Filed under: Books, Posts by John, Writing | Tags: Marilynne Robinson, PBS
Keizer, OR :: Marilynne Robinson is the author of “Housekeeping”, “Gilead”, “Home”, and a book of essays, “The Death of Adam.” She is one of my favorite writers, and I remember “Housekeeping”, especially, as a work of severe beauty.
In an August 31, 2009 interview for Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, Bob Abernethy asked Robinson, who is also an instructor at the University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop, what are some of the most important things she wants her writing students to understand. I’ve never sat in one of Robinson’s classes, but I try to learn from her books and essays what it means be to a writer of faith engaging with the world. Her answer to Abernethy’s question is encouraging when I start to despair about whether the OTNR book will have anything new for the world:
That [the students] have their own testimony to offer, that if they think about what they perceive and what they feel carefully, if they watch other people closely and magnanimously, they will have something new to say, something that’s an actual addition to what has been said. That they have no obligation to be derivative or imitative in any way. That is absolutely not the point. I want them to know that if they are thoughtful people, if they have the courage to evaluate things independently and to enjoy the processes of their own thought, then they will give the world something new, something worth having.
This passage from “Acedia & Me” reminds me of blogs, talk radio, and the faddishness of social justice in certain pockets of American Christianity.
Though we may think ourselves far too liberated to be considered prigs, the writer Marilynne Robinson insists that this is exactly what we have become. She points out that the polarized tenor of our social discourse epitomizes the dictionary definition of priggishness, as “marked by overvaluing oneself or one’s ideas, habits, notions, by precise…adherence to them, and by small disparagement of others.” It may be easy to profess not to believe in sin, but it is hard not to believe in sinners, so we embrace the comfortable notion that at least they are other people. “I’m a good person, but God hates homosexuals.” “I’m a good person, but God condemns homophobes.” “I’m a good person, but the homeless are irresponsible bums.” “I’m a good person, but those who denigrate the homeless are evil.” “Good people like me support our president.” “Good people like me oppose the president.” The loud litany of self-aggrandizement that reverberates through out culture convinces me that, for all of our presumed psychological sophistication, we remain at a primitive stage in our capacity to understand the reality of sin…
In the fourteenth century, Chaucer warned that “a great heart is needed against acedia, lest it swallow up the soul.” But in a priggish culture such as ours, this magnanimity of spirit is precisely what we lack, and if we persist in denying any truth but our own, the danger to society is that our perspective will remain so narrow and self-serving that we lost the ability to effect meaningful change. Robinson wonders, in fact, whether we have made such a fetish of social concern and criticism that we have eroded our belief that genuine reform is possible. Anger over injustice may inflame us, but that’s a double-edged sword. If our indignation feels too good, it will attach to our arrogance and pride and leave us ranting in a void.
