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1. • value: Christian
2. • value: judaism
3. • value: spiritual
4. • value: Faith
5. • value: Literary Criticism
6. • value: cultural criticism
7. • value: Catholicism
8. • value: suicide bomber
9. • value: American Authors
10. • value: belief
11. • value: Christian faith
12. • value: atheism
13. • value: Philosophical
14. • value: Protestantism
15. • value: Southern literature
16. • value: Philosophy of Religion
17. • value: Spirituality
18. • value: Essays
19. • value: American Literature
20. • value: Christianity
21. • value: religious
22. • value: theology
23. • value: Christian lifestyle
24. • value: 20th century american literature
25. • value: southern writers
26. • value: biblical theology
27. • value: Christian philosophy
28. • value: Knowing God
29. • value: deep thinker
30. • value: literary nonfiction
31. • value: christian ideology
32. • value: nature of god
33. • value: best selling authors
34. • value: essay collections
35. • value: marilyn robinson
36. • value: theology books
37. • value: elegant prose
38. • value: god's forgiveness
39. • value: Christian scholarship
40. • value: provocative prose
41. • value: literary argument
42. • value: literary cultural theory
43. • value: lively essay

creators

1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Robinson, Marilynne
   • bioText: Marilynne Robinson is the author of Gilead, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Home (2008), winner of the Orange Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Lila (2014), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Jack (2020), a New York Times bestseller. Her first novel, Housekeeping (1980), won the PEN/Hemingway Award. Robinson's nonfiction books include The Givenness of Things (2015), When I Was a Child I Read Books (2012), Absence of Mind (2010), The Death of Adam (1998), and Mother Country (1989). She is the recipient of a 2012 National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama, for "her grace and intelligence in writing." Robinson lives in California
   • name: Marilynne Robinson

publishDate

2015-10-27T00:00:00-04:00

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True

title

The Givenness of Things

fullDescription

The spirit of our times can appear to be one of joyless urgency. As a culture we have become less interested in the exploration of the glorious mind, and more interested in creating and mastering technologies that will yield material well-being. But while cultural pessimism is always fashionable, there is still much to give us hope. In The Givenness of Things, the incomparable Marilynne Robinson delivers an impassioned critique of our contemporary society while arguing that reverence must be given to who we are and what we are: creatures of singular interest and value, despite our errors and depredations.
Robinson has plumbed the depths of the human spirit in her novels, including the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Lila and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead, and in her new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern predicament and the mysteries of faith. These seventeen essays examine the ideas that have inspired and provoked one of our finest writers throughout her life. Whether she is investigating how the work of the great thinkers of the past, Calvin, Locke, Bonhoeffer—and Shakespeare—can infuse our lives, or calling attention to the rise of the self-declared elite in American religious and political life, Robinson's peerless prose and boundless humanity are on display. Exquisite and bold, The Givenness of Things is a necessary call for us to find wisdom and guidance in our cultural heritage, and to offer grace to one another.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Karen Armstrong, The New York Times Book Review
   • content:

     "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."

2. • premium: False
   • source: Bill Marvel, Dallas Morning News
   • content: "These are beautiful essays . . . beautiful in thought and beautiful in expression."
3. • premium: False
   • source: Michael Robbins, The Chicago Tribune
   • content: "The Givenness of Things is so rich that I'm tempted to quote it to death."
4. • premium: False
   • source: Yvonne Zipp, The Christian Science Monitor
   • content: "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."
5. • premium: False
   • source: Casey N. Cep, The New Republic
   • content: "Robinson's handiwork is capacious and serious, but also mysterious and wondrous; like the night sky, it deserves our attention."
6. • premium: False
   • source: Jeff Simon, The Buffalo News
   • content: "A new book of essays by Robinson is a major American literary event."
7. • premium: False
   • source: Michelle Orange, Bookforum
   • content: "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."
8. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     Starred review from August 10, 2015
     This probing, provocative collection by Pulitzer winner Robinson (Gilead) argues for the recovery of humanism as
     a response to the problems of our historical moment. Robinson's is a "humanism articulated in the terms of Christian metaphysics," based on a deep reading of the Bible and her self-declared Calvinism. She is as impressively erudite and incisive in dealing with Shakespeare's "theological seriousness" and the literariness of the Reformation as in examining the current American allegiance to science over wonder, competitiveness over generosity, technology over art. The essays demonstrate an engaging humility, a quiet voice pure of accusation or bombast, and insight touched with humor. Robinson's surgically precise prose and disciplined thought convey regret for human fallibility just as strongly as reverence for human potential. Her solution is a moral reparation—a reinvigoration of "the conceptual vocabulary of religion" and "a more considered understanding of the soul" that acknowledges "the ontological centrality of humankind in the created order." "To value one another is our greatest safety," Robinson writes, "and to indulge in fear and contempt is our gravest error." 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." Agent: Ellen Levine, Trident Media Group.

9. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     August 1, 2015
     A sober, passionate defense of Christian faith. In these 17 essays, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Robinson (Iowa Writers' Workshop; Lila, 2014, etc.) returns to themes she considered most recently in her memoir, When I Was a Child I Read Books (2012): ethics, morality, reverence, and her own convictions as a Christian. "My Christology is high," she writes, "in that I take Christ to be with God, and to be God. And I take it to be true that without him nothing was made that was made." Much scientific thinking, she believes, draws conclusions from only a "radically partial model of reality" that excludes the marvelous and the improbable. She criticizes, for example, "the reductionist tendencies among neuroscientists" to propose a material model for the human mind; instead, she finds the soul "a valuable concept, a statement of the dignity of a human life and of the unutterable gravity of human action and experience." Robinson is an astute critic of self-righteousness among some who identify as Christians: "a harshness, a bitterness, a crudeness, and a high-handedness" has entered political life, she maintains, causing some in the "religious monoculture" to be self-serving, self-congratulatory, and insular. This kind of American Christian identity, she sees, is "rooted in an instinctive tribalism" that incites resentment, rage, and bigotry. Contemporary America, she writes, "is full of fear," but fear "is not a Christian habit of mind." This fear "operates as an appetite or an addiction. You can never be safe enough." Fear also leads to rash actions, such as increased gun sales, which are often justified by misreadings of the Second Amendment. As she notes, "gun sales stimulate gun sales-a splendid business model." Besides offering close readings of biblical texts, Robinson also considers the works of Calvin, Shakespeare, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and William James. Deeply thoughtful essays on troubling and divisive cultural-and spiritual-issues.

     COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

10. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      September 15, 2015
      

      In this collection of essays, Pulitzer Prize winner Robinson (Iowa Writer's Workshop; Gilead) reflects on many of the themes that appear in her novels. The author comes from a Calvinist background and offers a positive view of the 16th-century Reformation theologian John Calvin, most remembered for the theology of predestination and his influence on the Congregationalists, who populated much of the American colonies. Here, Robinson tackles big issues: grace and forgiveness, the nature of belief, what it means to call oneself a Christian. Many of her examples stem from literature; in fact, the essay on grace is a reflection on numerous passages from William Shakespeare, whom she sees as particularly concerned with grace. Other entries concentrate on theological topics, often citing Calvin, whom Robinson seeks to rehabilitate. Readers who enjoy Frederica Matthewes-Green's writings on the relevance of Eastern Orthodoxy will particularly relish Robinson's reflections on Calvinist doctrine. VERDICT A fine collection by a skillful and thoughtful writer that will appeal to anyone interested in the connection between religion and literature, or who savors reading a solid discussion of deep topics.--Augustine J. Curley, Newark Abbey, NJ

      Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

11. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      Starred review from October 1, 2015
      While questions of faith underpin Robinson's award-winning Iowa novels (Gilead, 2004; Home, 2008; Lila, 2014), she addresses religious and moral questions head-on in her new essay collection, following When I Was a Child I Read Books (2012). Robinson's intellectual inquiries, works of rhapsodic clarity, are erudite, passionate, and bracing. A self-described theist, writer, and scholar, Robinson delves into neuroscience and metaphysics, celebrating the study of the complexity of the human brain, while cautioning against mechanistic reductiveness and elucidating our sense of self and the valuable concept of the soul. She scrutinizes the Reformation as a catalyst for learning and literature, exploring the works of Shakespeare and John Calvin. Stating, I attach religious value to generous, need I say liberal, social policy, Robinson protests the yoking of Christian and right, condemns pathologically narrow thinking, including our worship of financial gain over justice, and advocates for the humanities with ringing eloquence and wisdom. She decries today's unashamed racism, gun violence, incarceration for profit, unbridled power, and cynicism and vulgarism. Robinson also asks us to recognize the dire impact we are having on the planet. 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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

popularity

220

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1. • code: en
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subjects

1. • value: Christian Nonfiction
2. • value: Literary Criticism
3. • value: Religion & Spirituality
4. • value: Nonfiction

publishDateText

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shortDescription

The spirit of our times can appear to be one of joyless urgency. As a culture we have become less interested in the exploration of the glorious mind, and more interested in creating and mastering technologies that will yield material well-being. But while cultural pessimism is always fashionable, there is still much to give us hope. In The Givenness of Things, the incomparable Marilynne Robinson delivers an impassioned critique of our contemporary society while arguing that reverence must be given to who we are and what we are: creatures of singular interest and value, despite our errors and depredations.
Robinson has plumbed the depths of the human spirit in her novels, including the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Lila and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead, and in her new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern predicament and the mysteries of faith. These seventeen essays examine the ideas that have inspired and...

sortTitle

Givenness of Things Essays

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Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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   • description: Religion / Christianity / General