In what feels like a valedictory collection, Dillard has selected, rearranged and in some cases retitled and revised 22 of the best essays she’s written over the last 40 years, curating what amounts to a retrospective exhibit of her own career ... The Abundance is crepuscular. Darkness keeps falling across the page. Readers seeking pretty glimpses of heaven on earth will find little comfort here. Humor, yes. And a fair portion of the beautiful and the sublime. A great deal of the sublime. But little comfort.
Included here are eight short, less demanding pieces taken from her 1987 memoir An American Childhood, offering pointers to Dillard’s evolution as a writer. They suffer slightly through being juxtaposed with her more rapturous material, but even here there are masterful moments, hand-brake turn transitions, and she rattles out revelations in stories so elegant and compact they could be prose poems ... Dillard is triumphantly awake, and these essays are magnificent and dramatic, illuminating and inspirational. Read them; they brim with abundance.
The Abundance's subtitle, Narrative Essays Old and New, got me all excited — new essays from Annie Dillard! Alas, the subtitle is a cruel lie. There are no new essays here — nothing previously unpublished, and the most recent essay appeared in Harper's Magazine 14 years ago ... But what is here is a distillation of a strange, powerful sensibility, unique in contemporary American letters.
...for all Dillard’s brilliance as a nature writer, nature isn’t finally her subject. She situates herself on territory like Thoreau’s but faces toward a very different compass point ... The Abundance, a collage of existing material, is, by definition, nothing new. One hopes it heralds a return. One fears it is a valedictory.
Cynically, the book could be seen as an attempt on the publisher’s part to squeeze some sales out of Dillard’s literary reputation. But it could also be read more generously: as a welcome occasion to discern the themes common to her work over time and to take stock of her legacy.
With stirring language and powerful intellect, Dillard shows us what it means to be alive, to feel 'the planet buck under you — rear, kick, and try to throw you — while you hang on to the ring.' Relish the ride, for time is 'pounding at you, time.'
Annie Dillard is not a simple read. It seems that way at first. She will spell things out for you, but then you've got to assemble the parts ... Dillard works well being read out loud. It's like music, and the melody appears in little bursts. The reader hears the song as a whole as almost only an echo.
What a gift Annie Dillard’s The Abundance is. Over her 40-year career, Dillard has proven herself one of America’s most accomplished stylists and one of its most mesmerizing sensibilities. Her natural descriptions equal those of Thoreau, and her soul is as theological as Marilynne Robinson’s.
