Words&Dirt

Summary:

Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead is a superb contribution to the American literary tradition. The book is narrated by John Ames, a preacher from the fictional town of Gilead, Iowa. It’s the late 1950s, and Ames is approaching the end of his life. Before giving up the ghost, he decides to write a missive to his young son so the boy might understand his family history and possess a posthumous record of his father’s experiences and worldview. Ames recounts the exploits of his father and grandfather, both of whom were also preachers. He also describes how he met his wife, Lila, and explores his complicated relationship with Jack Boughton, the son of his best friend. Gilead combines grounded small town realism with timeless religious wisdom to form a powerful narrative brimming with insight, determination, and hope.

Key Concepts and Notes:

• Marilynne Robinson has been on my radar for years, but this is the first time I’ve read one of her books. It’s easy to see why she has become so popular with so many readers. Her writing is clean, unpretentious, and intellectually sophisticated––see below for examples.
• Gilead is a fairly short book, but even so it’s replete with engaging ideas about religion, humanism, nature, ethics, history, social justice, and life in general. It’s almost like a meandering work of theology/philosophy with a story tacked on, in a good way.
• Gilead is one of the most poignant depictions of parenthood that I have read. Ames’s boundless affection for his young son is a joy to encounter.
• I really love and relate to Ames’s commitment to the physical environment and small population of Gilead. This novel is a welcome contrast to the overwhelmingly-urbanite bias of most modern literature, offering consolation and validation for readers seeking happiness and flourishing in America’s rural communities.
• At the time we meet him, Ames has lived through two major World Wars, the 1918 Flu Pandemic, and also grew up in the aftermath of the US Civil War and Reconstruction. His grandfather was an abolitionist supporter of John Brown’s activism in Kansas during the 1850s. There are lots of interesting reflections on these events that American history buffs will enjoy.
• Probably my favorite theme of the book is the question of whether people can find mutual understanding and forgiveness across generational divides, opposing political and religious beliefs, and racial lines. Robinson’s general answer is that yes, it’s possible, but also that healthy pluralism is very difficult, never guaranteed, and gains made in this direction are often partial and fragile, even if they are also heartfelt and profound.
• I didn’t realize until I was almost done with this book that it’s the first in a series, which currently has four novels in it. This makes me excited that I might be able to return to this world and these characters one day, but also made me annoyed that I only got a slice of the overall story with this first novel. Although Ames is a very strong protagonist, I often found myself wishing I could access the internal experiences of other characters.
• My main reservation about this book is that it’s a bit too religious for my personal taste. I’m grateful that it exposed me to Christian thought in a way that was approachable and allowed me to feel respect and even awe for its best qualities, but I found many of the theology-heavy sections boring. I also disliked Ames’s intellectual reliance on the notion that there’s a blessing to be found in everything, even the most abhorrent tragedy. There’s just a little too much of the “everything happens for a reason” or “God has a plan and it’s not our place to understand it” mentality that’s always rubbed me the wrong way.
• Another minor gripe is that, taken as a standalone novel, Gilead offers an extremely limited perspective on the many fascinating topics it covers. We’re basically getting everything filtered through the perspective of an old white guy (albeit a very thoughtful, caring, and well-educated one). There are peripheral women and people of color in the story, but none of them has any real depth. I hope––and assume, given Robinson’s obvious talents as a storyteller––that the other books in the series seek to balance this out.

Favorite Quotes:

This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it. (28)

To be useful was the best thing the old men ever hoped for themselves, and to be aimless was their worst fear. (49)

You never do know the actual nature even of your own experience. Or perhaps it has no fixed and certain nature. (95)

My present bewilderments are a new territory that make me doubt I have ever really been lost before.

Though I must say all this has given me a new glimpse of the ongoingness of the world. We fly forgotten as a dream, certainly, leaving the forgetful world behind us to trample and mar and misplace everything we have ever cared for. That is just the way of it, and it is remarkable. (191)

In every important way we are such secrets from each other, and I do believe that there is a separate language in each of us, also a separate aesthetics and a separate jurisprudence. Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable––which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live. We take fortuitous resemblances among us to be actual likeness, because those around us have also fallen heir to the same customs, trade in the same coin, acknowledge, more or less, the same notions of decency and sanity. But all that really just allows us to coexist with the inviolable, untraversable, and utterly vast spaces between us. (197)

There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient. (243)

Theologians talk about of prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave––that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm. And therefore, this courage allows us, as the old men said, to make ourselves useful. It allows us to be generous, which is another way of saying exactly the same thing. (246)

Rating: 9/10