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An American Childhood
A book that instantly captured the hearts of readers across the country, "An American Childhood" is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard's poignant, vivid memoir of growing up in Pittsburgh in the 1950s.
Paperback, 272 pages
Published
September 1st 1988
by Harper Perennial
(first published 1987)
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In An American Childhood Dillard traces her life from early childhood into adolescence. Her self-stated project is to show how a child “wakes up” to life, moving from the self-absorbed now-ness of early childhood to the rumblings of consciousness, the awareness that one is alive.
As if to underscore Dillard’s position as an “example” of childhood rather than the work’s actual subject, she begins her autobiography by describing Pittsburgh’s topography and history, followed by a chapt...more
As if to underscore Dillard’s position as an “example” of childhood rather than the work’s actual subject, she begins her autobiography by describing Pittsburgh’s topography and history, followed by a chapt...more
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Nathanial
rated it
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review of another edition
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review of another edition
Recommends it for:
former mouseketeers
Shelves:
fiction
Okay, Dillard, show us what you got. She bluffs, she holds, she raises the stakes. I love her broad scope and her precise portraits. Also, her self-consciousness is crucial in this - her narrator doesn't take herself too seriously as she addresses serious topics like race prejudice, class discrimination, and religious intolerance. However, Dillard's own limitations remain irksome, even as she points towards them: on one page, she claims that "Every woman stayed alone in her house in tho...more
I chose this one for the Book Discussion group because I was looking for a memoir and I remembered really liking this when I read it 21 years ago on the eve of Gabe's birth. I liked it just as much the second time around and reading it again now, on the eve of Gabe's transition into adulthood, made me realize what an impact this book has had on my life and the way I have raised my children.
When I read it the first time, I kept thinking about how I spent too much of my own childhoo...more
When I read it the first time, I kept thinking about how I spent too much of my own childhoo...more
What is it like to "grow up?" How thrilling and disconcerting is it to discover our distinctness from our parents? What do we do with freedom as found in a bicycle? What changes when we discover boys (or girls)?
Annie remembers, and helps you remember, too. Some of her memories seem like my own, and this is one of those great reads as an adult where you feel the reality of a book blending with your soul. I have many such books in my heart of hearts from childhood. I can't re...more
Annie remembers, and helps you remember, too. Some of her memories seem like my own, and this is one of those great reads as an adult where you feel the reality of a book blending with your soul. I have many such books in my heart of hearts from childhood. I can't re...more
This book was really delightful; a memoir that sort of takes me back to my own childhood, because of growing up in the same time period. I loved Annie's creative imagination, and the activities that occupied her days. I laughed a lot and loved looking at life through her eyes. It was a fun read. Thanks Nikki for a fabulous birthday present.
A keenly and humorously observed account of growing up (or waking up). The book is as quotable as a transcendentalist work, but as full of wonder as any blessed childhood. Confused adolescence tangles with the "thought that joy was a childish condition that had forever departed," but the child's wisdom that "There was joy in effort, and the world resisted effort to just the right degree, and yielded to it at last" prevails. (235, 107)
On books...
"What I...more
On books...
"What I...more
Annie Dillard has an odd style that grates on my readerly ears. She makes big, dubious generalizations to talk about a small detail. That wears on me enough. Then, a paragraph later, she sometimes simply contradicts the original generalization. The first time or two were when I wanted to throw the book across the room, had it had enough heft to make that enjoyable.
It doesn't. And this is no more "an American childhood" than yours, mine, or a thousand thousand others mi...more
It doesn't. And this is no more "an American childhood" than yours, mine, or a thousand thousand others mi...more
Dillard is a prose poet - that's the tack I take when I read her, anyway. As a memoir specifically it would be a disappointment, but as a sort of meditation on childhood awareness it is unique. I loved the parts about her crazy fascinations with everything - rocks, insects, books, her parents. (She obviously had a very privileged up-bringing, and so had the luxury of being able to pursue whatever interests she had.) I was very aware throughout that this is Dillard's "creative memory" -...more
Annie Dillard remembers. She remembers the exhilaration of whipping a snowball at a car and having it hit straight on. She remembers playing with the skin on her mother's knuckles, which "didn't snap back; it lay dead across her knuckle in a yellowish ridge." She remembers the compulsion to spend a whole afternoon (or many whole afternoons) endlessly pitching a ball at a target. In this intoxicating account of her childhood, Dillard climbs back inside her 5-, 10-, and 15-year-old ...more
This is one of the best books I have ever read. Annie Dillard writes about growing up in Pittsburgh. She dabbled in everything as a child -- drawing, sports, music, dancing, intense and extensive reading, collecting, finding "small creatures" under a microscope. She more than dabbled; she seems to have thrown herself into every endeavor. She writes about becoming awake to the world, and is the first writer I've ever read who has captured my own amazement at waking up to the world a...more
I was hooked from the very first sentence:
"When everything else has gone from my brain—the President's name, the state capitals, the neighborhoods where I lived, and then my own name and what it was on earth I sought, and then at length the faces of my friends, and finally the faces of my family—when all this has dissolved, what will be left, I believe, is topology: the dreaming memory of land as it lay this way and that."
And how could she not think that, having gro...more
"When everything else has gone from my brain—the President's name, the state capitals, the neighborhoods where I lived, and then my own name and what it was on earth I sought, and then at length the faces of my friends, and finally the faces of my family—when all this has dissolved, what will be left, I believe, is topology: the dreaming memory of land as it lay this way and that."
And how could she not think that, having gro...more
Adama Fall
added it
sometimes we are pulled toward one or two characters in the story. we identify with them or feel sympathy for them. with which characters do youidentify in the book, and why do you beleive you identify with them
i american chilhood annie dillard, when she was young always imagine a monster which was creeping into her room periodically throuthougt the night, but later she discovered that it was just the headlights of a car coming trough her.
i really pay attention to that part because whe...more
i american chilhood annie dillard, when she was young always imagine a monster which was creeping into her room periodically throuthougt the night, but later she discovered that it was just the headlights of a car coming trough her.
i really pay attention to that part because whe...more
Oh, Annie Dillard. I love your writing. It is like a cross between silver ore and the philosophical deliberations of a wise, fat Buddha. Since high school, I have been a devoted disciple: of your clipped, beautiful sentences, your child's wonder at the natural world, your relentless assimilation of knowledge, the musical assonances and rhymes in certain passages that propel my eyes from a sentence's end right back to the beginning, so that I can let your writing well up over my ears and close ov...more
I loved Pilgrim many years ago, one of my lifetime favorite books. After reading An American Childhood I should go back and read Pilgrim again.
You could open this book randomly to any page and likely find a great paragraph that by itself might make it worth reading the book. The "chapters" are short following chronologically Dillard's growing up year. I had not realized it before that she grew up a very priveleged family with private schools and full time mom with home help...more
You could open this book randomly to any page and likely find a great paragraph that by itself might make it worth reading the book. The "chapters" are short following chronologically Dillard's growing up year. I had not realized it before that she grew up a very priveleged family with private schools and full time mom with home help...more
I had to read this book for school, and otherwise I can assure you I wouldn't have made it all the way through. It was immensely boring, and while it got a bit better closer to the end, it was still boring and I just plain wanted to be done with it. I didn't see the point of the book, and have no idea why it was published in the first place. It was a random person deciding she was going to write down what her childhood was about and throw in some rubbish about "waking up to the world" ...more
I like Annie Dillard's style of writing -- complex and literary. I searched this book out at the library as I had read one of hers "The Mayfields" and was interested in reading more of her.
"American Childhood" is her biography up to about age 16 Part 1 is superb -- she catches all the mundane things children do (or did in th 50's) It brings back memories when she writes about the wandering freely around the neighborhood and gradually beyond, making camps and hiding...more
"American Childhood" is her biography up to about age 16 Part 1 is superb -- she catches all the mundane things children do (or did in th 50's) It brings back memories when she writes about the wandering freely around the neighborhood and gradually beyond, making camps and hiding...more
I read this book for summer reading. I had a good attitude going into it because Annie Dillard was (according to Barbara Kingsolver's official website FAQ) one of Kingsolver's favorite authors. It started incredibly, with some of the most beautiful prose I have ever read, and insight, and a strong voice. She continued through her childhood a very accomplished girl, smart and talented and full of ambition. Her parents were fun to read about, and her discoveries unique and interesting and, as I sa...more
Jennifer Wade
is currently reading it
Read one excerpt about growing up in Pittsburgh, which some essay anthologies treat as a single essay. Dillard conflates the history of the city of Pittsburgh with shaping the private and still unconscious dreams of the growing young child: "If you dug, you found things."
The essay, which at first appears disjointed and full of irrelevancies, can be understood as logical in the light of Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents. Pittsburgh full of repressed but dutiful civi...more
The essay, which at first appears disjointed and full of irrelevancies, can be understood as logical in the light of Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents. Pittsburgh full of repressed but dutiful civi...more
The author won a Pulitzer for Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and though this work—also about the interior life--- didn’t win a Pulitzer, it is a masterful piece of writing. In some ways, it’s more impressive because it’s a look back—from 1987 all the way to her 1950s girlhood in Pittsburgh.
In this very introspective series of essays, Dillard turns her student, naturalist, and historian’s eye to the people, the neighborhood, and the culture of Pittsburgh ---and in between waxes on about ...more
In this very introspective series of essays, Dillard turns her student, naturalist, and historian’s eye to the people, the neighborhood, and the culture of Pittsburgh ---and in between waxes on about ...more
I always love a writer who has a wonderful handle on prose and detail. That's what I like about her. I'd actually read her The Writing Life and adored her suggestions and advice. I picked this one up because she was born and raised in Pittsburgh. Her memories, the poignancy and specificity of her observations, is just completely incredible.
Right after Bill Bryson's memoirs of growing up in middle America in the 50, Annie Dillard's memoirs of growing up in the 50s in Pittsburgh was a great extension. Dillard's voice is smooth and beautiful, with the perfect balance of poignant reflection and biting adolescent angst. Like Bryson, she talks about a childhood marked with atomic bomb drills and the golden age of baseball. And just like Bryson's obsession with girls, Dillard's memories are laced with boys. To match Bryson's obsession wi...more
I believe I read some of Dillard's Pilgram at Tinker Creek in an American Studies class, but I don't really recall what I thought of her or that book. I saw this one at Powells and was intrigued by the Pittsburgh setting since my mom grew up there around the same time (just a few years later). Anyway, the Pittsburghisms were interesting and entertaining but what I particularly liked were her descriptions of childhood perceptions - how you perceived the world/adults/other kids/your house/neighboo...more
Nina
rated it
Recommends it for:
anyone who feels a little dead inside (or never did)
Shelves:
autobiographical
Exhilarating journey through childhood experience, with some of the best writing on the nature of consciousness I've seen since Proust. But her mother steals the show - based on the passages about her, I'd consider her my hero. Thanks to GGP for the recommendation.
"Living, you stand under a waterfall. You leave the sleeping shore deliberately; you shed your dusty clothes, pick your barefoot way over the high, slippery rocks, hold your breath, choose your footing, and step into the waterfall. The hard water pelts your skull, bangs in bits on your shoulders and arms. The strong water dashes down beside you and you feel it along your calves and thighs rising roughly back up, up to the roiling surface, full of bubbles that slide up your skin or break on ...more
Annie Dillard achieves a clarity and crispness of recollection in this autobiographical thought-storm that I would have thought impossible.
The book starts and nearly ends with a memory from when she was ten years old of her father deciding to sail along a network of rivers from Pittsburgh, his home to New Orleans, where the music calls to him. Growing up in the 50s and 60s in Pittsburgh among an upper class that sounds to me like the essence of the old WASP culture, Dillard was captiva...more
The book starts and nearly ends with a memory from when she was ten years old of her father deciding to sail along a network of rivers from Pittsburgh, his home to New Orleans, where the music calls to him. Growing up in the 50s and 60s in Pittsburgh among an upper class that sounds to me like the essence of the old WASP culture, Dillard was captiva...more
I had to read this book over the summer to prepare for my AP Language and Composition class, I was reluctant to read it, and put it off until I absolutely had to read it, as many students do. When I read this book, I was blown away. Annie Dillard writes about a very ordinary childhood, and she makes it extrodinary. Her sentence flow with great care, creating a moving piece. She brings back the magic we had in our hearts when we were young. This book moved something in me. Dillard has a very spec...more
I still love Annie Dillard's style, and she's got some insights into childhood that ring true.Some of the writing I found a bit overwrought, which I don't remember feeling about other Dillard books I've read, and I think that's because I'm not quite nostalgic enough about childhood yet. I love all the facts Dillard works in. She finds the world so interesting, and I love the things she knows and the ways she relates those interesting bits to her tale. Like the fact that silicon is water soluble ...more
Julie
rated it
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review of another edition
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review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Annie Dillard fans, Pittsburgh fans, memoir fans
Recommended to Julie by:
Kathi Nacca
Shelves:
own
Re-read this over the summer. Was looking for a particular quote or section and got so caught up that I ended up eventually going back to the beginning and reading the whole thing.
I first read this as a requirement for Mrs. Nacca's "20 minute speech" about a particular author. Having read The Writing Life and loved it, I chose Annie Dillard... and everyone knows she became my favorite author, with Pilgrim at Tinker Creek my favorite book. Both are still true.
As...more
I first read this as a requirement for Mrs. Nacca's "20 minute speech" about a particular author. Having read The Writing Life and loved it, I chose Annie Dillard... and everyone knows she became my favorite author, with Pilgrim at Tinker Creek my favorite book. Both are still true.
As...more
Having recently moved into the Point Breeze neighborhood of Pittsburgh, of course I went searching for literature set there, because that is my modus operandi. Fortunately this book serendipitously crossed my path one day at the library and I checked it out. Dillard's memoir did not disappoint. Among the wonderful mid-century Pittsburgh factoids I learned that the newly redeveloped Bakery Square shopping destination and new headquarters of Google Pittsburgh used to be a Nabisco bakery, as Dillar...more
This was the perfect read for the beginning of summer. Annie Dillard chooses her words so carefully and in doing so constructs vivid images, memories, and little philosophical pearls. One of my favorite lines (one of many) in this book is: "Private life, book life, took place where words met imagination without passing through world." Then she goes on to talk about how as a child she would spend hours up in her bedroom, sometimes rereading the same passage over and over again. She cap...more
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“What does it feel like to be alive?
Living, you stand under a waterfall. You leave the sleeping shore deliberately; you shed your dusty clothes, pick your barefoot way over the high, slippery rocks, hold your breath, choose your footing, and step into the waterfall. The hard water pelts your skull, bangs in bits on your shoulders and arms. The strong water dashes down beside you and you feel it along your calves and thighs rising roughly backup, up to the roiling surface, full of bubbles that slide up your skin or break on you at full speed. Can you breathe here? Here where the force is the greatest and only the strength of your neck holds the river out of your face. Yes, you can breathe even here. You could learn to live like this. And you can, if you concentrate, even look out at the peaceful far bank where you try to raise your arms. What a racket in your ears, what a scattershot pummeling!
It is time pounding at you, time. Knowing you are alive is watching on every side your generation's short time falling away as fast as rivers drop through air, and feeling it hit.”
—
46 people liked it
Living, you stand under a waterfall. You leave the sleeping shore deliberately; you shed your dusty clothes, pick your barefoot way over the high, slippery rocks, hold your breath, choose your footing, and step into the waterfall. The hard water pelts your skull, bangs in bits on your shoulders and arms. The strong water dashes down beside you and you feel it along your calves and thighs rising roughly backup, up to the roiling surface, full of bubbles that slide up your skin or break on you at full speed. Can you breathe here? Here where the force is the greatest and only the strength of your neck holds the river out of your face. Yes, you can breathe even here. You could learn to live like this. And you can, if you concentrate, even look out at the peaceful far bank where you try to raise your arms. What a racket in your ears, what a scattershot pummeling!
It is time pounding at you, time. Knowing you are alive is watching on every side your generation's short time falling away as fast as rivers drop through air, and feeling it hit.”
“You can't test courage cautiously, so I ran hard and waved my arms hard, happy.”
—
24 people liked it
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