THINKING

I had been holding off on reading Marilynne Robinson's When I Was a Child I Read Books because I knew it would require more of me than others. In short, I knew it would be work. I do not say that in a negative way. I mean it in that I knew her writing would require me to bring a little more of myself to it, a little more attention and willingness to fully engage. Robinson assumes her reader is a bit more responsible in this way. I will propose that if there is a preeminent thinker and writer walking among us today, in much the same vein as a Thoreau or a Whitman or an Emerson, it is Marilynne Robinson. Make of that claim whatever you may, but I feel safe in saying that not only is her prose some of the most lyrical and poetic that you may find in the published world, but her words also challenge and push the reader to consider questions of a more literate and scholarly bent than most other writers.

But I need not try and convince you. Despite recent events, trust that her reception of the Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for her novel, Gilead, is indicative enough of her skill and competence. Having been a fan of her fiction for a long time now, When I Was a Child, is the first of her nonfiction I have delved into, mostly for the reasons above. Within the first paragraph I was questioning my own reading comprehension level and, as with her novels, it was handy to have a dictionary nearby. This is an essay collection of weighty material, covering a wide range of questions, but, like all of Robinson's work, at least for me, most of it seems to return to a central theme of the nature of the Divine and of our relationship to God and to the world. One thing I love about her fiction is that she has a particular artistry when it comes to the making of metaphor and this gift is equally apparent here. Her words read almost like a prayer, with a rhythm and a fluidity that calms, while at the same time challenging some of  your most basic ideas and deeply held beliefs. Her work is rife with passages like the two I will share below that exude the very concept of grace, pointing out all that is wrong about the world and the ways in which we fall short, while at the same time celebrating those things as part of what makes us more fully human.

All of the pieces in the collection are exceptional, but two that particularly stand out for me are the title essay, which discusses her roots in the American West, and one called Imagination and Community, which has much to say about writing itself,  so I feel quite compelled to share from it with you.

"Presence is a great mystery, and presence in absence, which Jesus promised and has epitomized, is, at a human scale, a great reality for all of us in the course of ordinary life.
I am persuaded for the moment that this is in fact the basis of community. I would say, for the moment, that community, at least community larger than the immediate family, consists very largely of imaginative love for people we do not know or whom we know very slightly. This thesis may be influenced by the fact that I have spent literal years of my life lovingly absorbed in the thoughts and perceptions of -- who knows it better than I? -- people who do not exist. And, just as writers are engrossed in the making of them, readers are profoundly moved and also influenced by the nonexistent, that great clan whose numbers increase prodigiously with every publishing season. I think fiction may be, whatever else, an exercise in the capacity for imaginative love, or sympathy, or identification."

This passage struck me because it follows lines of thought found in some previous discussion here about fiction and its importance in increasing our ability to empathize with and understand those around and apart from us -- key, as Robinson postulates, to our ability to both define and fully participate in the act of community.

Then there is this, which I believe may serve as the very essence of what I wish for this blog to be, a celebration of reading and of books.  

"I remember once, as a child, walking into a library, looking around at the books, and thinking, I could do that. In fact I didn't do it until I was well into my thirties, but the affinity I felt with books as such preserved in me the secret knowledge that I was a writer when any dispassionate appraisal of my life would have dismissed the notion entirely. So I belong to the community of the written word in several ways. First, books have taught me most of what I know, and they have trained my attention and my imagination. Second, they gave me a sense of the possible, which is the great -- and too often, when it is ungenerous, the great disservice -- a community performs for its members. Third, they embodied richness and refinement of language, and the artful use of language in the service of the imagination. Fourth, they gave me and still give me courage. Sometimes, when I have spent days in my study dreaming a world while the world itself shines outside my windows, forgetting to call my mother because one of my nonbeings has come up with a thought that interests me, I think, this is a very odd way to spend a life. But I have my library all around me, my cloud of witnesses to the strangeness and brilliance of human experience, who have helped me to my deepest enjoyments of it. Every writer I know, when asked how to become a writer, responds with one word: Read. Excellent advice, for a great many reasons, a few of which I have suggested here."