For the Time Being
question
Does she achieve her usual balanced view?
Dean
Sep 06, 2015 02:34AM
For the Time Being
In all her books that I've read, Dillard is explicit about her view of the world--that there is great beauty and great awfulness. I remember two scenes from "Pilgrim": the bird dropping from the tall building and opening its wings to soar down gently at the last minute put against the tale of the giant water bug sucking the guts out of a frog. But in "For the Time Being," she begins the book with images of horror from a book of photographs of children with birth defects and then says, characteristically, "For the world is as glorious as ever, and exalting, but for credibility's sake let's start with the bad news."
THE QUESTION: Does this book mark a shift in Dillard's point of view? Does she see more of the "bad news" than the glory?
In all her books that I've read, Dillard is explicit about her view of the world--that there is great beauty and great awfulness. I remember two scenes from "Pilgrim": the bird dropping from the tall building and opening its wings to soar down gently at the last minute put against the tale of the giant water bug sucking the guts out of a frog. But in "For the Time Being," she begins the book with images of horror from a book of photographs of children with birth defects and then says, characteristically, "For the world is as glorious as ever, and exalting, but for credibility's sake let's start with the bad news."
THE QUESTION: Does this book mark a shift in Dillard's point of view? Does she see more of the "bad news" than the glory?
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Maybe its only in fully entering into the dark, the painful, the bad, that we can emerge on the other side to a more full and rich life or... glory
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