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Holy the Firm
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Holy the Firm Paperback - 1988

by Annie Dillard


Summary

In 1975 Annie Dillard took up residence on an island in Puget Sound in a wooded room furnished with "one enormous window, one cat, one spider and one person." For the next two years she asked herself questions about time, reality, sacrifice death, and the will of God. In Holy the Firm she writes about a moth consumed in a candle flame, about a seven-year-old girl burned in an airplane accident, about a baptism on a cold beach. But behind the moving curtain of what she calls "the hard things -- rock mountain and salt sea," she sees, sometimes far off and sometimes as close by as a veil or air, the power play of holy fire.This is a profound book about the natural world -- both its beauty and its cruelty -- the Pulitzer Prize-winning Dillard knows so well.

From the publisher

"[This] is a book of great richness, beauty and power and thus very difficult to do justice to in a brief review. . . . The violence is sometimes unbearable, the language rarely less than superb. Dillard's description of the moth's death makes Virginia Woolf's go dim and Edwardian. . . . Nature seen so clear and hard that the eyes tear. . . . A rare and precious book." -- Frederick Buechner, New York Times Book Review

From Pulitzer Prize-winning Annie Dillard, a book about the grace, beauty, and terror of the natural world.

In the mid 1970s, Annie Dillard spent two years on an island in Puget Sound in a room with a solitary window, a cat, and a spider for company, asking herself questions about memory, time, sacrifice, reality, death, and God. Holy the Firm, the diary-like collection of her thoughts, feelings, and ruminations during this time, is a lyrical gift to any reader who have ever wondered how best to live with grace and wonder in the natural world.

First line

Every day is a god, each day is a god, and holiness holds forth in time.

From the rear cover

In 1975 Annie Dillard took up residence on an island in Puget Sound in a wooded room furnished with "one enormous window, one cat, one spider and one person." For the next two years she asked herself questions about time, reality, sacrifice death, and the will of God. In Holy the Firm she writes about a moth consumed in a candle flame, about a seven-year-old girl burned in an airplane accident, about a baptism on a cold beach. But behind the moving curtain of what she calls "the hard things -- rock mountain and salt sea," she sees, sometimes far off and sometimes as close by as a veil or air, the power play of holy fire.

This is a profound book about the natural world -- both its beauty and its cruelty -- the Pulitzer Prize-winning Dillard knows so well.

Details

  • Title Holy the Firm
  • Author Annie Dillard
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition Revised
  • Pages 80
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Harper Perennial, New York
  • Date 1988
  • ISBN 9780060915438 / 0060915439
  • Weight 0.15 lbs (0.07 kg)
  • Dimensions 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.2 in (19.81 x 13.21 x 0.51 cm)
  • Themes
    • Sex & Gender: Feminine
  • Library of Congress subjects Meditations
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 77006883
  • Dewey Decimal Code 242
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Holy the Firm
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Holy the Firm

by Dillard, Annie

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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
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Holy the Firm
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Holy the Firm

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Holy the Firm

Holy the Firm

by Annie Dillard

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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
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Holy the Firm
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Holy the Firm

by Dillard, Annie

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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
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Holy the Firm
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Holy the Firm

by Dillard, Annie

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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
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