It seemed to me, reading it, that skin had never been adequately described before. The passage grows into a meditation on how parents (in her case, very young and very good-looking ones, though she didn't know it then) physically appear to aĬhild. Instantly returning to smooth shapeliness as a child's hand does. She begins with an event: herself as a little girl, pinching up the skin over one of her mother's knuckles, and watching in fascination as it stays ridged up instead of In which she talks about adult skin as perceived by a child. There is a passage in this book, a rather long one,
(Thoreau once said he had never met a man who was fully awake - but he was forgetting about women, and he hadn't met Ms.
She is one of those people who seem to be more fully alive than most of us, more nearly wide-awake than human beings Dillard has written anĪutobiography in semimystical prose about the growth of her own mind, and it's an exceptionally interesting account. Dillard's equivalent of Wordsworth's ''Prelude.'' The full title of that work is ''The Prelude or, Growth of a Poet's Mind: An Autobiographical Poem.'' Ms. Dillard grew up in the small Presbyterian elite that runs (or used to run) the city. ''An American Childhood'' takes place almost entirely in Pittsburgh, where Ms. The very name Annie suggests a homespun background, and the rural Virginia location of Tinker Creek affirms that the author must be a countrywoman. Dillard only from ''Pilgrim'' are going to get some surprises. She continues to see beyond the visible in her autobiography, ''An American Childhood.'' This woman is either unusually sensitive or prone to exaggeration, the Of three Canada geese to land on her frozen duck pond. In the meditative book ''Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,'' she saw the coming of God in the attempt She may or may not see auras - but she invariably sees something beyond what is just there. Somewhat like a guinea?' 'O no, no, I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying, ''Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.'' ' ''Īnnie Dillard is one of Blake's company. '' 'What,' it will be questioned, 'when the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire One of William Blake's more famous passages describes his reaction to sunrise, as opposed to the response of ordinary Englishmen. Such a talent greatly increases the power, majesty, drama and interest of this humdrum world. SeptemHer Inexhaustable Mind By NOEL PERRIN
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