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Title details for When I Was a Child I Read Books by Marilynne Robinson - Available

When I Was a Child I Read Books

Essays

by Marilynne Robinson
Marilynne Robinson
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
A New York Times Bestseller
A New York Magazine Best Book of the Year
An Economist Best Book of the Year
Pulitzer Prize–Winning Author of Gilead
Marilynne Robinson has built a sterling reputation as a writer of sharp, subtly moving prose, not only as a major American novelist, but also as a rigorous thinker and incisive essayist.
In When I Was a Child I Read Books she returns to and expands upon the themes which have preoccupied her work with renewed vigor.
In "Austerity as Ideology," she tackles the global debt crisis, and the charged political and social political climate in this country that makes finding a solution to our financial troubles so challenging. In "Open Thy Hand Wide" she searches out the deeply embedded role of generosity in Christian faith. And in "When I Was a Child," one of her most personal essays to date, an account of her childhood in Idaho becomes an exploration of individualism and the myth of the American West. Clear-eyed and forceful as ever, Robinson demonstrates once again why she is regarded as one of our essential writers.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    April 12, 2012

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781427226785
      • File size: 213762 KB
      • Duration: 07:25:20

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Robinson's essays demand one's undivided attention as they illuminate profoundly relevant global issues, and the political, social, environmental, and religious climate in America today. Robinson's insights, bolstered by treatises on Christianity, pinpoint how humanity arrived at this point and the likely effect of today's climate on future generations. Read by the author, the collection articulates her intensity and sincerity. The purposeful force of her inspiring narration encourages the listener to compare his or her own depths of experience to hers. In the title essay, Robinson describes an Idaho childhood in which her youthful coming-of-age expectations mirrored the myth of the American West. Any devoted reader will identify with her lifelong love of books, the craft of writing, and the creative spirit. With its elegant prose, this book once again affirms Robinson's well-deserved status as a Pulitzer Prize winner. A.W. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from December 19, 2011
      Author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Gilead, Robinson weighs in with a series of tightly developed essays, some personal but mostly more general, on the Big Themes: social fragmentation in modern America, human frailty, faith. Her project is a hard-edged liberalism, sustained by a Calvinist ethic of generosity. Among her contemporary intellectual models are theologians such as John Shelby Spong and Jack Miles. From earlier times, she invokes Moses, Jesus, Calvin, Emerson, Johann Friedrich Oberlin (who figures indirectly in Gilead), Poe, Whitman, and others. In these times of the ever-ascending religious right, in the aftermath of what she sees as the ideologically secularist-driven cold war, Robinson bravely explores the corrosive potion of “Christian anti-Judaism” and what it really ought to mean to be “a Christian nation.” The closing essay is about the twin establishmentarianism straitjackets of Freudianism and Darwinism in the collective presumptions regarding the supremacy of self-interest—ill-informed fundamentalist nostalgias being one clear sign—which, she says ruefully, have supplanted true religious discourse. Agent: Ellen Levine, Trident Media Group.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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