"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." —
Los Angeles Times
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard's classic work of literary criticism
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 how contemporary fiction works and why traditional fiction will always move us. Like Joyce Cary's
Art and Reality
, this is a book by a writer on the issues raised by the art of literature. Readers of
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
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.