My Book of the Month – Jack, by Marilynne Robinson Kylie

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My Book of the Month – Jack, by Marilynne Robinson Kylie Day I am currently reading Jack, the new novel by Marilynne Robinson in her justly acclaimed Gilead series. Each book centres on a different person in the circle of the Reverend John Ames, a white Congregationalist pastor in the small fictional town of Gilead, Iowa. So far we have heard from the perspective of Rev John Ames (in Gilead), his best friend Rev Boughton, the local Presbyterian minister (in Home), Ames’ young wife Lila (in Lila) and now we come back to Jack, the prodigal son of Rev Boughton. From the opening pages, it is clear that race is going to be a key issue. Living in the segregated city of St Louis, Missouri, Jack is falling in love with an African-American woman, the child of a preacher. I would recommend anything written by Marilynne Robinson, her fiction and her non-fiction, all of which unashamedly explores questions of faith. She has a great mind and, in my view, she is one of the best modern Christian thinkers and writers. Gilead and Housekeeping are two of my all-time favourite novels. People on the fringe have a central role in her fiction, as they do in Christianity, and I can’t think of Gilead and Housekeeping without remembering how deeply moving I found them. There are a number of podcast interviews with Marilynne Robinson that would be worth pairing with reading her books. She was interviewed at length by Barack Obama in 2015 and in recent weeks on the launch of Jack, by Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury. Both conversations are in two parts and all are worth listening to. .

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Marilynne Robinson
For more information contact us on: North America 855.414.1034 International +1 646.307.5567 [email protected] Marilynne Robinson Topics Best Selling and Award Winning Authors Travels From Bio Marilynne Robinson is the recipient of a 2012 National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama, for "her grace and intelligence in writing." She is the author of Gilead, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Home, winner of the Orange Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her first novel, Housekeeping, won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. Robinson's nonfiction books include The Givenness of Things, When I Was a Child I Read Books, Absence of Mind, The Death of Adam, and Mother Country. Robinson began teaching at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1991 and retired in the spring of 2016. In 2016, Robinson was named in Time magazine's list of 100 most influential people. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa. In March 2021, Oprah announced The Gilead Novels as Oprah's Book Club Picks. Oprah recognized Robinson as "one of our greatest living authors” and referred to The Gilead novels as "masterpieces". SPEECHES page 1 / 9 For more information contact us on: North America 855.414.1034 International +1 646.307.5567 [email protected] A Conversation with Marilynne Robinson Marilynne can speak to the craft of writing novels and her prolific writing career. BOOKS HARDCOVER JACK A Novel Farrar, Straus and Giroux Jack is Robinson’s fourth novel in this now-classic series.
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Marilynne Robinson's Gilead and Home Jeffrey Gonzaleza a the Borough of Manhattan Community College Published Online: 06 Aug 2014
This article was downloaded by: [Jeffrey Gonzalez] On: 07 August 2014, At: 10:09 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vcrt20 Ontologies of Interdependence, the Sacred, and Health Care: Marilynne Robinson's Gilead and Home Jeffrey Gonzaleza a The Borough of Manhattan Community College Published online: 06 Aug 2014. To cite this article: Jeffrey Gonzalez (2014) Ontologies of Interdependence, the Sacred, and Health Care: Marilynne Robinson's Gilead and Home, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 55:4, 373-388, DOI: 10.1080/00111619.2013.783780 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2013.783780 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.
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Names in Marilynne Robinson's <I>Gilead</I> and <I>Home</I>
names, Vol. 58 No. 3, September, 2010, 139–49 Names in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead and Home Susan Petit Emeritus, College of San Mateo, California, USA The titles of Marilynne Robinson’s complementary novels Gilead (2004) and Home (2008) and the names of their characters are rich in allusions, many of them to the Bible and American history, making this tale of two Iowa families in 1956 into an exploration of American religion with particular reference to Christianity and civil rights. The books’ titles suggest healing and comfort but also loss and defeat. Who does the naming, what the name is, and how the person who is named accepts or rejects the name reveal the sometimes difficult relationships among these characters. The names also reinforce the books’ endorsement of a humanistic Christianity and a recommitment to racial equality. keywords Bible, American history, slavery, civil rights, American literature Names are an important source of meaning in Marilynne Robinson’s prize-winning novels Gilead (2004) and Home (2008),1 which concern the lives of two families in the fictional town of Gilead, Iowa,2 in the summer of 1956. Gilead is narrated by the Reverend John Ames, at least the third Congregationalist minister of that name in his family, in the form of a letter he hopes his small son will read after he grows up, while in Home events are recounted in free indirect discourse through the eyes of Glory Boughton, the youngest child of Ames’ lifelong friend, Robert Boughton, a retired Presbyterian minister. Both Ames, who turns seventy-seven3 that summer (2004: 233), and Glory, who is thirty-eight, also reflect on the past and its influence on the present.
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Reflections on the Ordinary: an Interview with Marilynne Robinson
Reflections on the Ordinary: An Interview with Marilynne Robinson The following interview took place on 4th November 2017 in Dey House, of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop in Iowa City. Cunning: The word ‘ordinary’ seems so important to your work, and the more I read your fiction, the more it stands out as a significant term. Your novels focus on profoundly ordi- nary things: family, ageing, light, water, loss, language, time, the natural world. I think this would be a good place to start our conversation. Where does your mind go when you hear the word ‘ordinary’ and what is behind your conscious decision to write novels so attentive to the ordinary? Robinson: I think the ordinary is very mysterious. I think the ordinary, given a reasonable span of time, might also be called the ephemeral. It presents itself as if it were not, as something that allows itself to be taken for granted, when nothing is finally granted. There’s a sort of metaphysical mystery, I think, because the ordinary can be so over- looked, even though it’s basically the fabric of life. It is so important that it has to be very meaningful and at the same time so sort of self-effacing in a way that it is so seldom put into the model of reality from which people extrapolate statements about reality. Cunning: It seems that it is overlooked, yet the more attention that is paid to it the more it seems to open up. In your fiction there is the sense that the ordinary is inexhaustible.
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Home by Marilynne Robinson Readers of Marilynne Robinson's
Home by Marilynne Robinson Readers of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead will find themselves viewing familiar events from an unfamiliar perspective in Home. —Robinson’s third novel, like her second, is set in Gilead, Iowa, in 1956, but the home around which the story is centered is not that of John Ames, narrator of Gilead, but of Ames’ longtime friend and colleague, Presbyterian pastor Robert Boughton. For many years, the large house, inherited from his frugal and foresighted parents, and the boisterous family of eight children he and his late wife raised there, have ―embodied for [Boughton] the general blessedness of his life, which,‖ in his eyes, ―was manifest, really indisputable.‖ Now retired and increasingly frail in both body and mind, Boughton clings tenaciously to this worldview, greeting the smallest indication that all is well with his home and family with an enthusiastic ―Yes!‖ But such determined optimism has its costs, not only for Boughton himself, but also for his family, especially the two children whose less-than-happy lives cause their father the most anxiety. Robinson focuses her narrative on these siblings, telling the story from the perspective of the youngest daughter, Glory, who has returned home to care for her father after a thirteen-year career as an English teacher and a failed engagement, and centering the novel’s action around the reappearance after twenty years of Jack, the black sheep of the family. Jack’s disproportionate power in the family has always derived from his absences, actual and anticipated. Jack’s badness – his tendencies to drinking, theft, and other petty crimes – creates undeniable but ultimately manageable challenges for his parents.
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Souls in the Dark: Theodicy and Domesticity in Home
religions Article Souls in the Dark: Theodicy and Domesticity in Home Mark S. M. Scott Department of Religious Studies, Thorneloe University at Laurentian, 935 Ramsey Lake Road, Sudbury, ON P3E 2C6, Canada; [email protected]; Tel.: +1-705-673-1730 (ext. 403) Received: 17 October 2017; Accepted: 15 December 2017; Published: 19 December 2017 Abstract: Theodicy typically addresses the problem of evil in the public square, focusing on instances of paradigmatic evil that raise the issue broadly. Theodicy, however, also operates in the private sphere, where the conflict and chaos of family life raise doubts about God’s goodness and power. Domestic suffering—here defined as the hurt, sorrows, and heartbreaks of family life, apart from domestic abuse, which belongs to a separate category—has often been neglected by theodicists. In this article, I will analyze Marilynne Robinson’s fictional novel Home for insights into the problem of evil in the domestic realm. While it does not offer a domestic theodicy per se, Robinson’s Home sheds light on the reality of suffering love and its bias toward hope, which charts new theological pathways in theodicy that have hitherto been underexplored. Keywords: Marilynne Robinson; Home; Gilead trilogy; problem of evil; theodicy; suffering love; hope “But the soul finds its own home if it ever has a home at all” (Home, 282) Classic theological and philosophical treatments of the problem of evil cast the question onto a vast canvass, enumerating the most egregious examples of suffering around the globe, both historically and currently. Most often, these are infamous spectacles whose shockwaves were felt far and wide: the Plague, the Inquisition, the Lisbon Earthquake, the World Wars, the Holocaust, 9/11, and so on.
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HOME by Marilynne Robinson Discussion Questions
HOME by Marilynne Robinson Discussion Questions 1. What does “home” mean to Robert Boughton and his children? What does the Boughton house signify to his family? With whom do they feel most at home? 2. How does Glory’s opinion of Jack change throughout the novel? What enables them to trust each other? In what ways is that trust strained? How does their relationship compare to yours with your siblings? 3. How is the Boughton household affected by the presence of a television set? How does this reflect a shift that took place in many households throughout America in the 1950s? Were you surprised by Robert Boughton’s comments about African Americans, and by his reaction to the televised race riots? 4. Why do you think Robert loves Jack best, despite Jack’s shortcomings? What is your understanding of Jack’s wayward behavior? How would you have responded to his theological questions regarding redemption? 5. Discuss the friendship between John Ames and Robert Boughton. What has sustained it for so many years? How did they nurture each other’s intellectual lives, approaching life from Congregationalist and Presbyterian perspectives? 6. What did Glory’s mother teach her about the role of women? How was the Boughton family affected by the death of its matriarch? 7. How do the Boughtons view prosperity and charity? What is reflected in th way Glory handles the household finances, with leftover money stored in the piano bench? What is the nature of Jack’s interest in Marxism? What is demonstrated in the incident of the book on England’s working classes (the stolen library volume that Robert Boughton considered dull)? 8.
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Read the Complete Series Now
Read the complete series now ,,,.,�� f , • t . 1"4,/ 0 11� _.; ,IP"J, � ..,� _--- Jack CC 2nd.indd 3 16/07/2020 17:24 Contents 6. Marilynne Robinson 10. Marilynne Robinson and her Awards 13. The Novels 17. Original Thinking 20. Landscapes 24. Being Alone 27. Before Jack 31. Questions for Readers and Reading Groups ©Alec Soth_Magnum©Alec Photos Marilynne Robinson Regarded as one of America’s most important, graceful and original writers, Marilynne Robinson is loved for her deep humanity and prized for her generous intellectual rigour. In many ways an uncategorisable writer, she will be forever cherished as the creator of some of the most memorable fictional characters, including Jack Boughton, John Ames and Lila Ames from her Gilead quartet, and Lucille and Ruth from Housekeeping. Marilynne Robinson has spoken of her enduring relationship with them: ‘I have found that when you write a novel, a character never actually leaves you from that point on.’ Born Marilynne Summers in 1943 in Sandpoint, Idaho, the town she used for the backdrop of her first novel,Housekeeping , she is the youngest of two. Her father worked in the timber industry and her mother kept home for the family. When Marilynne was young, her brother declared that he would be an artist and she would be a poet. David Summers became a Renaissance art scholar and painter, and Marilynne dedicated her collection of essays When I 6 Was a Child I Read Books to him, ‘the first and best of my teachers’. She was brought up Presbyterian but became a Congregationalist, strongly influenced by John Calvin.
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2009 Winner 25
25 2009 WINNER HOME BY MARILYNNE ROBINSON AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with Marilynne Robinson is the recipient of a his traditionalist father, he nevertheless remains the 2012 National Humanities Medal, awarded favourite and most beloved child. Told by his sister by President Barack Obama, for “her grace Glory, who has also returned to the family home to and intelligence in writing”. In 2013, she was care for her dying father, this is a moving book about awarded South Korea’s Pak Kyong-ni Prize for families, love, death and faith. her contribution to international literature. She is the author of Lila, a finalist for the National WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Marilynne Robinson’s quite formal choice of Award, Gilead, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for language style in Home, often using long sentences Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and bibilical references, reflects the pious ways of and Home, winner of the Orange Prize and the Los the Boughton family. We get a sense of the language Angeles Times Book Prize, and a in which Glory thinks, according to finalist for the National Book Award. her religious upbringing, as well as a Her first novel, Housekeeping, won strongly traditional feel of the whole the Hemingway Foundation/PEN community; the language used by the Award. Robinson’s non-fiction books Boughtons shows how important include The Givenness of Things, When religion is to the Reverend and how I Was a Child I Read Books, Absence of it influences the daily reality of living Mind, The Death of Adam, and Mother in Gilead.
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GILEAD Reading Guide MARILYNNE ROBINSON‘S Novel Gilead (Straus and Giroux) Gives Us the Pleasure of Meeting the Reverend John Ames of Gilead, Iowa
THE PRACTICING DEMOCRACY PROJECT We the People Book Club GILEAD Reading Guide MARILYNNE ROBINSON‘S novel Gilead (Straus and Giroux) gives us the pleasure of meeting the Reverend John Ames of Gilead, Iowa. Though Reverend Ames is a different sort indeed than Huck Finn or Holden Caulfield, his is one of the great first-person narrative voices in American literature. His voice is the very diction and syntax of discernment and compassion. In the person of someone who is gentle, aware, loving, and at the same time troubled like the rest of us, Robinson crafts a narrative that is itself a spiritual practice; Ames’s meditative voice is a powerful influence, guiding us to do what he is doing: pay attention to life. The book consistently and credibly models the better nature we all have the ability to access: kindness to our neighbor and a capacious definition of “neighbor;” transcendence of petty troubles in favor of service to the eternal. Robinson’s first novel, Housekeeping, was published in 1982 and won the PEN/ Hemingway Award. Readers had to wait 23 years for Gilead, her second novel, which won a handful of awards including the Pulitzer. She followed Gilead with two more novels set in the same town, Home in 2008 and Lila in 2014. Though popularly known as a novelist, Robinson has published far more nonfiction than fiction, and her many books of essays are also award-winners. One of her most faithful readers, President Barack Obama, awarded her with the National Humanities Medal in 2012. About This Book Club Reading Guide Researched and written by Julia Davis (a 2018-2019 Fellow with the Practicing Democracy Project), this guide includes background on Marilynne Robinson, an overview of Gilead, and observations on Robinson’s literary style.
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Jack by Marilynne Robinson
FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX Reading Group Gold Jack by Marilynne Robinson ISBN: 9780374279301 / 320 pages Marilynne Robinson’s mythical world of Gilead, Iowa—the setting of her novels Gilead, Home, Lila, and now Jack—and its beloved characters have illuminated and interrogated the complexi- ties of American history, the power of our emotions, and the wonders of a sacred world. In Jack, Robinson tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the prodigal son of Gilead’s Presbyterian minister, and his romance with Della Miles, a high school teacher who is also the child of a minister. Their deeply felt, tormented, star-crossed interracial romance resonates with all the paradoxes of Ameri- can life, then and now. Robinson’s Gilead novels, which have won one Pulitzer Prize and two National Book Critics Circle Awards, are a vital contribution to contemporary American literature and a revelation of our national character and humanity. Contact us at [email protected] | www.readinggroupgold.com Don’t forget to check out our monthly newsletter! FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX Reading Group Gold Reading Group Gold QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION 12. Jack works a slew of decidedly odd jobs. Which ones would you have been willing to take? How is his 1. Raised by clergymen and devoted to literature, Jack and Della appear to have much in common. Are concept of work different from that of the teachers and clergy in his life? those commonalities the basis for their attraction to each other, or does the true spark come from their dif- ferences? What accounts for the fact that Della is quite accomplished in her professional life but doesn’t 13.
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Literature and Learning in Marilynne Robinson's Novel Gilead
Prague Journal of English Studies ARNAB CHATTERJEE Volume 6, No. 1, 2017 ISSN: 1804-8722 (print) '2, ISSN: 2336-2685 (online) https://digilib.phil.muni.cz/handle/11222.digilib/116033. 10.1515/pjes-2017-0004 Martel, Yann. Life of Pi. Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2001. Print. Singh, Mrigendra Narayan. “Golding’s Pincher Martin.” International Journal Literature and Learning in Marilynne on Studies in English Language and Literature. 4.11 (2016): 22-26. 2016. Web. Robinson’s Novel Gilead 15 Mar 2017. https://www.arcjournals.org/pdfs/ijsell/v4-i11/6.pdf Mária Hricková Spitz, David. “Power and Authority: An Interpretation of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.” e Antioch Review. 30.1 (1970): 21-33. n.d. Web. 10 Feb 2017. http://images.schoolinsites.com/SiSFiles/Schools/ Literature and learning play an important role in Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Surette, Leon. “A Matter of Belief: Pincher Martin’s A erlife.” Twentieth Century Prize-winning novel Gilead (2004). By focusing on the author’s many references to Literature. 40.2 (1995): 1-25. n.d. Web. 20 Jan 2017. books, literature and learning, the present paper attempts to study their individual https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269937726_DOI: 10.2307/ contextual occurrences and explores how they saturate the discursive substratum of 441803. the novel’s major themes. e paper claims that a special role attributed to books and e Book of Eli. Dir. e Hughes Bros. Perf. Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, learning, and particularly to the Greek New Testament, e Trail of the Lonesome Mila Kunis, et al. Alcon Entertainment-Silver Pictures, 2010.
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