I must have at least heard of Annie Dillard but it took Maggie Nelson to make the name somehow urgent. Three of her works arrived this morning plus (surprise!) the Iain Sinclair talk on Blake.
One chapter in with The Writing Life and it's clear to me why it's a classic of its kind.
You write it all, discovering it at the end of the line of words. The line of words is a fiber optic, flexible as wire; it illumines the path just before its fragile tip. You probe with it, delicate as a worm.
Dillard's shifting metaphorics of line - pick-gouge-probe - resonates (Beckett, Bunting, Eliot ...
One of those texts everyone else seems to have read but you stumble upon later. But better later than never. No?
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