Marilynne Robinson: American Authors Challenge December 2019

Marilynne Robinson was born and raised in Idaho, where she credits her older brother, David Summers, with being her “first and best” teacher. David also predicted that his sister would be a poet. He was close...much of her prose is so lovely as to be virtual poetry. Marilynne earned a PhD in English from the University of Washington in 1977, and taught at the Iowa Writer’s workshop for 25 years. She has written 4 novels, three of which are intertwined (not serial) yet easily stand alone. Her work is thoughtful –- sometimes meditative; short on action and long on moral seriousness; grounded in Christian spirituality yet never preachy or off-putting, at least to this heathen. She is a theologian and a thinker; this is a combination we rarely see. Her fiction gives us profoundly religious characters who are nevertheless plagued by doubt, characters we can love and try to understand, even as we disagree with some of their beliefs or actions. In a Time magazine interview, Robinson said “When people find something like a religion unfashionable, they avoid it in a way that means they know nothing about it, so that whatever offended them becomes the one impression they have, whether it’s a legitimate impression or not.” The Vancouver Sun called her a “liberal Christian even conservatives can love”. I think we could shuffle those words a bit, to come up with another label, “a devout Christian even liberals can love”, and not lose a bit of the truth.

While Robinson’s fiction is calm and often comforting in its themes, her non-fiction is a bit more challenging, and occasionally even controversial. She recently said she was getting “too old to mince words”, but in her essays on religion, modern culture, trends toward anti-science and anti-intellectualism, she has never pulled any punches.

Robinson has been awarded a lapful of honorary degrees, a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Critics Circle Award, the Orange Prize for Fiction, a National Humanities Medal, the National Book Award for Non-Fiction, and more.

In December, 2016, as President Barack Obama was preparing to leave office, and Robinson was retiring from teaching, he recorded a message to her explaining why he found her work meaningful and important. He said her novels demonstrated “the dignity of the struggle to overcome our faults”. A year or so earlier, Mr. Obama had interviewed Ms. Robinson, more or less as a treat for himself, it seems, and the result was both insightful and delightful. I can’t imagine trying to add anything more by way of encouragement to new readers of her work.
Do treat yourself.

Even if you read nothing of hers this month (but, please, please….DO), take this bit of advice she received from her high school English teacher, who told her “You will live with your mind for the rest of your life, so make it a good companion.” Any work by Marilynne Robinson will help you with that.

She is such an amazing writer. I heard her speak at the beginning of the year, what an intellect.

I'm half through Housekeeping which I am enjoying, if not, possibly, quite as much as the Gilead series.

>2 Caroline_McElwee: It's very interesting to me that she wrote Housekeeping, and then it was over 20 years before she published another novel.

>1 laytonwoman3rd:, Thank you for the above summary about Marilynne Robinson. She is one of my favourite writers and can hardly wait for her to publish another novel. I have read some of her interviews and poor thing the answers she must give to the questions asked about religion, her beliefs. I think she gets pigeon holed! i must try her essays. I would say that the Gilead books are up there as my all time favourite books. I look forward to following this thread and see what others have to say.

I've started Gilead, and it's lovely.

(Side note: when will the 2020 authors be discussed and/or revealed?)

For the very first time I will join here, I have Gilead from the e-library and hope to read it before the 22nd (the loan expires on that date).

>4 mdoris: I'll be very happy if Marilynne Robinson publishes another novel, Mary. I read somewhere in my research that she was working on one...but the article was almost two years old, and I can't find anything more current. Fingers crossed.

>5 katiekrug: I'm working on getting the 2020 discussion thread up, Katie. Another day or so. And thank you for asking!! We had such a terrific list last year, that I think it'll just be a matter of settling on 12 selections from the left-overs. Again, I have a couple favorites I'm probably going to foist on everyone.

>6 FAMeulstee: We'll be very happy to have you reading along, Anita.

Housekeeping (Marilynne Robinson) (03/12/19) ****

An exceptional debut novel, as it was 20 years ago. Two sisters move from pillar to post after their mother’s possible suicide, initially in the care of their Grandmother, then of 2 of their grandmother’s sisters, and ultimately in the care of their mother’s sister Sylvie, a woman who has spent most of her life as a transitory person. After so much loss in their lives, the girls are unable to trust that Aunt Sylvie won’t disappear too and watch her every move. Heading into the shape-shifting time of adolescence to young womanhood, the girls themselves are in many ways ephemeral. Exploring and observing versions of themselves. Seeing themselves through the eyes of others, whilst dissolving themselves and reforming.

Robinson goes on to write the even more wonderful series of Gilead novels, and I suspect if I had read this novel before those, I may have been even more impressed with this one, which is so rich in its sense of place and of the capacity that some people have of flickering in and out of persona. Igniting and not quite blowing out.

***

I heard her speak at the beginning of this year, or end of last, and she said she was working on a novel, but for her I don't think that is a fast process, her writing has such precision.

>8 Caroline_McElwee: - If you can find it, the film is very well done, though I can't say how faithful to the book since I don't think I've read it!

>8 Caroline_McElwee: Wonderful review of Housekeeping, Caroline. I can't remember now which of Robinson's books I read first, but I know that this one impressed me very much. I'm glad to her that she confirms work is ongoing on a new novel.

>9 katiekrug: I only learned about the movie version of Housekeeping while doing my research for this thread. It is available through Amazon Prime...but be careful. There are multiple movies with that title. It's the 1987 one with a picture of a woman sitting in a flooded living room that you want. (The novel is actually over 30 years old.)

>5 katiekrug: Here's the "planning" thread for the 2020 challenge.

Marilynne Robinson has a new novel coming out in October. This will purportedly finish her Gilead series, and is simply titled Jack. I have been hoping she would tell his story since I finished reading Gilead nearly 10 years ago. Bless her heart.