Holy the Firm: A Lyrical Meditation on Nature, Mortality, and the Sacred from Pulitzer Prize Winner Annie Dillard

My daughter states this is her favorite book, next to the Bible. She rereads it every year. I decided to find out what she likes. Having read Annie Dillard's other book and not in the mood for it at the time, I was surprised to find myself enjoying this book immensely. I feel it is a book that needs to be read aloud. Annie lives in a one room home on Puget Sound with a view of mountain ranges, the sea and forest. She lives with one ambitious cat, a spider and her thoughts. In this book we learn to appreciate the Pacific Northwest and the moods of the rain and sea. She writes prose like poetry. The book is almost like a diary, a rambling account of days. I like that for a writer, one so open and revealing. There are no expectations of deep thoughts but to reread this book, as my daughter does, I can see that I too would gain new insights into human nature, the wilds of land and sea and the solitude we all share as individuals when we too sit in one room alone with only our pets for company. I look forward to reading this again next year.

"Every day is a god, each day is a god, and holiness holds forth in time." With the opening words of this book, Annie Dillard sets us down, Holy and Firmly, and never lets go as we read on. This is a short book, but who says Holy must be long, either in space or in time? She set me down, and I read it wholly in one day, an otherwise cloudy, rainy, and depressing day in February; she held me firmly in a holy place till I turned the last page, she held me in a place where the Sun rising is a god, the Puget Sound is a god, the Pacific is a god whose being is articulated by the surrounding scene.[page 12] . . . his breast rises from pastures; his fingers are firs; islands slide wet down his shoulders. Island slip blue from his shoulders and glide over the water, the empty, lighted water like a stage. Today's god rises, his long eyes flecked in clouds. He flings his arms, spreading colors; he arches, cupping sky in his belly; he vaults, vaulting and spread, holding all and spread on me like skin.If you have read her Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, An American Childhood, For the Time Being, or Teaching a Stone to Talk, you would not be surprised, because Annie Dillard is always a surprise and a delight to read, whether it's a novel, a non-fiction story (as this one seems to be), or essays on the art of writing itself as in her The Writing Life. Like she recommends that we do, she goes at her life "with a broadax."Can God lose a tooth? we ponder this as we read the title "God's Tooth" for Part Two, which begins with a shock, "Into this world falls a plane." Those firs, which she reckoned as god's fingers earlier, pulls an airplane out of the sky and it falls down like a loosened tooth, all white and bloody to the ground. Annie's little friend, Julie, all of seven years old, lost her face in the flaming gasoline which leapt on her as her father pulled her from the crumpled plane which didn't clear the firs at the end of the small clearing. Annie remembers the day of cidering when Julie dressed up Small, Annie's cat, as a nun in a long black gown with a white collar. Now Julie doesn't have a face and Annie finds that hard to face, the possibility of a friend being blotted out.Holy the Firm is like a long lyrical poem which unrolls itself before our eyes as we read, never knowing how the intricate tapestry of loneliness and created-ness will weave its warp and woof of meaning for us.To read rest of my review, see DIGESTWORLD ISSUE#133 in April, 2013. Bobby Matherne Bobby Matherne

I ordered this in September 2020. I started reading it and put it right back on my shelf - couldn't find anything interesting about it. Picked it up again August 2021. Read it all the way through and hated it. For some unknown reason, I started Reading it for the second time as soon as I finished my first reading. It left me bewildered and slightly astonished. Began rereading it immediately for the third time, and finally, I saw the genius behind the book. I am now officially in love with this book and with Annie Dillard. She makes you work for it, but when you get IT... Wow!!!!

Annie Dillard has a special way of speaking to her readers. Her language is light and airy, yet filled with great significance and meaning. She blithely covers the most difficult and complicated of human subjects, with terrific contemplation. And what she yields is a treasure, a gem to be internalized and imbued.In this book, Annie discusses God. She is confused by the way in which random events that hurt and injure seem to be disconnected with the way in which we would like to live. If these random and terrible events take place, without willful malice; then how could it happen that God would let such terrible things occur?She describes a day in her life. In that day there is a young girl visiting, to whom she is attracted and vice versa. They have a chemistry that brings them within each other's spheres. This beautiful girl becomes the casualty of an airplane crash. No one else is hurt. No one is dead. But this girl for a random reason, is hit with a globule of flaming kerosene, and her face is totally burned away.This anomaly is the framework of the book. She could have chosen 1000 other examples that set up this question. But she chose this one of the girl, one that could be personal not just to her; but also to her readers. She reminds us that there is no everyday, omnipresent God directing things. And there is no way to figure out these random events. There are only DAYS. And those days are filled with things that we do or don't do. There is no God that will directly intervene and tell us what to do, or save us. He is as ruthless as he is merciful. His form, however, is quite another story. His form is spiritual, not worldly, and not mundane. And we must remember that we control most of the things in our lives directly. We need to assume that responsibility and leave the spiritual to whatever it is we seem to believe in as God.This book creates highly complex philosophical problems; which have no direct answers. Yet the book is highly recommended for critical thinkers. The book is a special treatment on the concept of the Divine.

I have several copies of this book in my possession. I think Annie outdid herself with this one -- the lyricism is gorgeous, the flow of ideas & experience, stunning. It's a good intro to Dillard, quite short, but also quite stout. Not for the faint of heart.

There are moments in life when one needs books like this. Whether or not you have a faith or subscribe to a religion, most of us would acknowledge that the human spirit is real. Annie Dillard has the extremely rare talent of reaching out to that spirituality and engaging with it with extraordinary power. If she's out there and sees this, thank you Annie for this little book. Other reviewers have said what it's about and how uplifting her imagery is, but for me it also contains a disturbingly deep and unforgettable inspiration like the poems of Rimbaud or the Bhavagad Gita.

another purchase for my husband , he is a fan of Annie Dillard after reading Pilgrim at tinkers creek years ago he has now come back to reading her other books

Scintillating writing and Annie Dillard's profound relationship with the world make this half-novella-half-prose-poem sing.“The mason jar sat on the teacher’s desk; the big moth emerged inside it. The moth had clawed a hole in its hot cocoon and crawled out, as if agonizingly, over the course of an hour, one leg at a time; we children watched around the desk, transfixed. After it emerged, the wet, mashed thing turned around walking on the green jar’s bottom, then painstakingly climbed the twig with which the jar was furnished.There, at the twig’s top, the moth shook its sodden clumps of wings. When it spread those wings—those beautiful wings—blood would fill their veins, and the birth fluids on the wings’ frail sheets would harden to make them tough as sails. But the moth could not spread its wide wings at all; the jar was too small. The wings could not fill, so they hardened while they were still crumpled from the cocoon. A smaller moth could have spread its wings to their utmost in that mason jar, but the Polyphemus moth was big. Its gold furred body was almost as big as a mouse. Its brown, yellow, pink, and blue wings would have extended six inches from tip to tip, if there had been no mason jar. It would have been big as a wren."

perfect

very pleased.