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 »
Liberal Christianity's retreat from Scripture. Continue Reading »
Is Christianity declining? Are we fearful? The same question. Continue Reading »
Why Housekeeping is still Marilynne Robinson's best book. 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 »
Poe’s horror is the horror of guilt exposed. 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 on the unspoken restrictions on speaking our minds. Continue Reading »
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