Hollins College (Roanoke, VA) Class of 1967 Feminist literary scholars Anne Goodwyn Jones and Lucinda Hardwick MacKethan Fiction writer Lee Marshall Smith: 2 John Dos Passes Awards for Fiction, the Lila Wallace

Award, the Robert Penn Warren Prize for Fiction, and 2 O. Henry Awards (Smith preferred short story genre)

Middle 20th century: women were gaining the same opportunities as men Nancy Parrish: Lee Smith, Annie Dillard, and the Hollins Group: A Genesis of Writers – Hollins

College developed students intellectual and artistic talents Phi Beta Kappa in junior year

Married writing prof Richard Henry Wilde Dillard end of sophomore year Wrote poetry, novels, and criticism and liked horror movies influenced AD’s gothic side of

nature; relationship fostered AD’s intellectual growth and established her writing themes Divorced 1975

Master’s in Eng Literature: thesis Walden Pond and Thoreau 40 page essay: Walden pond = space b/ heaven and earth, link material world w/ spiritual

Post College: Published poetry in lit mags The Atlantic and The American Scholar Took up painting 1971 caught pneumonia and almost died subsequent writing obsessed with mortality Camping in western VA PATC 1975-1979 and 1981-1983: scholar-in-residence at Western Washington Univ in Bellingham,

WA; liked coastal waters and high mountains/ natural beauty 1979 and 1983-2004: Distinguished Visiting Professor at Wesleyan Univ in Middletown,

Connecticut Married Gary Clevidence – anthropologist at Fairhaven College (in Western WA Univ) and novelist

Daughter Cody Rose and divorced 1988Married Robert Richardson 1988 – liked his biography of Thoreau; met after sending him fan mail; a literary relationship

Wrote Henry Thoreau: a Life of the Mind – AD’s fave biography of any authorSpent summers on Cape Cod reflected in setting of 2nd novel Provincetown, MATwo novels: The Living 1992 and The Maytrees 2007Short essays: Teaching a Stone to Talk (prize-winning)Memoir: The Writing Life & Encounters with Chinese AuthorsNonfic books: Holy the Firm 1977 spiritual and scientific issues, AD’s fave; For the Time Being 1999Dillard’s PATC Influences:Jean-Jacques Rousseau (18th century): The Reveries of the Solitary Walker (originally French 1972 Les Reveries du Promeneur Solitaire)

Transition b/ enlightenment and romanticism Solitude: theme in Romantic writing Walks in native Geneva, Switzerland and its environs Book never completed, 10 walks, narrator in dialogue w/ reader using “I” narrative persona intimate convo or a window into author’s innermost thoughts each chapter has a central idea beginning with walk/ outing and is a freestanding essay

Essai “attempt” or “venture” lit form developed by Michel de Montaigne brief, personal, subjective reflections b/ mundane and profound PATC chapters- freestanding essays linked together (several chapters published as essays)

AD refers to philosophers, theologians, novelists, dramatists, essayists, and poetsNature writers: connection b/ humans and the non-human world & human destruction of ecosystems

Gilbert White: Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne 1789; Thoreau’s Walden; Henry Beston: The Outermost House; Rick Bass: The Book of Yaak

AD: “a meteorological journal of the mind” from Thoreau’s Journal (mentioned in PATC Ch 1) Thoreau: pencil-maker’s son from Concord; lived at Walden Pond for 2 years

Walden: harmony b/ nature and man, optimistic; nature reflects the all-encompassing Mind (university deity

o PATC &WALDEN: a YEAR in the woods (PATC follow seasons); suburban Concord & Tinker Creek (cities Boston and Roanoke); focus on overlooked spot; natural cycles in background (seasons, migration); from authors’ journals

Ralph Waldo Emerson: founder of Transcendentalism and Unitarian minister Thoreau and Dillard: write on observations of natural phenomena and reflects philosophically;

literary sauntering: equally at home everywhere (in T’s essay Walking) Thoreau: uplifting, sees harmony everywhere Dillard: mesmerizingly weird and awe-inspiring/

awful, sees violence, unpredictability and nature’s indifference to peopleAD: shocking and horrifying dimensions of nature and human’s relationship

Natural phenomena is violent and uncaring Humanity plays a sinister role in transforming the natural world Sublime : not on a grand scale but microscopic phenomena

Theology and TheodicyChristian, jewish, Hasidism, islam, Sufism, Inuit (eskimos); history of religionsAD doesn’t proselytize (attempt to convert) and she's an indep theologianNo religious/spiritual certainty (idk whats going on)Am Transcendentalism’s openness to Eastern religions/ philosophies – Beats 1950s Kerouac and SnyderAD and Emily Dickinson (AD’s fave poet): personal spiritual awakening affecting writingfocus on here and now; bc of AD’s pneumonia in 1971 and her childhoodPATC THEME: evil in the universe; how can divine allow bad things to happen to good people: John Milton tries to justify the ways of God to men in epic poem Paradise Losttheodicy

In Holy the Firm (1977): describe horrific events and asks how god could let that happenAD is spiritually promiscuous and is an anchorite (really religious) in PATC AD converted to RC in mid-life but claims her religious affiliation as “none”PATC Organization and Structure – traditionally meditative patternAD attentive to language and structure like a novel such as James Joyce A Portrait of the Artist as Young Man or William Faulkner Absalom AbsalomCultural theorist Marshall McLuhan: the medium is in the message/ attentive to nuances of expressionCreative writing is art: pay attention to HOW she says it, look for patterns of thought/ expressionLinda Smith 1991 book Annie Dillard: PATC Ch 1-7 use via positiva (Christianity’s creation) to understand beauty of natural world. Ch 8-15 use via negativa for horrors of world and why god would allow/ create thatEcstatic = standing beside oneselfNarrative Persona – I-witness narratorDistinctive, fresh, brilliant storyteller w. casual irreverent and funny voiceRobert Finch and John Elder in The Norton Book of Nature Writing: AD has recognizable voice in Am. Prose; energetic and eclectic style, religious and comedian, embraces sublime and absurdAD says in interview: the old fighting tom and bloody clawing was from her student

Didn’t see giant water bug and frog sceneHerman Melville in Moby-Dick “call me Ishmael” – fiction calls for readers participationPostmodernism makes sense of problematic narratives:

Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Pynchon, and Jorge Luis Borges blur the live b/ fact and fictionShifting lit styles, modes and genres creates a pastiche

PATC title – irony and paradoxSteer like rayon: human relationship w/ farm animals have changed over timeNature is mysterious and awe-inspiring – Sharks (compared to scorpions in amber): grace w/ violence