In 1901, Rev. Maltbie Babcock wrote in a well-known hymn that God “shines in all that’s fair.” Like Calvin, Edwards, and Babcock before her, Marilynne Robinson presents in her writings a world suffused with theological significance. Robinson is known primarily as a novelist, but anyone who has . . . . Continue Reading »
Marilynne Robinson's Gilead should be read as a summa pietatis rather than a summa theologiae. Continue Reading »
Perseverance in the Parish?: Religious Attitudes from a Black Catholic Perspective by darren w. davis and donald b. pope-davis cambridge, 198 pages, $99.99 Perseverance in the Parish? details the findings of the largest and most methodologically rigorous study of the three million . . . . Continue Reading »
The Givenness of Things: Essaysby marilynne robinsonfarrar, straus and giroux, 304 pages, $26 Why is it that the most graceful writer of our day, who offers such a beautiful defense of charity and intellectual humility in her novels, is so often flippant and uncharitable in her essays? If . . . . Continue Reading »
Lila: A Novel by marilynne robinson farrar, straus and giroux, 272 pages, $26 Of Pieter Bruegel’s sixteenth-century depiction of Icarus crashing into the sea, W. H. Auden observes “how everything turns away / Quite leisurely from the disaster.” Bruegel’s painting shows a tragedy . . . . Continue Reading »
When I was a child,” Marilynne Robinson began an early essay, “I read books.” Lila Ames, the eponymous protagonist of Robinson’s most recent novel, did not. If not for a single year of schooling, she might have never learned to read at all. When she wanders, at age thirty, into Gilead, she is ashamed of the clumsy childishness of her own penmanship. Continue Reading »
Marilynne Robinson repeats the conclusion that Jesus had nothing to say about homosexuality. But that conclusion severs the connection between Jesus and his specially commissioned apostolic witnesses. Continue Reading »
Marilynne Robinson is not Rock, and this is not a song. Rather, it is simply a three-word sentence dropped by the acclaimed novelist last fall, when I heard her speak at Skidmore College. But the following was initially provoked by another writer, Bill Kaufmann. Kaufmann is a hard one to . . . . Continue Reading »
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 247 pp. $23. Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, published in 1981, is an extraordinary work of art, and many readers have waited impatiently for Robinson to publish a second novel. I’m among them, although I’ve waited more in dread than . . . . Continue Reading »
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