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Though coming late to Marilynne Robinson, I was immediately captivated by her narrative form, the power of the characters and the moral integrity that rises above moralising.
Having written several posts during 2018-19 in respect to Robinson’s Gilead trilogy, I have taken the time to experiment a little and put together an edited collection; compiled in LaTeX and available in PDF from my Downloads page.
It has come to my attention that the second part of Marilynne Robinson’s recent lecture (embedded in my previous post) is now in essay (long) form, and as “Is Poverty Necessary?” the cover title of the June edition of Harper’s Magazine. Maybe you are lucky enough to get the one free piece a month – or even luckier and be a subscriber.
Now should you have listened to these lectures, you may agree that they really are quite dense in subject matter and meaning; especially the second part which harks back to the roots of classical economics at the beginning of industrialisation and the accompanying (and colliding) emerging political theories of liberalism, capitalism, marxism …I dare say I forgot some other “ism”s! In this respect I am very grateful to have some written words for guidance and more stringent study – at leisure if not pleasure.
Also, a podcast of a discussion with the editor of the piece (who is also the executive editor of Harper’s Magazine), Christopher Beha, is enlightening and presumably available to all.
On February 5 and 6 2019, Marilynne Robinson delivered the Joanna Jackson Goldman Memorial Lecture on American Civilization and Government entitled “Liberalism and American Tradition” at the New York Public Library in which she investigates the roots of liberal thought in America. Before I lose track of them, here is the library’s introduction followed by the embedded lectures.
Part One: Part Two:Marilynne Robinson is one of the most celebrated American writers—she won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was awarded a National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama, …She recently delivered the Joanna Jackson Goldman Memorial Lectures on American Civilization and Government lecture on American Civilization and Government titled “Liberalism and American Tradition,” which traces the origins of liberalism. The biennial lecture series is presented by the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at NYPL.
The New York Public Library
This middle book is certainly the most political of the series; offering a socially critical view of that immediate post-war decade, as “out the ashes of…” these prosperous times are being relativized by a simmering discontent as many old norms are being questioned, and young men and women begin to come to the fore unencumbered by the prejudices of previous generations.
I am especially thinking here about Jack Boughton’s increasing despair at his father’s ambivalence to the plight of black Americans and rising tide of civil unrest, for example whilst watching the Montgomery riots on the newly bought TV:
The old man said, “I do believe it is necessary to enforce the law. The Apostle Paul says we should do everything ‘decently and in order’ You can’t have people running around the streets like that.
Home, Marilynne Robinson, Virago UK paperback ed. p. 102
And when Jack raises the matter of Emmett Till the following exchange ensues:
“[…]the Negro […] attacked the white woman?” Jack said, “He was a kid […]fourteen […]he whistled at a white woman.” His father said, “I think there must have been more to it […] There was a trial.” Jack said, “There was no trial. He was murdered. He was a child and they murdered him.”
p. 163
And I am particularly thinking about this at the moment in conjunction with this excellent feature in the New York Times, enhanced with brilliant images, reporting on the legacy of Emmett Till’s murder and the ways people choose to, or choose not to, memorialize.
…
The New York Times February 20 2019
In August 1955, a 14-year-old black boy visiting from Chicago walked in to buy candy. After being accused of whistling at the white woman behind the counter, he was later kidnapped, tortured, lynched and dumped in the Tallahatchie River.
The murder of Emmett Till is remembered as one of the most hideous hate crimes of the 20th century, a brutal episode in American history that helped kindle the civil rights movement. And the place where it all began, Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market, is still standing. Barely.
Today, the store is crumbling, roofless and covered in vines. On several occasions, preservationists, politicians and business leaders — even the State of Mississippi — have tried to save its remaining four walls. But no consensus has been reached…
Literature is of course another way of memorializing, and Marilynne Robinson indeed incorporates the racial tensions and ambivalence of her youth (that so often evolved into hate) in her writing. I dare say too she would admit her anger and sadness that so much remains unresolved, and even have in a different way become exacerbated.
I found it really quite interesting and often enlightening to consider Marilynne Robinson’s various name choices in her Gilead trilogy (that is – to date, trilogy!), and seeking out hidden meanings and symbolic. And they are certainly there aplenty; first and foremost, Gilead, that biblical place offering balm for souls searching, and in the names of siblings and children – all those Johns and Edwards, and Glory and Grace. Not immediately apparent to me was the significance one could give to the two family names. It must be said, Robinson could of course have chosen them from the recesses of her mind, or even at random! But anyway for what it’s worth…
William Ames was an important Protestant theologian, educated at Christ’s College, Cambridge, who by and by fell afoul of the clerical elite with his rigid Calvinist and staunch Puritan views (can said points of view be anything else but?), and specifically in relation to the debauchery and excesses (again, to his mind) surrounding the Twelve Days of Christmas. Persona non-grata on the island it then seems, he travelled to the Netherlands, and initially courted again controversy – this time with a dispute to do with the Arminian position of predestination. Nevertheless, he obtained important university teaching positions, and his person and writings were to become influential in reformed theological circles in Holland, and flourished across the Atlantic in the fledgling New England colony (where he had hoped to go before being hindered by ill health) and the purity of faith embraced there.
Probably the most prominent American theologian, Jonathan Edwards‘ fusion of Calvinism and Puritanism became one of the defining aspects of American protestantism, especially through the Great Awakening and Revival Theology period of the mid-eighteenth century, and his influence and legacy remain to this day theologically pertinent, and absolute to an understanding of American colonial history (see all things Perry Miller.)
A bit of a stretch – but anyway. George Henry Boughton was born in Norwich in England but grew up in Albany, New York. No learned man of church and theology here, Boughton was a painter and illustrator! The subject matter of his work though was very often drawn from New England colonial history, and per se therefore often representing Puritan life.
With my thoughts on Lila Ames I included an image from George Henry Boughton, and here is another that may very well be seen as representative of Lila’s quest for the grace and salvation that the Rev. John Ames believes and preaches.
Interestingly, Boughton also illustrated the 1881 edition of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, and when I think of Lila, I can’t help but think of Hester Prynne and the inner dignity and strength that they share, enabling them to surmount extreme denigration and hardship.
As we accompany Rev. Ames as he leaves testament to a good life lived in Gilead, his wife has been at his side for eight years perhaps, borne his child, grown into herself – distant still, but accepted. She is after all Mrs. Ames. Lila.
Told differently again is this third novel of the series. It is in the third person, but from the very reliable point of view of the subject – Lila’s voice shines through. Lacking the intellectual stringency of the first and the emotional roller-coaster ride of the second, and the complexity of both, it shines instead with its honesty and integrity and the more simple and direct tone.
Ah, Lila! Taken, kidnapped, saved, however one may look at it, as a feeble five year old by the wandering Doll, and from the most desolate and abused circumstances. Their bonding and time together, with and without the company of itinerant workers, was, in those pre-Depression years and the harsher times to come, what was to define her, and give her the inner strength in the times spent alone on the road and in a St. Louis brothel.
One is left to imagine the many years from childhood to adulthood, to ponder quite how this clever woman, this kind woman, lived her life, to imagine it as equal and as flawed in all its goodness to that of the Reverend Ames; he who she on whim, or an inner sense of destiny, pleaded for and who took then her as wife, and without hesitation – that wondrous lost soul; searching there for shelter one day at his church door. Did Rev. Ames presume himself saviour? Who saved whom at God’s door?
Marilynne Robinson, in the parlance of these days, delivers again, and with her unique voice and an abiding humanity. Lila provides another fine character portrait from which the narrative springs; drawing one again near to the essence and limits of the loneliness, wariness and despair that pervades the little world of Gilead and the greater world of humankind, and along the way fosters a belief in the capacity to grow and change.
Remarkable.
Home may well mean many things for many people – there is that of birth or formative years, and that “where the heart is”; there is a physical place and a sensory place, and a home of the imagination. And too there is the home one recognises and that which one denies, and the home you take with you and the one you leave behind. There is that state of being at home with oneself. It is remarkably elusive this “home” thing.
Home is also the title of Marilynne Robinson’s 2008 follow-up novel to Gilead, which so captivated me with the radicality of its givenness. More a companion of sorts than a sequel, Home runs parallel in time, say through the Spring and Summer of 1956 – sometimes taking its own trajectory and sometimes entwined with Ames’ record; enhancing that, putting things right, begging the question of where reliability lies. I could only approach Home in the context of that first reading, which brought with it all the sympathies and associations I had formed.
I like to think of it in this way: Whilst our Reverend Ames is sitting down writing his very personal testimonial for his son, over at the Boughton household we have the recently returned Glory and that wayward, beloved brother Jack; caring for a dying father and coming to their own reckoning of sorts with themselves and one another
I see now those themes that predominated in Gilead – loneliness, forgiveness, sorrow, all that weariness and wariness – as being observed and described by Rev. Ames; in more soul searching moments in terms of himself, more often though pertaining to those nearest and dearest, but in Home the emotionally engaged reader lives them with the protagonists; the psychology of it all becomes reality. The change of narrative style to the third person, predominately from Glory’s point of view, and the wonderful dialogic exchanges facilitates this new rendering.
Glory, seemingly peripheral for Ames’ story, is central to this narrative, and I loved getting to know this woman – intelligent, duped by a bounder, and ashamed, felt left behind by life and her own aspirations. I even loved the tears. Teary rhymes with weary I know.
It is through Glory’s eyes that we see the tormented Jack, and with her we approach some knowledge and understanding of the lonely, desperate boy who never felt at home in this the family home, but treasures every memory, every detail. Dutifully, have the other siblings come “home” over all the years – and been glad enough to leave – but Jack has carried that “home” to which he never felt as if he belonged with him every day; and the burden heavy. What is home?
Jack and Glory: Their trials and tribulations, what they bring home with them, and what they seek and what they find instead; it may not be the sought for resolution, but there is a way there – and the reader’s hope that it be found.
With Home, Marilynne Robinson delivers again her deep Christian and human convictions in a prose that is sometimes more beautiful and profound than the profane heart or head can bear – but borne it is, and one is just left wondering at the limits of own profanity!
I have always noted with interest the dedication and epigraph of a book – to whom if anyone – precise or otherwise (“To A.B.C. with love”!), sincere or ironic, inspirational or nonsensical. Sometimes they may mean nothing to anyone other than the author, but sometimes they are revealing (I think this is called paratextual).
My attention recently diverted to thinking about Puritans (who I have never thought much about before!), I recalled Margaret Atwood’s dedication of The Handmaid’s Tale to the historian Perry Miller (and Mary Webster – an Atwood ancestor and victim of the Salem witch trials!) who so impressed her whilst at Harvard in the early sixties.
Confounded somewhat about how those first Puritans could reemerge so diabolically in her Republic of Gilead (and at the same time dwell in the good spirit of a Reverend Ames in Marilynne Robinson’s novel), and fairly ignorant to colonial New England history, and absolutely to the theological dimensions, I have resolved therefore to pursue a little of my own research (over time!). And a starting point may well be at least some reading of Perry Miller’s The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century. Quite how far I will get I don’t know; it does seem somewhat daunting!
I have wondered though about that “Historical Note” that bookended rather than framed Atwood’s novel, and I think I can see that this literary device may have been influenced by what she took from Miller all those years ago; something perhaps like history to be seen in continuity, as inherited over and over, and inextricably embellished all the way along with the set of beliefs of the historian and his or her time. Atwood characterises her (rather obnoxious) historian as one analysing the past from the physical and intellectual coordinates of his present; oblivious that all these 200 years on he is carrying all the baggage from those two centuries. For Miller I think that meant that the Puritanism of colonial New England had only previously been understood in evidential terms, rather than conceding that the history being told was affected by the America of the ensuing years and the present.