Marilynne Robinson on Finding the Right Word

Marilynne Robinson has a short essay in today’s New York Times Book Review about—what does she know best?—the process of writing.

People always ask me why I often write about characters who have no name, and no place, and no money, and nothing else. Well, it’s in those circumstances that you can get real definitions of things and people and experience.

For the many of us who could not enjoy the privilege of being an actual student of Robinson, this taut little piece is steeped with professorial observations about the potency of words and their application to the craft of writing.

Writing should always be exploratory. There shouldn’t be the assumption that you know ahead of time what you want to express.

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Marilynne Robinson wins 2017 Chicago Tribune Literary Award

Marilynne Robinson is no stranger to awards, and she’s added another this year: The 2017 Chicago Tribune Literary Award.

According to the Tribune’s own coverage, “The annual prize recognizes the lifetime achievement of a prominent writer, usually someone with strong connections to the Midwest, and is presented each fall during the Chicago Humanities Festival.” (We also appreciate the description of Robinson as an “impassioned essayist”.)

Ms. Robinson will receive the award on Saturday, October 28 in a ceremony at the Alice Millar Chapel in Evanston, Illinois.

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Announcing Marilynne Robinson’s next book of essays: ‘What Are We Doing Here?’

Great news today! Marilynne Robinson has a new book of essays coming out. The new book will be titled, What Are We Doing Here?, and is due out in autumn 2018. Katherine Cowdrey, writing for The Bookseller, has the story:

The collection will publish in autumn 2018. It follows two other collections published by Virago, When I was a Child I Read Books, about the place literature has in life, and The Givenness of Things, including a published conversation with president Barack Obama.

We are very much looking forward to this new book and will post further updates on it as more information becomes available.

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1987 film of ‘Housekeeping’ to be re-released on Blu-Ray, including a new interview with Marilynne Robinson

Scottish film director Bill Forsyth’s 1987 adaptation of Marilynne Robinson’s first novel Housekeeping is being re-released on May 22 on Blu-Ray disc. The Blu-Ray release will include new interviews with both Forsyth as well as Marilynne Robinson herself. It is unclear from the listing whether the Blu-Ray release will be specific to the United Kingdom or whether it will see a global release.

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Library of Congress to honor Marilynne Robinson at April 3 event

The Library of Congress announced that it will honor Marilynne Robinson with a special event titled ‘Fiction, Faith and the Imagination’ on Monday, April 3. The event will include a panel discussion of Paul Harding, Geraldine Brooks, Alan Lightman, and Marilynne Robinson herself. A book signing for all the writers will follow.

The event will take place at Monday, April 3, at 7:00p EST in the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress’s Thomas Jefferson Building. See the link for full details.

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‘A thousand thousand reasons to live this life’

We’re always interested to read coverage of Marilynne Robinson’s writing from different cultures—even different languages.

The Hindu, a leading daily publication in India, has a lovely, brief article by Sudipta Datta that discusses the Gilead trilogy alongside Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman, in light of President Obama’s invocation of Atticus Finch in his farewell address.

The article begins with bold questions:

Does literature stem anxieties, soothe frayed nerves, help us escape difficult realities? As one bad news follows another, carrying on from 2016, can the world of books bring some solace?

And continues them:

In the sheltered world that we live in, what are we doing to understand someone different? Are we doing enough to rise above our petty selves and reach out? Is it possible to change a viewpoint so that we appreciate the other view? Gilead and Home ask these questions about race, religion, Whites, Blacks, freedom, exile.

(Source: thehindu.com)

Tablet interview: ‘The Churches have disgraced themselves’

Marilynne Robinson was recently interviewed by The Tablet, an international Catholic news weekly. As usual, she covered a wide variety of topics, with particular and cutting attention paid to the current political crisis in the United States of America.

Among many good quotes, a few stand out to us:

We preclude grace when we react to events as if we were their sole judge. All this is to say that the things that stay our hands and our judgements – patience, humility, mercy, love and faith – are the things of light. Darkness is as it presents itself, hypocrisy and self-righteousness being relevant here.

And on the role of churches and Christians in the outcome of the 2016 United States presidential election:

I think the Churches have disgraced themselves, more or less, the best by a silence that approaches capitulation, the worst by corruption of various kinds, weaponising piety, among other things. Of course, it has always been true that religion has been put to bad uses, and the emergence of a “true church” is always to be hoped for. But the flagrant use of religion to inflame fear and hostility and resentment that we have seen, has set back American society by 150 years.

(Note: Access to the full article requires registration, but not payment.)

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To the 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Obama, and a friend, pen pal, and conversation partner of Marilynne Robinson: Thank you.

To the 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Obama, and a friend, pen pal, and conversation partner of Marilynne Robinson: Thank you.

Marilynne Robinson to retire from Iowa Writers’ Workshop

Marilynne Robinson will retire from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop after 25 years. The University of Iowa, to which the Iowa Writers’ Workshop belongs, announced the news today via its IowaNow press channel:

Marilynne Robinson, renowned author and F. Wendell Miller Professor of Creative Writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, will retire at the end of this semester after teaching for 25 years at the program.

Jeff Charis-Carlson and Zach Berg, writing for the Iowa City Press-Citizen, add further details, noting that although Robinson is retiring from the Workshop, she plans to keep up her usual workload of writing and speaking:

Upon her retirement, Robinson will assume the title professor emerita. She plans to continue writing fiction and essays and traveling to speaking engagements around the world, according to the release. [IWW program director Lan Samantha] Chang said that Robinson has also volunteered to teach in the future at the workshop if needed.

This retirement is not wholly unexpected, given Robinson’s length of tenure. In a way, it’s quite admirable, as her stepping down makes room for a new voice on the faculty of the Workshop. And insofar as her work is concerned, it’s possible that her writing and speaking will accelerate with more free time.

We congratulate Ms. Robinson on her many years of good and faithful service to her university and her students. Job well done, Ms. Robinson, and thank you.

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Marilynne Robinson interviewed on CBC Radio ‘Q’

Marilynne Robinson appears on the CBC Radio One program ‘Q’ recently for an interview with host Shad. Their nearly 20-minute conversation covered a range of topics, from politics and fear to religion and the role of writers in critiquing society.

In one of the more notable excerpts, Robinson took issue with the word “faith,” and offered an explanation of why:

“The word ‘faith’ kind of bothers me. I think of it more as the acceptance as true of a very profound model of reality. Faith always implies to me that you’re clinging to something with your fingernails. Too often that’s what it means now. For me, I live in it, I enjoy it, it’s fruitful for my thinking. I don’t feel anything pulling me away from it. Whatever might arise as a criticism I am grateful for because it gives me more to think about.”

The entire interview is available for streaming on the CBC website or as a podcast. The CBC website also includes an excerpt of Robinson speaking on the topic of grace, which did not air due to time limits.

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Marilynne Robinson wins Library of Congress fiction prize—and hints at a new novel

Marilynne Robinson has won the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, a lifetime achievement honor.

The acting Librarian of Congress, David S. Mao, said of Robinson’s award, “With the depth and resonance of her novels, Marilynne Robinson captures the American soul.”

Ron Charles of the Washington Post—which is a charter sponsor of the National Book Festival at which the award will be presented—secured an interview with Robinson before the award was announced:

Robinson said she was “awfully happy to be on the list” of winners because she feels such a strong kinship with the classic authors of the United States. […] To a great extent, they have defined for me what language could do. So I really feel very much indebted to them and happy to be associated with them.”

Robinson also hinted at a new novel in the interview with Charles:

“One thing that I have found,” she says, “is that with a fairly small population, I have created the possibility of many other novels. I could fill Iowa with fictional characters. […] I have been fiddling around with a new novel, but I don’t want to be more specific than that,” she said.

All in all, a well-deserved recognition for a lifetime of tremendous literary accomplishment.

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Trump: the great orange-haired Unintended Consequence

Marilynne Robinson is out with a piece in The Guardian today about Donald Trump, and it’s quite searing.

This is one of the most direct political criticisms Robinson has made lately; her recent political essays have tended to be broader in focus, but not this one:

[T]he tactics of the Republicans have been to stigmatize the Democrats by association with disfavored groups, so that their championing of the rights of minorities, and of women, of immigrants and the poor, together with their support of marriage equality, triggered the kind of quasi-moral distaste many people the world over feel toward the disfavored. This might seem to be at odds with the Christianity the party so loudly claims for itself. […]

They re-jiggered their primary system to enhance party influence in choosing a candidate, and Trump, the great orange-haired Unintended Consequence, has played their innovations like a fiddle.

Unsurprisingly, her sharpest criticism is of Trump himself:

He is alarming as well as absurd, stirring and stoking the worst impulses in the electorate. […] Trump has stepped right out of the fusion of news and entertainment, out of the gothic fantasy world of sinister foreigners and imminent catastrophe, a fact that may have made him less bizarre to their viewers and listeners than the rest of us were ready to understand.

She winds down her criticism with an admission of some anxiety, while ending finally with a spirit of optimism in the American political process—an optimism she exercises tirelessly.

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Thinking Long Thoughts with Marilynne Robinson

Robinson spoke at the National Book Festival earlier this month, and Ryan Hammill wrote in Sojourners about the experience of seeing her.

During a discussion with the Washington Post’s esteemed book critic, Ron Charles, Robinson expanded on being one of the few contemporary American writers to depict religion in an admiring, even ecstatic manner.

It’s true, she said. With the proliferation of the out-of-touch pastors and abusive priests in our national literature, an observer would think that Americans are an irreligious bunch. But many Americans have a deeply-treasured friendship with a minister.

“It is part of our national character to ridicule what we value,” she said.

“And this makes it difficult to articulate what we actually value.”

One can see the consequences of such kneejerk ridicule: an online culture where a kind of unearned cynicism is the default mode for those posting comments and sending out tweets. It’s one of the aspects of Robinson’s work that makes it surprisingly relevant to our present culture.

Though much of her work is concerned with the Midwest of the mid-20th century, she uses that era as a lens into the perennial human concerns of faith, doubt and connection. Her many readers, saturated in the media of the early 21st, visit her work as a reminder that such concerns persist, even when lose track of them.

Man Booker longlist author interview with Marilynne Robinson, with hints of new novel

Although Marilynne Robinson didn’t make the shortlist for this year’s Man Booker Prize, she gave a very brief interview to the Booker prize.

The whole interview will only take you a minute to read, but perhaps the most important part comes here:

What are you working on next?

There is a novel lurking in my mind, turning up on a few pages, while I work on a series of lectures.

The topic of a new novel—rumored to be a fourth in the Gilead series—has been discussed before. While this is no clarification of that, it’s worth noting that the last time Robinson hinted at a forthcoming novel, in 2011, Lila arrived three years later.

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