The Givenness of Things

Essays

De: Marilynne Robinson

Narrado por: Coleen Marlo

Duración: 10 h y 7 m

Resumen del Editor

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 17 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.

©2015 Marilynne Robinson (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

well written & reader brought it to life

Excellent review of a considered life. Ultimately, it did not answer questions I have about Christianity; but, she certainly gave me another direction to pursue in my Quest & it is a direction I had not previously considered. Thank you, Ms. Robinson.

Good insight but a bit too elitest and one sided.

A little too left leaning to be enjoyable. Robinson is clearly brilliant but too arrogant.

Arrogant, self-centered, and outdated.

This is a very fragmented and outdated, hardly disguised, bash on science (why didn't she just come out and say she didn't like Darwin? It would save me time and irritation because I would've quit the book much earlier than I did). This lady is old enough to have earned her opinion certainly. I'm just not sure why this book had gotten a high ratings with which it was advertised. The book does not inspire spiritual enlightenment because the author just seems too damned pissed off. She's able to integrate the miracles Uncovered by science that still offers only a peek into what is truly before us inside of us and among us. she criticizes neuropsychology for being reductionistic but she comes her own orthodoxy that is equally reductionist and certainly under informed. I only hope that before she moves on to the next life she enters this one with more humility.

Mostly thoughts on religious things

Marilynne Robinson is a fantastic novelist. Her most recent novel, Lila, is among my favorite novels ever and I recently re-read her award winning novel Gilead and enjoyed it even more the second time.

But Marilynne Robinson the essayist I am not sure of. She is an incredible writer. Her ability to string words together holds true whether she is writing non-fiction or fiction. But being an essayist requires more than a gift with words.

Part of my frustration with her is that her politics are always present. That is fairly natural since most of the time, the subject actually is politics. Her earlier book of essays, When I was a Child I Read Books, was much more political than this collection. In many ways I am not sure why her politics bothers me so much, because much of the time I agree with them.

I am not always sure why these were written. Some of them were probably cathartic or were addressing a specific issue, and I guess that shouldn’t matter. But I was just not engaged through many of them. There are snatches of brilliance throughout the book. (As I said, she can put together a phrase.) And part of the issue is that I listened to the book. For both this an When I was a Child, I picked up the audiobook because the Kindle or paper editions were so expensive. It is odd, in this case the audiobook was half the price of the kindle book. I think that if I read another set of her essays I will check them out of the library.

That being said, what I do find interesting about Robinson is her Calvinism. She is clearly Calvinist in the way that Abraham Kuyper and the covenantal Calvinists are Calvinist (and not the way that neo-Calvinists like John Piper and Albert Mohler are Calvinists.) The focus is on covenant not the five solas or the TULIP. And so she speaks with great respect for Calvin and has clearly read him carefully and widely. Her essays on fear or grace or human limitations are all theologically rich and intellectually helpful.

But more than several of the essays wander away from their purpose. I never question her intuitive wisdom or her sheer brilliance. I do question her background into some of the areas that she writes. It is not that I think she should not write about international affairs or economics, but when she does, I am far from convinced that she is writing about things she fully understands. Or at least if she does understand them she seems to create strawmen opponents that maybe because of the length of the essay seem too quickly demolished. After I finished, I read a few reviews. And I think that this quote from the Boston Globe summarizes my general thoughts well,

"These examples are in some sense nit-picking, but they convey an underlying attitude — that those who don’t share her world view are blinkered or ignorant — at odds with Robinson’s message of Christian charity and grace. I’m being hard on this fine writer because (full disclosure) I share her liberal political convictions and agree with almost everything she says about the current mean-spirited state of the American polity and the way a certain kind of Christianity has been twisted to justify it. But I regret to say that there’s a smug, self-satisfied tone to her writing here that too many Americans associate with elitist liberalism. It detracts from Robinson’s stirring rejection of cynicism and passivity, her ringing affirmation of “the profound and unique sacredness of human beings” that leads her to support government aid to the poor, gay marriage, and other progressive causes that have right-wing Christians thundering condemnation. Robinson’s variety of Christian faith is appealingly humane and broad-minded, but the dodgy way she often explicates it makes “The Givenness of Things” inspiring and infuriating in roughly equal measure."