Living by Fiction

A beautiful repackaging of Annie Dillard’s classic work of literary criticism.

“Everyone who timidly, bombastically, reverently, scholastically–even fraudulently–essays to ‘live the life of the mind’ should read this book. It’s elegant and classy, like caviar and champagne, and like these two items, it’s over much too soon.” — Carolyn See, Los Angeles Times

Living by Fiction is written for–and dedicated to–people who love literature. Dealing with writers such as Nabokov, Barth, Coover, Pynchon, Borges, García Márquez, Beckett, and Calvino, Annie Dillard shows why fiction matters and how it can reveal more of the modern world and modern thinking than all the academic sciences combined. Readers of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, An American Childhood, and Holy the Firm will recognize Dillard’s vivid writing, her humor, and the lively way she tackles the urgent questions of meaning in experience itself.