Annie Dillard’s death at 81 on September 15 had my brain cells spinning for a response. I gathered memories of recent encounters and the long record of her writing career, even a poem of mine in which she appears, and posted them in a Substack piece. Here is a review I wrote of Dillard’s mid-life memoir, An American Childhood, which ran in the Kansas City Star on September 20, 1987 (almost exactly 39 years ago). Apologies for the lame headline here, but I think the review holds up rather nicely.