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Article: A GOD'S-EYE VIEW.(Review)
- Article from:
- Commonweal
- Article date:
- September 10, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Commonweal Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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For the Time Being
Annie Dillard
Knopf, $22, 204 pp.
In 1982, Annie Dillard found herself, as part of a tour group in China, standing above the excavation site of thousands of life-sized clay soldiers, modeled individually on each member of the imperial army and buried twenty-two hundred years ago. "I saw what looked like human bodies coming out of the earth," she writes. "The earth was yielding these bodies...; it grew and bore them. The clay people were earth itself, only shaped. The hazards of time had suspended their bodies in the act of pressing out into the air." Then she reflects: "Seeing the broad earth under the open sky, and a patch of it sliced ...