Barack Obama interviews Marilynne Robinson
Out-nerding book nerds and shaming us at not having read Marilynne Robinson.
The President: Were your parents into books, or did they just kind of encourage you or tolerate your quirkiness?
Robinson: There was great tolerance in the house for quirkiness. No, it’s a funny thing because on the one hand, I’m absolutely indebted to my origins, whatever they are, whatever that means. On the other hand, with all love and respect, my parents were not particularly bookish people.
The President: Well, that’s why you have good sense along with sort of an overlay of books on top of good sense. What did your mom and dad do?
Robinson: My mother was a stay-at-home mother. My father was a sort of middle-management lumber company guy.
The President: But they encouraged it.
Robinson: You know what, they were the adults and we were the kids, you know what I mean? Sort of like two species. But if they noticed we were doing something—drawing or painting or whatever we were doing—then they would get us what we needed to do that, and silently go on with it. One of the things that I think is very liberating is that if I had lived any honest life, my parents would have been equally happy. I was under no pressure.
Read the first part of the interview at the New York Review of Books or listen to it on iTunes.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
October 23rd, 2015 at 12:48
I’m a fan of Marilynne Robinson’s fiction. If one can’t commit to the Gilead tetralogy (fourth book is on the way), readers can go for Housekeeping. I’m now forced to read her nonfiction because I ran out of Robinson novels to read.