Posts Tagged ‘Marilynne Robinson’

WHAT PAGE ARE YOU ON?

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010

Park University was recently lucky enough to have book critic Michael Dirda kick-off its Big Read with tips on reading and appreciating Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping. In the excerpts from an interview with the NEA below, Michael Dirda provides the reader some tips for understanding the writing style in another of our Big Read books—Ursula K. LeGuin’s A Wizard of Earthsea:

The style of A Wizard of Earthsea is appropriate, I think, to the kind of characters in it.  Fantasy novels tend to deal with people who are heroes, and heroes need to be somewhat separate from, you know, run of the mill people and I think their language needs to reflect that. It can’t be stilted and it can’t be too foreign, but it needs to possess a kind of nobility, a plainness, a slight sense of gravity, of formality, even. And these Le Guinn uses throughout A Wizard of Earthsea in all of her sentences.…A Wizard of Earthsea is all about balance, so that it’s never, I think, overly stylized, or stilted or anything that would be off putting to the reader, but is instead a kind of hypnotic, elegant prose.…But throughout, there is this sense of this serene, self-assured, musical prose that carries you along that is really, I think, one of her great gifts as a novelist.

The writer Nabokov—not perhaps a writer that you would think of in connection with fantasies of this sort, although many of his books are, in fact, fantasies—he said that a writer only needs one talent. He said that it doesn’t always have to be skill as a particular kind of stylist or anything at all, but as a storyteller, he needs to possess what he calls the wand of the enchanter. If, through your prose, or through your story, or through the voice you present on the page, you can enchant the reader, then you’ve done your job.  And this is what Le Guinn does with her sentences in A Wizard of Earthsea.…This is one of the great powers of the book, that not only are you reading about magic, but you’re reading it in prose, it seems, somehow, magical itself, and that reinforces the power of the novel altogether.

Click here for the NEA’s A Wizard of Earthsea Audio Guide and more insight into the novel from Dirda, as well as Michael Chabon, Pico Iyer, R. L. Stine, and the author herself, Ursula K. Le Guin.

Please read more about Park University’s Big Read.

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Read Between the Lines: A Q&A with Park University (Parkville, Missouri)

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

May 6, 2010
Parkville, Missouri

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Michael Dirda kicks off Park University’s Big Read with his tips on reading and appreciating Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping. Photo courtesy of Park University, the Kansas City Public Library, and the Central Exchange.

When I speak with Big Read organizers I like to ask them to describe their Big Read in three words. Inspiring, fun, and gratifying are words I’ve heard before, but I was struck by the answer given by Jane Wood, Park University’s Big Read coordinator and the university’s Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Wood described her city’s Big Read as “Impassioned, creative, impactful.”  The university’s Big Read certainly lives up to these strong words with programming that brings new insights into Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping both as a novel and as a jumping off point for an exploration of important issues in their society.

NEA: Why did you choose Housekeeping for your community’s Big Read book?

JANE WOOD: Because we looked at images of war and masculinity, among other important themes, in the Hemingway Big Read (in 2007), we (Park University, the Kansas City Public Library, and the Central Exchange) wanted to look at the other side of the coin, and that was Housekeeping.

NEA: What were some of the unique activities that your organization planned for The Big Read?

WOOD: The kick-off event with Michael Dirda, one of the first reviewers of Housekeeping when it was originally published, was a phenomenal success. Titled “Housekeeping Tips from Michael Dirda” we had almost 400 people attend the event (on a stormy April 6th evening) and receive a free copy of the book, our itinerary for events, and a Reader’s Guide to the novel.

Our second creative event took place on April 29 at the Central Exchange, which is the “premier organization in the Kansas  City area supporting women leaders” and was titled “Housekeeping: A Case for Corporate Gender Diversity.” I began the evening’s program with a discussion of the novel and how it explores the need for gender diversity in society. We then segued into a panel event featuring Doranne Hudson, executive in residence at the UMKC Bloch School; Denise Kruse, president of Addams-Gabbert and Associates; and Mary McClure, management director for McClure Management Consulting and board member of Quik Trip. More than 40 women and men attended this discussion on the importance of women in the home and in the boardroom.

We also offered the community an academic discussion at Park University at which Park University English majors, who wrote academic papers on the novel, presented them at an event titled “Postmodern Paradox: Literary Criticism and Housekeeping.” We will close our Big Read on Wednesday, May 12 with “A Conversation with Marilynne Robinson” where the author will join us for her own personal story and her thoughts about the novel with Anglea Elam from New Letters on the Air.

NEA: What has been your favorite Big Read moment, either from this year’s program or your past Big Read?

WOOD: There have been so many! Certainly one of the highlights from the Hemingway Big Read was the kick-off event that featured Steve Paul, an independent scholar and Senior Writer and Arts Editor at the Kansas City Star, sharing his article “Reading the Young Hemingway’s Kansas City Star, 1917-18.”

The Housekeeping event at the Central Exchange was also a fascinating and creative discussion by community women and a few good men about the importance of gender diversity in all realms of society.

NEA: In what ways has your community benefitted from The Big Read?

WOOD: Community members have learned the integral role that Kansas City played in Hemingway’s life and literature, as well as reaffirming the importance of the Midwest landscape and its people to the settling of the American west. I believe that people also have reconnected with the library as a place of creative and stimulating community conversations.

NEA: Why should other cities participate in The Big Read?

WOOD: To read amazing literature! Also, participating in the Big Read allows people to meet members of their respective communities in environments that encourage education, activism, and civic engagement around relevant literature.

NEA: What has been the biggest surprise from your experience with The Big Read?

WOOD: That by and large community members undertake the reading and exploration of the novel with serious intent and deliberation. People were, and are, genuinely concerned and invigorated by the reading and discussion process.

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WHAT PAGE ARE YOU ON?

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

January 27, 2010
Washington, DC

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“A library user in its natural habitat” by Molly Ali from Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mollyali/ / CC BY-NC 2.0)

On the one hand, there’s ample evidence that literary reading is not as popular a pasttime as it used to be. On the other hand, when you hear all of the enthusiastic testimonials from folks who are participating in The Big Read and other reading programs and projects, it’s clear that there are entire towns, cities, and, even, states full of people that still have books at the top of their to-do lists. In this excerpt from a conversation with the NEA, Marilynne Robinson chimes in on the persistent nature of literary culture.

I do think that how people spend their time, and people often have limited time, is responsive to what they feel about the world. I think that a lot of people are reading what they find on the Internet,and a lot of this is information of a valuable or interesting kind, you know. I think that there’s a lot of interest in nonfiction because there are lots of problems that are cultural and social problems that are addressed by nonfiction.  I think that, in my own experience going around doing readings and so on and talking to other people who do them, there is a very passionate reading audience. I don’t know how large it is, but there are some very intense readers out there. 

I think that the literary culture of a civilization is sort of, it’s like the musical culture, you know.  It’s profoundly expressive and reflective in a way that is, perhaps, not easily articulated. But I think that you can see in this culture, odd as its forms are, sometimes, that there’s a kind of coherence that is established in cultural life by music. I think that this is true also when a culture is producing strong literature, that it becomes a way in which a culture can converse with itself and can form its idea of value in life, the esthetic, the beautiful. I mean the oldest art we have is narrative literature, which has been very meticulously maintained, by who knows who, over eons. I think that there’s a very strong impulse in human cultures to produce this kind of culture; it’s hard to imagine it being lost.  It’s sort of like imagining that people will stop dreaming, you know.

To find a Big Read even near you, visit The Big Read calendar. Don’t forget the last day to apply for a Big Read grant for 2010-2011 is Monday, February 2.

 

 

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Happy Birthday Marilynne Robinson!

Friday, November 27th, 2009

November 27, 2009
Washington, DC

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Marilynne Robinson read from her most recent novel, Home, at the 2009 National Book Festival in Washington, DC. Photo by Tom Roster.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY (a day late) to Housekeeping author Marilynne Robinson! Today I’m pondering this quote from Robinson’s second novel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead. I like this quote because I think it eloquently captures one of the recurring themes of Robinson’s writing.

“I’m not saying never doubt or question. The Lord gave you a mind so that you would make honest use of it. I’m saying you must be sure that the doubts and questions are your own, not, so to speak, the mustache and walking stick that happen to be the fashion of any particular moment.” — Reverend John Ames in Gilead.

Learn more about Marilynne Robinson on her author’s page on The Big Read website.

 

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WHAT PAGE ARE YOU ON?

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

November 24, 2009
Washington, DC

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“Untitled” by Svet via Flickr Creative Commons (http://www.flickr.com/photos/svet/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Regardless of genre, length, historical epoch, setting, or other variables, what each of the Big Read titles has in common is sheer sticking power. It puts me in mind of this quote by William Faulkner, “The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.”

Going on the theory that all great artists are in some way in conversation with one another, here’s a follow-up trio of quotes from Big Read authors.

“The goal of the artist is not to solve a question irrefutably, but to force people to love life in all its innumerable, inexhaustible manifestations.” — Leo Tolstoy

“I want to overhear passionate arguments about what we are and what we are doing and what we ought to do. I want to feel that art is an utterance made in good faith by one human being to another. Iwant to believe there are geniuses scheming to astonish the rest of us, just for the pleasure of it.” — Marilynne Robinson

“An artist should have no moral purpose in mind other than just his art.” — Willa Cather

Check out The Big Read educational materials to hear more from The Big Read authors.

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WHAT PAGE ARE YOU ON?

Monday, August 24th, 2009

August 24, 2009
Washington, DC

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“Typewriter” by aprillynn77 from Flickr

The work of the very best writers is deceptive in that, if the writer does her job well, the reader is aware only of a sense of effortlessness and ease to the text. In truth, every writer struggles with the best way to write, and in most cases revise, the work.  Some writers proceed one sentence at a time and can’t go on until the sentence at hand is absolutely buffed and polished. Other writers prefer to pour as much as possible onto the page at one go, and then go back and start paring and cutting away until the story or poem emerges. From an interview with the NEA, here’s Marilynne Robinson on her approach to writing and revising.

I write when I can.  I write very much when I have the impulse to write. And so I can write five days a week, you know, continuously. And then, if I come to the end and I have to think about things for a while, I don’t write at all for a while. I’m not at all a work ethic sort of writer. Either I have persuaded myself of the illusion or I’m outside of the illusion, and those are my two states, as far as writing is concerned.

I don’t really revise very much.  It seems to me that [if] you have something written the way it ought to be written, then you’ve preserved the integrity of the dream, you know.  That if you make a mistake you’re, in a sense, rupturing this dream. And you cannot go on from a mistake very successfully.  You really have to try to preserve the integrity of the fiction at every point, and that’s what I try to do.

Check out the Housekeeping Reader’s Guide for more on Marilynne Robinson and her Big Read novel.

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WHAT PAGE ARE YOU ON?

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

July 22, 2009
Washington, DC

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Marilynne Robinson was the guest of honor at Marshall Public Library's Big Read of Housekeeping, her first published novel.

 Today I’m diving into The Big Read audio archive (again) to bring you author Bret Lott on Marilynne Robinson.  (Lott, whose novel Jewel was an Oprah Book Club pick, currently serves on the NEA’s National Council on the Arts.)

“I’ve probably read [Housekeeping] seven or eight times.  I use it for my classes. All my undergrads will read it [and] my graduate students will read it because it does precisely what I think a great book should do and that is to combine language and story.  Too often, language can eclipse story and story can eclipse language but this one has both in equal measure.

When I wrote my first novel, there were many things in Housekeeping that informed it. My first novel takes place in western Massachusetts and there’s a lake that plays prominently in it. . . . [I]t’s one of these old 1930s-era reservoirs that were built by flooding towns in the floors of the valleys. There’s this real haunting sense, not even a sense, it’s just pervasive everywhere, the haunting. In fact, the lake is a character in the book, [representing] what’s beneath the surface. When I finally got to this part of the novel, I realized that . . . Housekeeping was why I was so enchanted with this idea of these villages at the bottom of the Quabbin Reservoir in western Massachusetts.“

Check out The Big Read Reader’s Guide to learn more about Marilynne Robinson and Housekeeping.

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