An American Childhood
Annie Dillard. HarperCollins Publishers, $17.95 (255pp) ISBN 978-0-06-015805-7
Dillard's luminous prose painlessly captures the pain of growing up in this wonderful evocation of childhood. Her memoir is partly a hymn to Pittsburgh, where orange streetcars ran on Penn Avenue in 1953 when she was eight, and where the Pirates were always in the cellar. Dillard's mother, an unstoppable force, had energies too vast for the bridge games and household chores that stymied her. Her father made low-budget horror movies, loved Dixieland jazz, told endless jokes and sight-gags and took lonesome river trips down to New Orleans to get away. From this slightly odd couple, Dillard (Teaching a Stone to Talk acquired her love of nature and taut sensitivity. The events of childhood often loom larger than life; the magic of Dillard's writing is that she sets down typical childhood happenings with their original immediacy and force. (September)
Details
Reviewed on: 09/01/1987
Genre: Nonfiction
Analog Audio Cassette - 978-1-4417-7389-0
Compact Disc - 978-1-4417-7391-3
Compact Disc - 978-1-4417-7390-6
Hardcover - 255 pages - 978-0-06-015834-7
Hardcover - 396 pages - 978-0-8161-4491-4
MP3 CD - 978-1-4417-7392-0
Open Ebook - 272 pages - 978-0-06-147606-8
Open Ebook - 1 pages - 978-1-4417-7394-4
Other - 272 pages - 978-0-06-147610-5
Other - 272 pages - 978-0-06-184313-6
Paperback - 272 pages - 978-0-06-091518-6
Peanut Press/Palm Reader - 272 pages - 978-0-06-147608-2
Pre-Recorded Audio Player - 978-1-4417-7395-1
