THETIMESSaturdayJune52010 thereview 9 interview An enigmatic recluse who relishes a scrap

SOPHIE BRANDSTROM FOR THE TIMES Unprolific but revered, deeply religious but in love with science: Marilynne Robinson is unique, Isays Tim Teeman t must be obvious, Marilynne Robinson says, that her life has followed a “pretty eccentric course, going from one obsession to another”. Well, not immediately. The author is dressed neutrally, with a neat brown-grey bob, drinking coffee and toy- ing with a dish of baklava in a small Greek café in the Astoria district of New York where one of her sons lives. She looks mousey, her conversation is peppered with feathery “hmms”, but do not be fooled. Her latest book, Absence of Mind, is a rigorous andun-eccentriccollectionofessaysabout the frailties and flaws of science and its vexed relationship with religion. The ana- lysis encompasses Freud (who she thinks a “genius”,but in conversation with a culture that ill-served his writing), consciousness, metaphysics, the self and much else. As its sub-heading (“The Dispelling of Inward- Author Marilynne ness from the Modern Myth of the Self”) Robinson at implies, the book is dense: you need to L’église Saint- know your positivism and Auguste Comte. Sulpice in Paris “Science versus religion I consider to be a phoney war,” she says. “I don’t think there’s thoughthasn’tabsorbedmodernphysicsto claimingto‘know’something.”Ifweaccept collected works of Emily Dickinson and an intimidating-to-mere-mortals booklist think that writing predisposes you towards anynaturalantagonismbetween them.” a surprising degree. They uphold the idea that science is flaky, then what of religion, anthology of American poetry and included The Wealth of Nations, The Origin it,” she says. “It is a part of life, and the time Robinson’s nonfiction is not as well of matter versus antimatter as if physics whose most vocal spokesmen are extrem- “wantedmetobeapoet,whichIwasclearly of Species, The Ascent of Man, Das Kapital, when my thinking goes back behind my known as her fiction, probably because hasn’t shown that both exist on a continu- ists and zealots? “Yes, elements of religion notgoingtobe”. “andallkindsofFrenchhistoryandFrench thoughts in a radical way. I always feel ‘Oh Home, her third novel, won the Orange um indescribable to us. We’ve got to think have been hijacked and other elements Robinson’sself-defined “eccentricity” — literature”. “I couldn’t accept how they had it’s over, I have no more language’ when it Prize last year. It won’t surprise readers of againaboutourconceptionofmaterialreal- have thrown themselves off the cliff,” Rob- if it is that — is embodied by the “obses- been interpreted and it was like reading strikes, then at a certain point you discover that book, or its predecessor Gilead (2004, ity, it’s obviously a more subtle, rarefied inson says. She is “religious in the classic sions” borne from this life of omnivorous them afresh. Adam Smith is very different youhaveotherlanguage, otherideas.” which won the Pulitzer Prize), that Robin- thing than we thought.” Would she like to sense” and belongs to the Presbyterian reading, study and interrogation. “I read to read without the weight of his reputa- Gilead and Home’s Reverend Ames and son is exercised about big themes such as debate withDawkins in public?“Ofcourse, United Church of Christ. She goes to books for a long time before I realised tion, the same with Marx.” Gilead’s Rever- Reverend Boughton may“live”again, Rob- faith, belief, family and forgiveness. In the but I shy away from the overturning of church every Sunday and preaches “very people were authors,” she laughs. “I never end Ames “came” to her while she was in a inson reveals, although she is not working characters oftheReverend Ames in Gilead, chairs and tables. Who can shout louder is occasionally”.Herchurchhasbeenordain- had the imagination to be a writer. I didn’t guest house one Christmas, and she wrote onanovel.Nextshewilltakeonanotherob- and his neighbour Reverend Boughton in nota competitionIwishtoenter.” ing women since 1853 and gays since the write Housekeeping with the intention of it the novel quickly. The characters “haun- session: the Old Testament, which, around Home, these themes thrummed alongside The idea that science can explain every- 1970s. She is frustrated that churches “tear being published.” A friend sent it to an ted” her so she let them live again in Home. 1850, she says, “took a very bad bounce powerfulcharacterstudies.Sheisalecturer thing is, Robinson says, “unbelievably sim- themselves apart” over such issues and agent who took it on. “I was surprised and WinningtheOrangePrize was“glorious”. whenitcametointerpretation”.The“herm- at the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Work- plistic”: the idea of multiple universes, for takes heart that time, and changing demo- pleased,” Robinson says. “It made me think Robinson is extremely private, but eneutics of suspicion” dismantled large shop, famed for producing authors such as example, means that material reality could graphics,will bleedthepoisonfromthem. Icouldbeawriter,itwasn’tsomethingIwas reveals that she and her husband divorced parts of it and she wants to analyse this Michael Cunningham and Jane Smiley. take on many forms. “I have to believe that Robinson was raised in rural Idaho, in a going todojustforthepleasureof turning a in1989.“Toalargeextentitwasdowntomy “maimed document” (particularly Gene- Despite a relatively thinfictional output — science will tell us more and more but it is wilderness that is the only nonfictional phrase.” Housekeeping won a PEN/Hem- life changing, becoming a writer.” He was a sis) “as a literary structure with a multipli- there was a 24-year gap between House- not working in an exhaustible field. It’s partof Housekeeping,her1980debutnovel. ingway award and was made into a film by writer as well, she says. “Who knows why cityofvoicesandincompatibletheologies”. keeping,herfirstnovel,andGilead—Robin- deficient. Take the human brain: it’s the Robinson’s father worked in the lumber that put pressure on us, but it did.” Her two She likes to champion the tough ones, Isay, sonhasadevoted readership. most complex object in the Universe, yet industry, her mother was a housewife. She sons, James and Joseph, are 40 and 35 and and she laughs. “I like taking on things that It is only relatively recently that science, we have no conception of howit works.Lit- hasanolderbrother,David.“Wehadalotof ‘The assumption is she has a two-year-old granddaughter, aremisunderstood,toarticulatemydiscon- with its fallacious imprimatur of certainty, tle lights light up for certain things, which time to ourselves,” she recalls, “wandering presently “discovering nouns”. In the early tent and be analytical, it’s very satisfying. hasbeenperceivedwithsuchauthority,she may explain elements of it, but if you can’t around looking for lady’s slipper orchids we’re all idiots who years she wrote while her sons were asleep. Myworkmeansbeingcritical,riskingdisap- claims.“WecantraceittotheFrenchRevo- fullyexplainthebrainhowcanyouclaimto and strawberries.” Her earliest memories “They were surprised to find I had this probation and, God knows, being most of lution when anything that was connected explainmotivation,perceptionandhowwe are of her mother reading to her: Gulliver’s don’t want information other life. And,” she says, “when I am the time unfashionable. I don’t want to be to the Establishment, like the Church, was construe reality?” Real scientists, she says, Travels; The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan obsessed Ireally amobsessed,so solitudeis one more voice in the choir. If people want immediately discredited.” Before the 19th don’t assert that they, or science, can Rawlings; and Edward Lear, “which surely or who are impatient a gift.” She will never write an autobio- toconfuteme,thenthat’spartoftheconver- century,shenotes,many,ifnotmost,scien- explaineverything. had a good impact”. Her mother thought graphy.“Beenthere,donethat,”shelaughs. sation. But generally it seems that public tists were religious, most famously New- But surely science, rather than religion, she should play outside more, “but I can’t with complexity’ “In all candour I think it’s difficult to find discoursehastakentheworstpossibleturn. ton. “I love science, I love religion,” Robin- offers scope forconcrete explanation.Rob- regret my choices: ‘contented’ and ‘isola- Bill Forsyth, the director of Gregory’s Girl, theboundariesofone’sownself.” We’re condescending to each other son says, “but when I see the way religion is insonshakesherhead.“Whyistheresome- ted’aresynonymousforme,”she says. “whounderstooditcompletely”. Robinson especially loves Iowa, a state because the assumption is that consumers represented by its defenders it is not what I thing rather than nothing? The physicist David, who lectures in art history at the After her PhD in English at the Univers- that has always been radical she says, ever are idiots who don’t want information or would call religion. Religion now hangs by wouldsay‘it’mustlingerinastateofmatter UniversityofVirginia,wasRobinson’sintel- ity of Washington, Robinson was a visiting since abolitionists settled there, building areimpatient withcomplexity.” certain proofs and demonstrables — ‘This rather than antimatter, but as a philosoph- lectual guide from the start. “He was a born professor at the University of Kent, churches and colleges. She calls it part of WhatisherGod,Iaskaswedemolishthe must be so because the text says so and ical question that doesn’t touch the sub- pedagogue and I was his first student,” she Amherst, and the University of Massachu- the Middle West, rather than Midwest. last of the baklava. Robinson looks briefly must be taken literally’ — which no great stance of it. Human beings are not content says. He would read to her — the great dia- setts, before arriving in Iowa in 1989. Dur- “When I arrived I remember being told it stumped. “I can write about it, but that’s a religion can ever flourish by. The narrow- with essentially material descriptions of logues of Plato, for example — “and it was ing the 24-year fiction drought, she wrote had no history and so I researched it (and big question. The term ‘God’ has a big real- ing of the definition of religion is continu- reality,theywanttoknowthenatureofreal- the pure admiration of my brother that nonfiction (including a book about Brit- wrote about it in Gilead and Home) and dis- ity for me but that’s not to say it has defini- ously increasing religion’s fragility. When ity — is there meaning in it? The fact that made me suffer through things that really ain’s nuclear industry and a collection of covered how wrong that was. It was also tion.” Is “it” a rock? “Yes, but that doesn’t we identify anything with its most extreme science maynot detect meaning is a limita- were too difficult for me”. She tackled essays, The Death of Adam). But what lay one of the first states to desegregate its mean I am not vulnerable to everything in forms, we lose the gist of what made it so tionof science,notalimitationofthepossi- Moby-Dick, aged 9 — “I read it, it doesn’t behind the lack of novels? “When I wrote schools and legalise gay marriage.” She the same way as other people.” She had no important toourculture.” bilityofmeaning.Manyscientistsaredoing mean I understood any of it,” she laughs — Housekeeping, I wrote with a visual dialect feelsnoconflictbetweenwritingandteach- imageof Godwhengrowingup. Robinson, 66, may be petite and preci- beautiful things constituent with genius: then Aristotle, but she would never accept that was only mine,” she says. “One of the ing. The blue-chip Iowa course, which has “That never meant anything to me. I was sely spoken, but she relishes a scrap: “My questioning, doubting, being self-critical. I defeat. Every book was a challenge, thingsthat horrifiesmeis theidea of repro- 1,300 applicants for 25 places, isn’t graded too Protestant,” she laughs. “There are eternal project of reconstruction”, she calls consider science to be one of the greatest patiently read, and has remained with her. ducing cliché. I felt everything I wrote (“These are writers in the process of devel- things that exceed language. God is one of her partiality to questioning orthodoxies. monumentsof civilisation,of human exist- At Brown University, brother and sister sounded too like me. I wanted to give opment”) and her students have included thosethings,pre-eminentlyandutterly.” In taking on science she also relishes chal- ence, but not everything that calls itself would“walkaroundthetowninrainandhe myself another mind, to feel that I was the novelists Paul Harding (who won this Marilynne Robinson’sAbsenceofMindis lenging atheism’s torchbearer, Richard science is science. Not all ‘scientific argu- would tell me his latest theories on art his- thinking in my own right, by reading all year’s Pulitzer Prize), Nathan Englander publishedbyYaleUniversityPress at Dawkins, who she calls “a terrible defender ment’includesfalsifiabilityandexperimen- tory. In art galleries he would expatiate on those books that everyone acts like they’ve and Adam Haslett. Robinson tells her stu- £16.99 Toorderit for £15.29inc p&pcall of science”. She laughs. “His school of tal method. There is just a triumphalism of all the antiquities.” David bought her the read.” Well, Robinson’s peers anyway: this dents not to be scared of depression: “I 08452712134

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