Marilynne Robinson’s ‘The Givenness of Things’ - The New York Times
The Givenness of Things: Essays Hardcover – October 27, 2015
by Marilynne Robinson (Author)
Product Details
Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition edition (October 27, 2015)
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Editorial Reviews
Review
One of Time's Top 10 Nonfiction Books of 2015
"A sense of wonder pervades the powerful essays in The Givenness of Things . . . Robinson's heroic lamentation is magnificent . . . Robinson's insistence, throughout these essays, that we recognize the limitations of our knowledge is timely and important." ―Karen Armstrong, The New York Times Book Review
“These are beautiful essays . . . beautiful in thought and beautiful in expression.” ―Bill Marvel, Dallas Morning News
“The Givenness of Things is so rich that I'm tempted to quote it to death.” ―Michael Robbins, The Chicago Tribune
“Over the course of 17 provocative essays, Robinson, a ‘self-declared Calvinist from northern Idaho,’ brings both her formidable intellect and powers of plain speaking to deliver a clarion call against the culture of fear that she believes is eating away at American society.” ―Yvonne Zipp, The Christian Science Monitor
“Marilynne Robinson displays the same passionate concern with matters of faith that suffuses her majestic trilogy of linked novels.” ―Wendy Smith, The Boston Globe
"Robinson’s handiwork is capacious and serious, but also mysterious and wondrous; like the night sky, it deserves our attention." ―Casey N. Cep, The New Republic
"A new book of essays by Robinson is a major American literary event." ―Jeff Simon, The Buffalo News
“Robinson's genius is for making indistinguishable the highest ends of faith and fiction . . . The beauty of Robinson's prose suggests an author continually threading with spun platinum the world's finest needle.” ―Michelle Orange, Bookforum
“These bravely and brilliantly argued, gorgeously composed, slyly witty, profoundly caring essays lead us into the richest dimensions of consciousness and conscience, theology and mystery, responsibility and reverence.” ―Donna Seaman, Booklist
“The prose is as finely wrought as in any of Robinson’s novels . . . any reader not tone-deaf will be enchanted by her grave, urgent music.” ―George Scialabba, Bookforum
"Eloquent, persuasive, and rigorously clear, this collection reveals one of America's finest minds working at peak form, capturing essential ideas with all 'the authority beautiful language and beautiful thought can give them." ―Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Marilynne Robinson is the author of the novels Lila, Home, Gilead (winner of the Pulitzer Prize), and Housekeeping, and four books of nonfiction: When I Was a Child I Read Books, Mother Country, The Death of Adam, and Absence of Mind. She teaches at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.
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Top Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 starsBrilliant and Heartwarming
By Wilson on October 30, 2015
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
In full disclosure I was already a huge Robinson fan. I read her first novel, Housekeeping, six times and would have read it twenty had Gilead and Lila not intervened. I've given the paperback editions as sort of shibboleths to prospective friends and I traveled a hundred miles in a Michigan winter to hear her lecture. I also share the author's keen interests in Cosmology and Theology, along with her respect for the Transcendentalists, especially Thoreau. But Robinson is not writing only for her fans. Anyone who has ever sensed "another reality ...beyond the grasp of our comprehension yet wholly immanent in all of being, powerful in every sense of the word, invisible to our sight, silent to our hearing, foolish to our wisdom, yet somehow steadfast, allowing us our days and years" will find much to ponder in these essays.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
a unique book
By Mark bennett on October 27, 2015
Format: Hardcover
This is a really unique book. Marilynne Robinson is a contender for the last American intellectual. She manages in this book to produce 17 interesting, well thought out and occasionally provocative essays. She speaks against the growing American polarization, the "fear" culture and for the place of the humanities and religion in life. She also manages the extremely difficult matter of being critical but positive. As well, she tries to reconcile science into her worldview and offers analysis as far afield as the American Civil War and Marx. Being all over the map is part of what makes it all so interesting.
Its far from the case that I agree with her on every point she makes. But the points she makes are always interesting and somewhat original. To an extent, its not even what she says. Its how she thinks and how she manages to break through a great deal of intellectual stagnation in the modern United States. This book will not be for everyone. Especially for those who don't like to read things they might disagree with.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Deep dive
By robert johnston on November 20, 2015
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
Robinson has delivered her share of superb, attention grabbing philosophical works engaging man and mind and soul. Her topical range, grasp and elucidation of post-modernist, deconstructionism's stunning technical success.
She writes that we live in the best time to be alive in human history but can't quite understand why an unease and unhappiness still lingers in ourselves. There is a reasoned 'more' at the core of these Robinson essays
As for my reading experience, I'm happier for having explored an intellectual elucidation from among our words and speculations just beyond linguistic expression.
This is a chapter at a sitting read. Robinson's economy of words delivers profoundly more mind fodder to be consumed. Each chapter essay demands a break for introspection before plunging forward. That's a 5-star read.
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5.0 out of 5 starsEssays of passion, precision, and life-changing insight.
By Len Vander Zee on November 6, 2015
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
If you are waiting for someone to profoundly define life today in North America from a Christian perspective, get this book right now. Robinson writes with amazing theological depth, rich historical knowledge, and passionate intelligence on many of the perplexities of our age: scientific reductionism, gun-toting fear, the vagaries of the contemporary church, and the miracle of the human soul; and threaded through it all, the grace of God. And she knows and loves Calvin better than any neo-Calvinist I can think of. Read it and you will be enlightened.
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4.0 out of 5 starsProvides stimulating insight into the themes of Robinson's fiction
By Amazon Customer on December 8, 2015
Format: Hardcover
The New York Review of Books recently published parts one and two of an extended conversation in September 2015 in Iowa between President Obama and Marilynne Robinson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award for GILEAD. Readers of that fascinating exchange whose familiarity with Robinson doesn't extend beyond a relatively small body of fiction --- which includes that novel and others like HOME and LILA --- learned that she's a close observer of America's culture and politics and someone whose life and writing are informed by a deep engagement with Christianity.
Those aspects of Robinson's thinking are explored in the 17 essays that compose THE GIVENNESS OF THINGS. This searching, at times daunting, collection exposes a great and restless mind grappling mightily (but with humility) with some of the most challenging aspects of human existence.
In its best moments, Robinson's book offers a passionate defense of her liberal Christian, humanistic worldview against both scientific materialism and capitalism's worship of the market. As to the former, Robinson is especially dismissive of the increasing dominance of neuroscience for the way it "greatly overreaches the implications of its evidence and is tendentious" (a favorite Robinson adjective). At the same time, she's no science denier. On the contrary, she's eager to give the theories of modern physics and cosmology their due in an effort to describe (if not explain) a complicated universe.
A "self-declared Calvinist from northern Idaho," Robinson leaves no doubt of her place on the political spectrum. In the essay "Awakening" (like all but one of the pieces, its one-word title is not especially informative of its content), she decries the brand of Christianity that "has brought a harshness, a bitterness, a crudeness and a high-handedness into the public sphere that are only to be compared to the politics, or the collapse of politics, in the period before the Civil War." She offers a withering condemnation of the way that opposition to gun control or support for privatizing prisons have somehow been defined as "Christian" points of view:
"I never feel more Christian," she writes, "than I do when I hear of some new scheme for depriving and humiliating the poor, and feel the shock of religious dread at these blatant contraventions of what I, as a Christian, take to be the will of God. And yes, I can quote chapter and verse."
That disdain is matched only by her critique of an economic system that disparages the liberal arts in service of the single-minded goal of "making our children into maximally efficient workers." Instead, she argues, with no little vehemence, that "If we are to be competent citizens of a powerful democracy, we must encourage the study of the aptly named humanities."
Especially noteworthy in the current climate of free-floating dread engendered by events like the attacks in Paris is Robinson's resounding condemnation, in the appropriately titled essay "Fear," of the "marked and oddly general fearfulness of our culture at present," something she describes as "not a Christian habit of mind." With persistent rumors of terrorist plots and enhanced security measures at public gatherings, it's easy enough to identify with what she calls the "so entrenched habit with us to live in a state of alarmed anticipation, gearing up for things that do not happen."
This collection is less political, less personal and, regrettably, frequently less accessible than Robinson's 2012 book of essays, WHEN I WAS A CHILD I READ BOOKS. As she reveals in her Acknowledgements, these pieces originally were delivered as lectures at institutions that included the First Presbyterian Church of New York City and the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh. That provenance perhaps explains the opacity of essays that focus on the identity of Jesus ("Son of Adam, Son of Man") or the Gospel of Mark ("Limitation"), and whose arguments will prove elusive, if not impenetrable, to readers not already steeped in Christian theology or without a deep interest in the topic.
But Robinson, who wrote her doctoral thesis on Shakespeare, can be a delightful and informative historian and critic when dealing with challenging literary material. In the essay "Grace," she explores that concept in the dramas of “Hamlet” and “Antony and Cleopatra,” noting along the way that "the Puritans were not puritanical. Nor were they anti-intellectual or obscurantist." "Servanthood" reveals the somewhat surprising interplay between theology and art in Shakespeare's time, noting that "much of the literature and poetry of the English Renaissance was the work of people who were Puritans and Calvinists."
Among contemporary authors who have achieved significant levels of both commercial success and critical recognition, Marilynne Robinson stands alone in her unabashed religiosity and the depth of her scholarly engagement. THE GIVENNESS OF THINGS provides stimulating insight into the persistent themes of her fiction and shines a light on what it means to her to be a devout Christian in the modern world.
Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg
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Marilynne Robinson’s ‘The Givenness of Things’
By KAREN ARMSTRONG
NYT, DEC. 7, 2015
A sense of wonder pervades the powerful essays in “The Givenness of Things,” Marilynne Robinson’s new collection. “Existence is remarkable, actually incredible,” Robinson exclaims; even materiality is “profoundly amazing, uncanny.” Yet unlike physics, which has a strong sense of the “givenness” Robinson refers to in her title, neo-Darwinian positivism rejects anything — the self, the soul or God — that cannot be explained empirically. Robinson defines the “given” as something “that presents itself, reveals itself, always partially and circumstantially, accessible to only tentative apprehension, which means that it is always newly meaningful.” Calvin insisted that divine wisdom was one such “given,” perceived only “within radical limits.” Robinson does not say so, but here Calvin was deeply in tune with the great sages of the past, who all maintained that the transcendence we call God, Brahman, Nirvana or Dao must always ultimately elude us.
Calvin has had so profound an influence on Robinson’s religious heritage that when she reads him it seems “like the awakening of submerged memory.” Perhaps one reason for this is that the Protestant Reformation gave sacred sanction to ideals that were becoming essential to the new commercial economy in 16th-century Europe: independence, a strong work ethic, innovation and the enfranchisement of the lower classes. It had never been possible to implement these fully in premodern agrarian civilization, but their value would become self-evident in the modern West.
Yet Calvinism has declined in America, Robinson argues, and seems to have lost all sense of the “given.” A falsely confident omniscience has instead become widespread in the Age of Information, and not only in the United States. Once we forget that our knowledge of anything can only be partial, we can, like the positivists, become arrogantly disdainful of anyone who does not share our views. In American religion, Robinson believes, moral rigor has become an obligation “to turn and judge that great sinful world the redeemed have left behind,” and self-righteous Christians can be “outrageously forgiving of one another and themselves, and very cruel in their denunciation of anyone else.” Christianity has become a mere marker of identity, even a sign of electoral eligibility, and Calvin’s cosmic Christ has degenerated into an “imaginary friend” in a faith that focuses solely on “personal salvation” and “accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior.”
Christianity in her view has thus become the opposite of itself, and Christians seem preoccupied with “sins” Jesus never mentioned. For the prophets the great sin was always social injustice, but too many American Christians seem comfortable in a world in which 1 percent of the population controls 40 percent of the wealth, and are not perturbed to hear the Gospels cited to legitimize for-profit prisons or to sanctify the use of guns. Jesus said, “Blessed are you who are poor,” but we now hear talk of the “unworthy poor” and of schemes that will humiliate and dispossess them.
Robinson’s heroic lamentation is magnificent. Yet for me something crucial was missing: There is no sustained discussion of America’s relationship with other nations. Robinson admits that the United States often seems like “a blundering giant, invading countries of which we know nothing,” but there is no particular meditation on foreign policy or the Iraq war and its tragic aftermath. Robinson recalls Lincoln telling Americans during the Civil War that they must love their enemies because God loves them, but she does not wonder what that great president would have said about Guantánamo Bay or Abu Ghraib. Similarly, she mentions Martin Luther King and notes with sorrow that America unfairly privileges the values of those who are white, but we hear nothing specific about the current plight of ¬African-Americans.
In Britain, we still see ourselves as Shakespeare’s “sceptred isle,” but in the interdependent global economy no nation is an island. Like Robinson, I am in my early 70s, and in this last phase of my life I too find myself reflecting painfully on the failings of my country, especially on its colonial behavior, which has contributed to so many of our current problems. Actions always have consequences. Every night on the news we see traumatized migrants from the Middle East and Africa literally dying to get into Europe. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Europeans invaded and exploited these regions for their own benefit; now, in a karmic reversal, their peoples are invading us. Yet we talk only of how to keep them out.
Robinson’s insistence, throughout these essays, that we recognize the limitations of our knowledge is timely and important. She is acutely aware that the “us and them” mentality, so prevalent in modern political discourse, is dangerous, false and unsustainable, and that it is essential that we cultivate “a respectful awareness of lives lived otherwise.” Yet sometimes she herself pulls back from the “given,” as when she wonders, with some trepidation, if those who do not know Christ can enjoy the ultimate good promised to the Christian. She concludes, tentatively, that because they participate in God’s world, they must somehow be included in God’s providence. This solution may have been acceptable in Calvin’s time. But after studying the profundity and richness of world religions for over 20 years, I can no longer believe that any one faith has a monopoly on truth or wisdom.
Robinson rarely mentions other religious traditions specifically; when she does, however, she is seldom complimentary. She seems to have inherited from Calvin an anti-Catholic bias — her discussion of the Huguenot tragedy, for example, is one-¬sided and fails to take into account the recent scholarship clarifying that in this complex struggle there was bigotry on both sides and that it is impossible to divide 16th-¬century France into neat communities of Catholics and Protestants. She is extremely (and in my view inappropriately) scathing about ancient Near Eastern mythology. Yet she approvingly cites William James’s warning that “we should never assume that our knowledge of anything is more than partial.” This must — surely? — mean that no tradition can have the last word on the ineffable. Protestant Christianity had admirable, indeed indispensable insights, but like any ideology, its vision too was partial. John Locke, who, after Calvin, is Robinson’s favorite theologian, suggested that the liberal state could tolerate neither Catholics nor Muslims, claimed that Native Americans had no property rights to their land, and showed some robust support for the institution of slavery.
In the West, we often speak of “the Reformation” as if it were a unique event. Robinson is not only convinced of this but seems to regard the Protestant Reformation as God’s last word to humanity, something that cannot be bettered. Yet almost every single one of what we now call the “great world religions” began as a reformation of existing spirituality during a period of social, political or economic transformation, when old pieties no longer sufficed. This is true of the myriad religions of the Indian subcontinent (including Buddhism and Jainism), the Chinese traditions, Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Over the centuries, all of these faiths continued to re-form themselves during times of disturbance and change. Perhaps in the global village that we have created, it is time for another reformation that will help us to achieve and to act upon the apparently difficult recognition that we share the planet with equals.
THE GIVENNESS OF THINGS
Essays
By Marilynne Robinson
292 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $26.
Karen Armstrong’s “Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence” has recently been published in paperback.
A version of this review appears in print on December 13, 2015, on page BR20 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: The Spirit of Our Times.
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