If you are not reading Marilynne Robinson, I truly believe you are missing out on one of the preeminent American writers and thinkers of our time. Robinson teaches at the Iowa Writers Workshop, which has produced for over 75 years writers of the absolute highest caliber. Their alumni and faculty dominate the list of Pulitzer Prize winners and include, among other notables, the likes of Robert Penn Warren, Wallace Stegner, John Cheever, Philip Roth, and Paul Harding. This is but a small sampling. If you see on a book jacket that an author is connected to the Iowa program, read the book. You cannot go wrong. (Of recent note is first time novelist Ayana Mathis' book, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie.)
Robinson herself won the Pulitzer in 2005 for her novel, Gilead, a work of such moving power and beauty that I consider it an example of all that a novel should be. Woven into her narratives are powerfully brought forth questions on the very nature of the Divine and of our relationships with it and with one another. At the same time, it is just a damn good story. Her nonfiction work will challenge you, so much so that I tend to reserve it for those rare stretches of time when I feel up to paying it the full attention it deserves.
A small treat was to be had this week in a New York Times interview of Robinson, which can be found here. It is not necessarily an in-depth piece, but it is interesting nevertheless for her responses to questions about books and literature in general. What I found most compelling, though, was her response to the question of which writer, either living or dead, she would like most to meet.
"A wonderful writer has given the best of herself or himself in the work. I think many of them are frustrated by the thinness and inadequacy of ordinary spoken language, of ordinary contact even with the people they know best and love best. They turn to writing for this reason. I think many of them are magnanimous in a degree their lives cannot otherwise express. To meet Emily Dickinson or Henry James would be, from their side, to intrude on them, maybe even to make them feel inadequate to expectation. I can’t imagine being a sufficient reason for the disruption. We do have their books."
What truth. I understand completely what she means by frustration with the "thinness and inadequacy of ordinary spoken language." I find myself befuddled oftentimes in weightier conversations by an inability to express all that I am thinking. It is not that I lack a thoroughly thought through opinion on a thing, but that I seem to somehow not be able to force the words shifting around in my head out through my lips. Give me a moment to consider and to speak them slowly and I can generally make my point clearly. Especially, though, give me paper and pen and time to erase and rearrange and I can offer a marriage of words that says all that I truly mean to say.
This is what I admire about Marilynne Robinson. She is willing to cut to the chase, so to speak, and not gloss over matters with romantic notions. I suppose you could call it a thoroughly Midwestern sensibility. Or something like that. Of course, it is tantalizing to imagine a conversation with a great writer or anyone, for that matter, whom we hold up as a hero or an inspiration, but in imagining such a thing we neglect to recognize the humanity of that person, the very thing that makes them someone whose work we so respect. As an example, a particular course I took in college was afforded the opportunity of a visit from a writer of note whose work we had read and confronted intensley as a group. I had found the book extraordinary and one that I loved and I anticipated the visit for weeks, imagining a deeply inspiring conversation that offered insight and wisdom of the sort that I thought only an artist of this ilk might convey. Long story short: it was a bit awkward. And it was a good lesson for me. Part of what made this person a brilliant writer was also the same thing that made her not so much a brilliant conversationalist.
But, "we do have their books" and that, of course, is really all we need.
One of the gifts my running life gives me is the ability to see the places I visit in a different way. And one of the gifts my job gives me is the perk of traveling to some great places. Last week I zig-zagged for five miles through the French Quarter just as the sun was coming up. Running at dawn allows me to see places, I think, as they really are--when the day is just beginning and the streets are clear of tourists and the real people who scrape out their livings in the shadows are going about their business. New Orleans was a particular treat at that time of day as I ran down Rue Bourbon, literally kicking my way through the flotsam of the previous night's revelry. A few frat boys were still upright here and there and staggering down the street, but mostly it was quiet. I caught sight of more than one stripper finishing her shift, leaving by the side door, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt now, a weary look in her eyes somehow giving her away. I finished my loop at the Cafe' Du Monde and walked back to my hotel as the sun rose over the river, a bag of beignets clutched tight to my chest and a big cup of strong, chicory coffee warming me up. This is how you see a city when you are a runner.
I have learned to tune out the irritation of air travel by using the time to read. A lot. A plane ride is more often than not an opportunity to consume most of a book, if not all of it. The flight to New Orleans was the perfect amount of time to finish Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. It is a small book, created from a journal Murakami kept as he trained for one of the many New York City Marathons he has run. I opened the cover to the first page ready to be inspired as a runner, but most of what I read about running I already fully understand and appreciate. This is not a book to spur on someone considering taking up running. After so many years, Murakami is one of those runners who have been running long enough that it is altogether a part of his very being. This I get.
What surprised me and knocked me upside the head a bit was realizing that Marukami was talking as much about writing as he was about running. And what he showed me is how very closely related the two things are.
I became a runner by not allowing myself an alternative. My alarm went off, my feet hit the ground, I was out the door. No matter what. It is still that way, but now it is very much like breathing. I hardly think of it at all. I long ago came to a point where I simply could not imagine my life any other way. My first run may have lasted ten minutes, but I was back the next day for another ten minutes. I began to steadily add to my time on the runs until one day, I looked up, and it was no big deal to run for forty minutes. This is a lesson we seemingly must learn more than once, that the only way to succeed at anything is sheer and dogged determination. We may be lucky sometimes or we may be blessed with innate ability and talent, but these are things that can only carry us so far. Always, it comes down to simply putting in the time, saying to yourself, I am going to do this.
I do not tolerate the making of excuses for not running. I simply do it. And, after reading Murakami's book, I realize that so should it be with writing. For too long I have allowed myself alternatives and excuses when what it really comes to is that I simply must do it. Sweat it out each day. No excuses. I should begin as I did with my running. Ten minutes today. Again tomorrow. With the goal of one day looking up to find that it is no big thing to write for forty minutes. Like the running, it matters only that I do it and that I do it without fail. There is a phrase that pushes me along when I am training for an event or to reach a new running goal. It comes from the consummate book about running, John Parker Wilson's cult classic, Once A Runner. The hero of that book, Quenton Cassidy, speaks of miles of trials, trials of miles. It is a reminder to me of what it means to grind. Marukami's book let me know that running is not the only thing to which it applies.
A quick postscript: Do not forget the reading list if you are looking for book suggestions. I do not blog about every book I read, but you can find a list of all that I have been reading here.
