I came downstairs to write a little bit about Marilynne Robinson, but I see that Phil has already beat me to it. Oh well. I just finished her latest work of fiction, "Gilead," about 15 minutes ago, and I feel compelled to recommend it to everyone who happens to stumble across this blog.
I've heard that it's quite a task for writers to create characters that are wholesome. I don't mean wholesome in a simplistic, unswervingly "good" manner that seems to be presented in a lot of Hollywood films and children's entertainment (consider Optimus Prime or He-Man, to take some examples from my childhood). I mean 'wholesome' as it is manifested in characters who acknowledge their own brokenness, yet live in constant awareness that they've been forgiven. Out of this knowledge comes the desire to do good, and thus the character becomes exceedingly real and engaging; much more so than those cardboard cutouts for whom "good" seems to be so natural that it's hard to imagine that they could do otherwise.
If such a character is difficult for writers to develop, then Robinson's achievement with this book is monumental. Robinson's Rev. John Ames knows he's been forgiven, and forgiveness is one theme among many in Gilead. It stands alongside fidelity, family, love, God, death and fond rememberance, creating a mixture so potent that you could skip church for a month and still be ok.
Robinson's narrative is infused with the rhythms of pastoral life (in both the agricultural and ecclesiastical senses), and it makes for a useful corrective against our culture's disposition toward haste. This book will slow your life down, and during that extended while, you'll be able to absorb the bucolic grandeur of 1950s Iowa, a place never far from my mind.
I won't say any more about the story, because you can just click on over to Amazon and find out for yourself.
I don't believe in burning books, but sometimes when I'm shelving books in the "Religious Fiction" section of the bookstore at which I work, my zippo finger gets a bit itchy. If I could burn all those books and dump stacks of 'Gilead' on the shelf as a replacement, I think it would be cosmically justified.
However, to call this a "religious" book would be to do it a disservice. A meditation on the above-mentioned themes as profound as this book transcends the often messy, persnickety and tyrannical nature of "religion."
I've heard that it's quite a task for writers to create characters that are wholesome. I don't mean wholesome in a simplistic, unswervingly "good" manner that seems to be presented in a lot of Hollywood films and children's entertainment (consider Optimus Prime or He-Man, to take some examples from my childhood). I mean 'wholesome' as it is manifested in characters who acknowledge their own brokenness, yet live in constant awareness that they've been forgiven. Out of this knowledge comes the desire to do good, and thus the character becomes exceedingly real and engaging; much more so than those cardboard cutouts for whom "good" seems to be so natural that it's hard to imagine that they could do otherwise.
If such a character is difficult for writers to develop, then Robinson's achievement with this book is monumental. Robinson's Rev. John Ames knows he's been forgiven, and forgiveness is one theme among many in Gilead. It stands alongside fidelity, family, love, God, death and fond rememberance, creating a mixture so potent that you could skip church for a month and still be ok.
Robinson's narrative is infused with the rhythms of pastoral life (in both the agricultural and ecclesiastical senses), and it makes for a useful corrective against our culture's disposition toward haste. This book will slow your life down, and during that extended while, you'll be able to absorb the bucolic grandeur of 1950s Iowa, a place never far from my mind.
I won't say any more about the story, because you can just click on over to Amazon and find out for yourself.
I don't believe in burning books, but sometimes when I'm shelving books in the "Religious Fiction" section of the bookstore at which I work, my zippo finger gets a bit itchy. If I could burn all those books and dump stacks of 'Gilead' on the shelf as a replacement, I think it would be cosmically justified.
However, to call this a "religious" book would be to do it a disservice. A meditation on the above-mentioned themes as profound as this book transcends the often messy, persnickety and tyrannical nature of "religion."