March 2011
16 posts
Marriage and Other Astonishing Bonds →
I’m going to try to find all of Robinson’s crucial, uncollected New York Times Book Review pieces from the 1980s. Here, from 1988, is one of the best considerations I’ve ever read of Raymond Carver’s fiction. (Not coincidentally, it is also the only one I’ve read that completely rejects the label “minimalism” and its attendant expectations.)
This was written before D.T. Max revealed the...
“When her brothers were at home, even Jack would play baseball. That may have...”
– An excerpt from Home, in celebration of Opening Day.
A Long and Wretched Vigil →
An early New York Times Book Review piece from 1985. It deals rather briskly with On the Perimeter, Lady Caroline Blackwood’s study of the women who went to live in a camp at Greenham Commons, an air force base in England, to protest full-time the presence of American missiles on that base. The book is “perfectly dreadful considered as prose and as journalism,” Robinson writes,...
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Marilynne Robinson announced as a finalist for the... →
Marilynne Robinson was announced as a finalist for the 2011 Man Booker International Prize this morning. The International, begun in 2005 as a complement to the annual Man Booker Prize, is described thusly:
“Worth £60,000 to the winner, the prize is awarded every two years to a living author who has published fiction either originally in English or whose work is generally available in...
A Moralist of the Midwest →
In this excellent 2004 piece by the poet and journalist Meghan O’Rourke, we learn, among other things, that Robinson likes Annie Dillard, hates small talk, and is still (eleven years later) royally pissed at the way Amistad portrayed the abolitionist Lewis Tappan. And, God bless her, that she named her poodle after Otis Redding.
The article mentions that, before she began Gilead, she was working...
Quotes from the Hemingway/PEN Award
As we mentioned, Marilynne Robinson was the keynote speaker at the 2011 Hemingway/PEN Award ceremony on Sunday. We weren’t able to be there, but author Nichole Bernier was, and posted several quotes on her Twitter feed (@NicholeBernier). My favorite is this:
“New writers essentially say, ‘I’ve seen the world presented a thousand ways, and none of those satisfy me.’”
Good reminder for the next...
Parallel Politics →
Robinson’s thoughtful endorsement of Obama, from August 2008:
“A little less than a year ago there was an event in Indianola, Iowa. […] It was a glorious September day, there were big white tents where barbecue was being served and there were campaign signs and paraphernalia in Fourth of July colors everywhere. It was a scene that would be recognizable anywhere on earth and at any time in the...
Americans →
A substantive essay from the April 2001 issue of Theology Today. A common theme in Robinson’s essays is the way she shakes out tropes from the conventional wisdom. Such as in this essay, where she takes aim at the idiom ‘Americans:’
“If one were to say all Canadians are materialistic, or all Mexicans have short attention spans, one would be reproved, as one certainly ought to be. To generalize...
Books & Culture review of ‘Absence of Mind’ →
Short review of Absence of Mind by Linda McCullough Moore, who suggests that even for its virtues, AoM furthers a “schoolyard fight:”
“Robinson claims the parascientists preach to the already converted. I’m thinking, pot: black, kettle: pretty much a similar color. She speaks with such authority that those in agreement will savor much her critics will no doubt pounce on with practiced aplomb.”
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In Boston? See Marilynne Robinson live!
If you’ll be in Boston this afternoon (that is, Sunday, March 27th), you have the opportunity to hear Marilynne Robinson live. She’ll be giving the keynote address at the presentation of the 2011 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, which is being awarded to author Brando Skyhorse for The Madonnas of Echo Park.
The award ceremony is at 3:00p at the JFK Presidential Library and Museum, and is free and...
Absence of Mind: Marilynne Robinson at Yale →
Andrew Seal over at Blographia Literaria penned this review after attending the first two of Robinson’s four Terry Lectureship lectures, which eventually became Absence of Mind. His review, though balanced, has several pointed criticisms:
“The nadir for me was when Robinson insisted that ‘none of this has been proven’ in reference to neo-Darwinian notions of human behavior, sounding more like...
Heresies and Real Presences →
A long, complex, and deeply impressive piece from the July 2002 Salmagundi, investigating the notion that “the modern period should be understood as, so to speak, plagued by an autoimmune disorder.” She writes:
“A human body can recognize a drop of milk as a pathogen and come near killing itself in its own supposed defense … The old Fascist writers helped me to recognize this analogy by...
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The Paris Review: Interview with Marilynne... →
Wonderful interview with Marilynne, from 2008, shortly after Home was published. Topics include the reviewer who helped popularize Housekeeping, background on her family life and growing up in Idaho, the interplay of religion and science, and many discussions about writing. In response to the question, “Do you think of yourself as a religious writer?”:
“I don’t like categories like religious and...
Connie Bronson →
An early short story, published in 1986 by The Paris Review.
Marilynne remarked in a later interview, “I wrote that story in college. I had a sort of fondness for it because it seemed to me to anticipate Housekeeping, though I had written it more than a decade earlier… ‘Connie Bronson’ has for me now the interest and charm of anyone’s juvenilia — that is, almost none at all.”
Prologue
Welcome to The Marilynne Robinson Appreciation Society, a curated collection of material for fans of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and essayist Marilynne Robinson.
