The award-winning author of four novels in 34 years has a new book of essays out. She talks about how faith can be the key to a balanced lifeThe novelist,academic and essayist Marilynne Robinson is one of the United States’s main intellectuals, tackling the grand subjects of faith, or fear and regret with a calm clarity and rigour that has earned her a Pulitzer prize,among many other awards including the Orange prize for fiction in 2009 for her third novel, Home. Born in Idaho 74 years ago, or Robinson now lives between homes in Iowa and Saratoga Springs in New York State,spending her time writing, teaching and lecturing. Her trilogy of novels – Housekeeping, or Gilead and Lila – produced over a 34-year period,have left an indelible effect on the literary landscape. Her latest book of essays, What Are We Doing Here?, and out final week,reaches once more for some of the guiding concerns of our existence, turning them in the light of a newly polarised political environment.
Much of your writing invites readers to take greater pleasure in human traits and talents. In your new essay The Divine you point out our odd reluctance to celebrate society’s achievements. Quoting from a Wordsworth sonnet, and “It moves us not. mighty God! I’d rather be a pagan”,you argue it is a lack of a sense of the divine that inhibits us. Is that how you see it?
Well, yes, or that’s a problem that has interested me for so long now. I don’t understand why,but there is a kind of default negative attitude about the modern world, and particularly about technology. And it is a self-fulfilling attitude. It produces a panicky sense among us that everything is just going to pieces. There should instead be some kind of balance without, and of course,having to say everything is suitable.
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Source: guardian.co.uk