Brief update
We have literally been too busy going to Marilynne Robinson events at the Festival of Faith and Writing to update the site today, but we’ve been to two lectures today, and they have both been amazing.
We’ve been live-tweeting snippets from them over at our Twitter page (http://twitter.com/MRASociety). We’ll be posting lots more material in the coming days. Stay tuned!
What Is Truth, and How Do We Recognize It?
The title here is not rhetorical, but rather the title of a recent address by Robinson to her own church, the Congregational United Church of Christ of Iowa City.
UCCIC describes the lecture as the first in a series of “the congregation’s new science and religion initiative made possible by Scientists in Congregations, a program funded by a grant from the Templeton Foundation.” How wonderful to learn such a program exists, and has funding.
At a gloss, this might be mistaken as another of Robinson’s essays on religion and science. While that dynamic frames much of the essay’s argument, she’s after a larger concern about the means by which ‘truth’ and ‘fact’ are deployed tactically by people against one another:
Ideas live on earth. They have history. They take form and coloration from the minds and communities among whom they live. They are seared and twisted by wars. They change to suit new environments.
To arrive at her thesis, she takes a path through the antebellum period — familiar ground to readers of ‘McGuffey and the Abolitionists’ in The Death of Adam, as well as the family history of Rev. Ames in Gilead. In the antebellum Southern rhetoric, particularly Alexander Stephens’s notorious ‘Cornerstone Speech’, Robinson notes the employment of science-as-fact in asserting the segregation of races — segregation later codified in the Confederate constitution.
That slavery was ever blessed by cocksure, vogue, and finally well-debunked “science” seems retrospectively quaint. Yet this drives Robinson to caution about our own willingness to gunsling “fact” and “truth” for present-day assertions — be they scientific or religious.
Seizing on Thomas Jefferson’s famous assertion in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” Robinson pointedly asks:
What safety does this vision have when science cannot affirm it and religion, or much that passes for religion, has become exclusivist and contentious, and seems to have forgotten its old loyalty to everything implied in our being all, as Sewell says, the offspring of God? This seems to me to be a real and an urgent question, a test of the legitimacy of all our systems of thought. Human dignity is the one truth against which every other claimant to the name of truth must be measured.
Our thanks once again to Chris Liebig for bringing this piece to our attention.
United We Bicker?
Another sharp review of When I Was a Child, this time by the wonderfully named Judy Lightfoot (who must have spent the ’70s enduring “Where’s Thunderbolt?” jokes, and also, impromptu renditions of Gordon Lightfoot songs). (I sympathize. My last name is Christman, easily turned into the exasperated and exasperating “Christ, man!”, and my poor mother’s name is Mary.) It comes from an interesting Seattle group blog/magazine/thing called Crosscut.
This piece picks up on a theme of Robinson’s that I especially like to see picked up on:
So let’s stop saying education is elitist. … Robinson turns the elitism cliche around by desiring an elite education for all Americans.
(I seem to remember a certain government functionary making the same argument about a month ago, and immediately being pounced upon for, what else, elitism. We’ve changed the definition of that word so that it only applies to those who don’t advocate military, financial, and cultural rule by an elite.)
Universal learning creates “a ruling class that is more or less identical with the population.” The undemocratic forms of elitism arise when tuitions soar, grants and scholarships are slashed, and leaders deride education for any purpose except job training, as if our great universities should be merely “corporate laboratories and trade schools.”
Choosing to see
A nice note from David Vardeman, a former student of Robinson’s who stumbled (or tumbld) upon the blog. He writes: I remember many things she said in passing, and for some reason I most fondly recall her saying, “The desire to see someone as beautiful is often promptly rewarded.” The discussion had centered on the effect of will or willingness on observation.
This is certainly a Robinsonian sentiment. It reminds me of the moment in ‘My Western Roots’ (the essay that gives us the title of her newest book, When I Was a Child I Read Books), where she writes:
It may be mere historical conditioning, but when I see a man or woman alone, he or she looks mysterious to me, which is only to say that for a moment I see another human being clearly.
The main point of the narrative [of Easter] is that God is of a kind to love the world extravagantly, wondrously, and the world is of a kind to be worth, which is not to say worthy of, this pained and rapturous love. This is the essence of the story that forever eludes telling.
an Easter excerpt from ‘Wondrous Love’ in When I Was a Child I Read Books.
Mapping essays in the new book
Many of the essays in the new book When I Was a Child I Read Books have been previously published, albeit in adapted or abbreviated form, to which we’ve previously linked.
The following is a map of the essays as they’re titled in the new book with correspondence to their earlier publication (along with links to our posts on them, where applicable).
- ‘Freedom of Thought’: Published as ‘Reclaiming a Sense of the Sacred’ in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
- ‘Imagination and Community’: Published as the same title in Commonweal.
- ‘Austerity as Ideology’: Published as ‘Night Thoughts of a Baffled Humanist’ in The Nation.
- ‘Open Thy Hand Wide: Moses and the Origins of American Liberalism’: Delivered as a lecture at Princeton Theological Seminary, available as an MP3.
- ‘When I Was a Child’: Published as ‘My Western Roots’ in Old West-New West: Centennial Essays, ed. Barbara Howard Meldrum.
- ‘The Fate of Ideas: Moses’: Published as the same title in Salmagundi (121/122, 1999).
- ‘Wondrous Love’: Published as the same title in Christianity & Literature (Winter 2010, Volume 59, Issue 2) and originally delivered as a lecture at the Christian Scholars’ Conference in 2009.
- ‘The Human Spirit and the Good Society’: Published as ‘A Common Faith’ in Guernica.
If we’ve missed an attribution, let us know; we’d be interested knowing, for example, if any of the published essays were originally delivered as speeches or appeared in a different format.
Yet more reviews of ‘When I Was a Child I Read Books’
The reviews continue coming in for ‘When I Was a Child I Read Books’. Some good ones in here, including from the beloved Books and Culture:
- National Post: ‘Open Book: When I Was a Child I Read Books, by Marilynne Robinson,’ reviewed by Philip Marchand.
- Books and Culture: ‘When I Was a Child I Read Books,’ reviewed by Wesley Hill.
- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: ‘Provocative essays castigate capitalism, sectarianism,’ reviewed by Mike Fischer.
- The Miami Herald: ‘Sacred mysteries,’ reviewed by Gigi Lehman.
- The New York Observer: ‘Keeping Faith: In ‘When I Was a Child I Read Books,’ Marilynne Robinson Criticizes American Politics,’ reviewed by Michael Robbins.
- The Independent: ‘When I Was a Child I Read Books, By Marilynne Robinson,’ reviewed by Lesley McDowell.
- The Telegraph: ‘When I Was a Child I Read Books: Essays by Marilynne Robinson: review,’ reviewed by Jane Shilling.
On that last review, the subhead informs that “Jane Shilling is underimpressed by the Olympian tones of Marilynne Robinson.” Fair enough. But Shilling’s critique highlights, in part, “the meandering clauses” and “her inexplicable affection for the verbless sentence” in the book. It seems curious to question the writing style of a Pulitzer and Orange Prize winner as a vector for criticism. Perhaps it’s a British joke we don’t get?
Marilynne Robinson and Hymns to the Miracle of Existence
One of the better responses we’ve seen to When I Was a Child … comes from Kristen Scharold, who uses the book as an opportunity to offer a synoptic reading of Robinson’s whole body of work, essays and fiction alike. I’ve tried to do that and it’s kinda hard, so, you know, hats off, Kristen.
Marilynne Robinson is just such a rain—warm and rare—on the literary terra of contemporary fiction and nonfiction. Even more, she has tilled a plot where deep, lyrical Christian reflection teems. Her output comes from both below and above, from the dust of humanity and the grace of divinity. She is a dream-catcher of sorts, stationing each work between the ordinary and sacred, weaving sinews of sentences that capture the lovely and true.
Culture After the Credit Crunch
Robinson was published in The Guardian yesterday with a shorter, edited form of ‘Austerity as Ideology’ from the new book, which also appeared last November as ‘Night Thoughts of a Baffled Humanist’ in The Nation. Far be it from us to complain about any of her essays — especially this one — being printed and reprinted far and wide.
My first thought was, “But why in a British newspaper?”, forgetting that the austerity doctrine has been in vogue at least as much in UK policy as in the US, if not more so. UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg reinforced this very point yesterday, just as Robinson’s piece was going to print. Would that Mr. Clegg and his contemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic would take heed of Robinson’s warning:
In the strange alembic of this moment, the populace at large is thought of by a significant part of this same population as a burden, a threat to their wellbeing, to their “values.” There is at present a dearth of humane imagination for the integrity and mystery of other lives.
Marilynne Robinson’s humanist Calvinism
Though he won’t admit to it, MRAS co-curator Phil is an extraordinarily talented writer. Thus, when he published a thoughtful review of Marilynne Robinson’s Absence of Mind , a few months ago, it flew under the radar of the very Marilynne Robinson site he curates.
No more.
Phil’s review takes thorough account of the presence of John Calvin in Marilynne Robinson’s work, and, prefiguring a knowledge of Calvin that is either incomplete or misinformed, offers a memorable defense of the Genevan reformer:
On the one hand there is the Calvin of reputation, who invented predestination and taught that wealth is a sign of God’s favor. This Calvin enjoyed a theocratic reign of terror in Geneva, where the national pastimes were frowning and burning heretics. He is more or less an invention. To find another example of an intellectual so successfully lied about to so many people in free societies, you’d have to read up on Noam Chomsky. […]
So much for the Calvin of reputation. Robinson draws on the less-known side of Calvin: the Renaissance humanist. It is [Calvin’s] high view of humanity — this sense that grandeur and majesty, so far from being opposed to us (as in the thought-world of pagan Greece and Rome), are actually found in our silly selves — that animates Robinson’s novels.
Continuing on to Absence of Mind, Phil draws out the role that Calvin the Renaissance humanist plays in shaping the arguments Robinson makes throughout the book:
So Robinson’s fiction praises the image of God as found in people. Her nonfiction, so different in tone and content, achieves the same goal indirectly by defending a high view of human nature and possibility against fashionable denials of it.
Of the reviews of Absence of Mind I’ve read, few take greater account of Robinson’s Calvinist predilections than Phil does here.
Many thanks to our good friend Michael Buma for allowing us to distribute this article from the Christian Courier.
More reviews of ‘When I Was a Child I Read Books’
A few more reviews of the new book:
- Washington Monthly: ‘Calvin vs. Hobbes,’ reviewed by Benjamin J. Dueholm.
- The London Evening Standard: ‘When I Was a Child I Read Books: Essays - review,’ reviewed by Claire Harman.
- The Kansas City Star: ‘Pulitzer winner Marilynne Robinson lays down her beliefs in a series of enlightening essays,’ reviewed by Kevin Canfield.
- New York Journal of Books: ‘When I Was a Child I Read Books: Essays,’ reviewed by Liana Giorgi.
Still waiting for the NYRB review; next week’s issue, one hopes.
Reviews of ‘When I Was a Child I Read Books’
Happy new Marilynne Robinson book day! ‘When I Was A Child I Read Books’ lands on bookstore shelves today. A few reviews for the book are already out:
- The Millions: ‘Thinking Again: Marilynne Robinson’s When I Was a Child I Read Books,’ reviewed by Alex Engebretson.
- The Houston Chronicle: ‘Review: Marilynne Robinson’s When I Was a Child I Read Books,’ reviewed by Maggie Galehouse.
- The Guardian: ‘When I Was a Child I Read Books by Marilynne Robinson – review,’ reviewed by Kate Kellaway.
- NPR: ‘Artful, American Essays From ‘When I Was A Child’,’ interview conducted by Linda Wertheimer.
The NPR piece from includes a 7:29 minute audio segment from ‘Weekend Edition,’ which includes an interview with Robinson conducted by Linda Wertheimer.
In other news, we’re sporting a fresh new design here at the site. There may be a few rough edges here and there while we finish polishing. If something on the site isn’t working properly for you, let us know. (Update: We’re Retina-optimized now too, for those of you sporting fancy new iPads.)
A Common Faith
An essay from Guernica (her first appearance there that we’re aware of) in which Robinson again levels the deck guns at unexamined arguments of her intellectual contemporaries and the broader culture. Even David Brooks gets name-dropped.
She begins with an analytical autopsy of free-market economics — particularly the libertarian kind that seems powerfully in vogue and woefully unchallenged:
Our civilization has recently chosen to identify itself with a wildly oversimple model of human nature and behavior and then is stymied or infuriated by evidence that the models don’t fit. And the true believers in these models seem often to be hardened in their belief by this evidence, perhaps in part because of the powerfully annealing effects of rage and indignation.
Proceeding onward, Robinson implicates neo-Darwinism for its diminishing and anachronistic anthropology:
Modern theories of human nature, which are essentially Darwinist and neo-Darwinist, pare us down to our instincts for asserting relative advantage in order to survive and propagate. This dictum hangs on our essential primitivity as they understand it—assuming that our remote ancestors would have been describable in these terms, and that we, therefore, are described in them also. But it seems worthwhile to remember that this is a modern theory projected onto the deep past.
Thus arriving finally at the crux of the piece:
I have made a long and indirect approach to my subject — the human spirit and the good society. The subject was of interest to me in the first place because I have felt for a long time that our idea of what a human being is has grown oppressively small and dull.
This sentiment comes as no surprise to readers of her fiction. Fingerbone and Gilead seem impossibly expansive and resplendent despite their diminuitive population and size. This grandiose view of the ordinary world is the indispensable delight of Robinson’s canon. John Ames musing “Ah, this life, this world” is a direct contravention to the diminutive and damning narrowness of a scientism that asserts life and world to be nothing more than the rote mechanics of an impersonal cosmos.
And so she seizes upon Thomas Jefferson’s assertion from the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” to make her case:
What would a secular paraphrase of this sentence look like? In what nonreligious terms is human equality self-evident? As animals, some of us are smarter or stronger than others, as Jefferson was certainly in a position to know. What would be the non-religious equivalent for the assertion that individual rights are sacrosanct in every case?
One of Robinson’s finest efforts to date at weaving her parallel interests in religion, literature, economics, and science into a common thread — one that challenges assumptions and assertions with every loop.
This essay is yet another excerpt from When I Was a Child I Read Books — which arrives in bookstores tomorrow. As always, we encourage you to buy your copy from a local, independent bookseller.
Our thanks to David Mahaffey for the link.
Festival of Faith and Writing
A reminder: Marilynne Robinson will be a plenary speaker at the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan next month.
Registration for the Festival is now open.
The Festival runs from April 19-21, and is always a wonderful event. This year is no exception: Robinson will be joined at the festival by Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun, Luci Shaw (too much good poetry to list), Gary Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars and Okay for Now), Shane Claiborne (The Irresistible Revolution), Craig Thompson (Blankets), and many more.
Robinson’s previous appearance at the Festival in 2006 was wonderful, and we strongly encourage you to attend if you’re interested. Registration for the entire Festival is only $195, and group and student discounts are available. The deadline for registration is April 1st.
Phil and I will be there, and we hope to see you there too.
Imagination and Community
One of the hallmarks of Robinson’s essays is her method of arriving at one topic by way of an entirely different one. She employs the technique well in this fine essay from Commonweal, which is yet another exempt from When I Was a Child I Read Books.
Robinson begins with an admission that she owns more books than she will likely ever read. Fellow bibliophiles will join my sigh of relief that we are not, in fact, crazy hoarders of books in the age of half-inch-thick Kindles (or at least that, if we are, we have entertaining company).
The thrust of the essay, however, comes from her focus on how education and writing foster imagination (and by extension: empathy) as well as her explanation for how imagination is essential to the health of humane, generous communities:
In the First Epistle of Peter we are told to honor everyone, and I have never been in a situation where I felt this instruction was inappropriate. […] How is Christianity consistent with this generalized contempt that seems to lie behind so much so-called public discourse? Why the judgmentalism, among people who are supposed to believe we are, and we live among, souls precious to God? It is simply not possible to act in good faith toward people one does not respect, or to entertain hopes for them that are appropriate to their gifts.
Writers especially will savor her closing remarks about the craft of writing and the pessimism of expectation that often accompanies it.
Our thanks to Chris Liebig for the tip.
