleasures are so mental that the reader needs to pay close attention while reading the seemingly disjoined narratives of this gem of a book in order to fully enjoy it. Dillard writes movingly on some of the least written-about subjects: birth defects (who's ever read about bird-headed dwarfs?); the formation of sand; and the dogma of Hasidic Jews, among others. With the skill befitting a Pulitzer Prize winner, she creates cleverly interwoven themes uniting these disparate subjects. Dillard's lyrical and seductive prose will lure most readers into the book, but the apparent randomness of the mix — one-liners juxtaposed with unrelated mini-discourses — may discourage some impatient readers. Still, good things come to those who wait. Dillard's method is deliberate, and given time, it works. Not only does she explore questions such as whether God directly causes anything in the universe and whether people as a species matter at all, but she also provides her own unique answers — for the time being. |
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