oats
08-19-2017, 11:27 PM
So this week I didn't come across anything that really stuck out. There was a solid piece on MMAFighting about McGregor's striking coach Owen Roddy, a moving piece on Mother Jones about Mexicans who live in Trump country, and of course a lot of stuff about Charlottesville and the Confederacy etc.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/annie-dillards-total-eclipse/536148/
But I wanted to switch it up. Since there's an eclipse happening in the next few days, I wanted to highlight one of my favorite nonfiction writers: Annie Dillard. She won the Pulitzer for nonfiction in 1975 and is largely credited with inventing literary nonfiction as we know it today. Her essay "Total Eclipse" is a weird, existential masterwork about a time she witnessed an eclipse. She witnesses oblivion and travels through time, and all sorts of crazy shit happens during the eclipse. It's dope.
"Now the sun was up. We could not see it; but the sky behind the band of clouds was yellow, and, far down the valley, some hillside orchards had lighted up. More people were parking near the highway and climbing the hills. It was the West. All of us rugged individualists were wearing knit caps and blue nylon parkas. People were climbing the nearby hills and setting up shop in clumps among the dead grasses. It looked as though we had all gathered on hilltops to pray for the world on its last day. It looked as though we had all crawled out of spaceships and were preparing to assault the valley below. It looked as though we were scattered on hilltops at dawn to sacrifice virgins, make rain, set stone stelae in a ring. There was no place out of the wind. The straw grasses banged our legs."
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/annie-dillards-total-eclipse/536148/
But I wanted to switch it up. Since there's an eclipse happening in the next few days, I wanted to highlight one of my favorite nonfiction writers: Annie Dillard. She won the Pulitzer for nonfiction in 1975 and is largely credited with inventing literary nonfiction as we know it today. Her essay "Total Eclipse" is a weird, existential masterwork about a time she witnessed an eclipse. She witnesses oblivion and travels through time, and all sorts of crazy shit happens during the eclipse. It's dope.
"Now the sun was up. We could not see it; but the sky behind the band of clouds was yellow, and, far down the valley, some hillside orchards had lighted up. More people were parking near the highway and climbing the hills. It was the West. All of us rugged individualists were wearing knit caps and blue nylon parkas. People were climbing the nearby hills and setting up shop in clumps among the dead grasses. It looked as though we had all gathered on hilltops to pray for the world on its last day. It looked as though we had all crawled out of spaceships and were preparing to assault the valley below. It looked as though we were scattered on hilltops at dawn to sacrifice virgins, make rain, set stone stelae in a ring. There was no place out of the wind. The straw grasses banged our legs."