HOLY THE FIRM - ANNIE DILLARD

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I’ve had this book for a while but decided to finally read it on a weekend trip to one of the Puget Sound’s many magical islands. Dillard herself wrote this book while living somewhere in Island County, though she doesn’t, at least in this book, make it totally clear exactly where she is. Irregardless, the book is only ~70 pages long so it seemed appropriate to read the book ensconced within the environment it was written in. Additionally, like the other Dillard books I’ve read, this one is very much about place and nature, the environment and natural rhythms. I’m not deeply read in Dillard but this short, almost polemic book, struck me as a distillation of her worldview. A bracing shot of Dillard. As she says herself, “Nothing is going to happen in this book. There is only a little violence here and there in the language, at the corner where eternity clips time.” Before, and here I’m mostly thinking of PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK, Dillard starts with the natural, infuses wonder and a mystic mystery before launching into deep theology and profundity. This book is that, but quicker. The speed at which she tackles the largest issues imaginable would be corny or pretentious in basically anyone else’s hands. Even the opening of the book, “Every day is a god,” I don’t think many people could pull off. She, again, doesn’t flinch from the hard stuff about nature, the cruelty and destruction, and weaves in a story about a local girl who’s very badly burned in a plane wreck and struggles to fit that terrible fact into her understanding of the world. I wonder how long it took to write this. I wonder if this really is the pruned down version of something longer and tedious. Either way, I found it really invigorating and engaging, she manages to be both straightforward and no nonsense while also being poetic and crafty. I wonder if there is a series of these short, almost zine-like, blasts from Dillard. I’ll have to keep my eyes open at used book stores, I would love to have a half dozen or so laying around to read while trapped in a car or on a short trip. 176 profound mysteries.