It might seem as if she lived an entire lifetime during the writing of "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek." Her voice is that of a wizened old woman with boundless patience and an endless amount of time to observe the smallest sublime moments in nature. But in fact, Annie Dillard wrote the book while she was s

Clever, Contemplative, Elegant, Intense, Literary fiction, Witty

For any literary teenager in the '60s, reading Kerouac's "On the Road" was a must. But immediately following that came Hermann Hesse's study of the Buddha's early life, "Siddhartha." It comes as no surprise, for Hesse was one of the major literary influences on the Beat generation ("Siddhartha" was

Contemplative, Modernist literature, Mythic, Self-reflection, Sincere, Spiritual

Losey's lofty artistic program was foiled by McCarthy and his anticommunist witch-hunters, who forced a bad hand and drove Losey into hiding in England, where he continued to churn out his cinematic epics undisturbed. After making films under a pseudonym for several years and releasing them in Britai

Blacklistees, Contemplative, Deconstructive, Dense, Political, Psychological

In 1922, Rainer Maria Rilke was staying at the Chateau de Muzot in Switzerland. His masterwork, the "Duino Elegies," had lain unfinished for seven years, and the poet was hoping to find some peace and solitude in which to complete it. Rilke had recently come across a Renaissance painting of the mythi

Contemplative, Pathos, Romantic poetry, Spiritual, Sublime