Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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79 of 81 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Buy a dozen and give 'em out like candy, September 18, 2000
This is a difficult review to write. I think very highly of Marilynne Robinson's work, and I would hate it if my wooden pedantries scared away even one prospective reader. As described here, the topics discussed in this book may seem dry, or irrelevant to your concerns, or unworthy of further discussion. In fact, "The Death of Adam" is not dry, but exhilarating; not irrelevant, but essential; and it represents a tradition of intelligent, fair-minded discourse that has not been an ideal, let alone a standard, in the 20th century. It's informative, certainly--not as a collection of facts to be memorized, but as a sort of web of active information, the strands of which you can follow as far as you like. The writing is dazzling, with all the power of a language fully employed by a fully attending author. Her humor is devastating; better still, she uses it therapeutically, as a surgeon uses a scalpel. At its best, "The Death of Adam" makes one aspire to be as curious, thoughtful, compassionate, and honest as its author. Chief among her concerns is that we treat the past as little more than a scapegoat for our era's problems. Important subjects on which people once failed, honestly, to reach agreement, we now fail even to recognize as important; and ideas of the past are contemptible except where they anticipate ideas of the present. It takes a bit of mental effort to remember that this attitude is not common to all times and places; it takes even more effort to realize what we're in danger of becoming by refusing to question its necessity. One of Ms. Robinson's most radical correctives is "to read major writers, and establish within rough limits what they did and did not say." A reasonable request, and yet... Here I must bring up an earlier reviewer's remarks. Certainly, everyone should be able to differentiate between fair-minded criticism, and snarls of half-bright belligerence; still, I can't let the remarks of "a reader"--undeserved honorific!--from Washington DC go unchallenged. We have here essays on subjects ranging from neo-Darwinism to Puritanism to market economics. Two fascinating pieces trace the influence of Marguerite de Navarre on John Calvin, another demonstrates the anti-slavery subtext of the McGuffey readers, and yet another discusses the life and writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran theologian who was executed by the Nazis. You'll notice, I hope, that "a reader" has nothing to say about Ms. Robinson's treatment of these subjects, offers no refutation of any of her statements, and suggests no other writer from whom the interested reader might seek better information. Instead, in his or her own inimitable style, "a reader" slaps her wrist for writing "poor prose." Personally, I tremble at daring even to praise so exquisite a prose writer as Ms. Robinson; one has to do it with words, after all! I am not an academic, thank God, but I didn't find a single word she uses to be obscure. (And had I run into a word I didn't know, I would've appreciated the opportunity to look it up and find out what it meant. I don't think I'm alone in feeling that learning new things is an agreeable fringe benefit of reading books.) If her prose is poor, it's certainly no worse than that of Emerson, Chesterton, Sir Thomas Browne, Dickens, or Tolstoy, which is more than good enough for me. Ms. Robinson obviously has no desire to baffle anybody; the entire point of this book is to affirm what we owe to ourselves and each other as civilized beings--foremost, perhaps, being the willingness to communicate honestly and in good faith. But we are to put all this and more aside, so that we may consign Ms. Robinson to an arguably mythical class of environmentalist fanatics. This is a computer-like simulacrum of thought--if "expression of concern," then "diagnosis of hysteria." It's no wonder that so many people believe computers can be programmed to think. The chapter on "Wilderness" comprises barely ten pages out of 254; its historical claims are matters of public record, all perfectly verifiable. If any of its predictions are wrong, I would love to see the evidence (as, I'm sure, would Ms. Robinson). Far from focusing on "the plight of the koala," she mentions the animal once, as an example of how we concentrate on "environmental issues that photograph well." Marilynne Robinson is also the author of the harrowing (and highly recommended) "Mother Country," the information in which could jaundice the sunniest of souls. And yet, despite having an unexcelled understanding of human cruelty and the drab postulates it thrives on, she's still engaged with the world--still passionate about the human capacity for feeling, knowing, and communicating things of transcendent value. If that's hysteria, I hope it's contagious! To those who are already familiar with "Death of Adam," I heartily recommend a somewhat kindred book, also available from Amazon: Alan Garner's "The Voice That Thunders."
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49 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A call to obedience, April 27, 2000
I was perusing the bargain table in a bookstore when this title leapt out at me. I boughtit (for the price what had I to lose?) and 24 hours later I had finished. Stunned, I think is the word. It is hard to believe, for one thing, that this is an actually a collection of essays. Such collections tend to be like your grandma's attic: a little bit of this, a little bit of that; connected only by the owners' (author's) singularity. This book, though the chapters are all on different subjects, describes a single argument, and each of the chapters -- er-- essays, increase the self-disclosure.The author does admit to some deception (p. 174) in the table of contents, a subterfuge to cover where she is going, but it seems necessary. The book's aim is to subvert a world view, that of her readers. To do so requires an ambush. She has to get you with her, moving in her direction before you notice how far she had lead you away from the beaten track. The first essay is the most conventional and reads a bit like Allan Bloom's "Closing of the American Mind" (whose conclusion she probably resonates with, while doubting he goes far enough; and whose methods she probably thinks are complete and utter poppycock). The last are very personal and subjective. She asks (and answers) disquieting questions. Why do we constantly go to prepackaged idea about our history when the original documents are readily available? Why is it that what passes for scholarship gives us opinions instead of knowledge? When we are drowning in information, why is public discourse so impoverished? For the answers to these questions, she goes back to the 19th century and beyond. How did we get into this fix? What were things like before? Is our plight necessary? She avoids conspiracies theories at the price of making her readers responsiblie for what they know. Without obedience, there is no faith. If you're just looking for information, you won't find it here. If you want, instead to be a person who is reponsible for what they know, this book is for you.
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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Still Reeling, January 22, 1999
My girlfriend loved Housekeeping (I never read it or even heard of it until recently) so I bought this to please her and because it looked interesting. I finished it two days ago, blown away, still reeling from the powerful intellect and moral arguments and passion Robinson brings to all her essays. She is at once fresh, direct, brilliant, dismissive of commonly accepted notions (and a helluva lot of other things), persuasive, thorough in her reasoning, a painter of dark times, and a light that shines through the dangerous triviality that pervades our global culture. I can't say enough about this book and, quite frankly, it's changing me even as I write this, as I know I need to react to it in an immediate way, but am as yet unsure how to do so. It's a highly "christian" book in many ways, at times heavily so, not in a doctrineaire way, but as the history of this country, the history of John Calvin (Jean Cauvin), the history of abolitionists and the opposition church of Nazi Germany, as moral/philosophical ethic. Her critique of "Darwinism" (and Nietzche and Freud) is both fascinating and chilling, and incredibly brilliant. (Her discussion of the Scopes trial is worth the price of the book alone.) Her dismissive put-downs of contemporary scholarship is witty, poignant and devastating, and when she gets too high on her high horse, she cuts herself down with a similarly poignant, self-depracating, remark. She often paints a bleak picture of today's world as it heads inevitably towards calamity and horrific climax, but the truth of her thought and writing creates just enough optimism so you don't end up feeling complete despair. I did find myself wishing she had written an essay or two of ideas on how to head out of our both individual and collective mess, if only because she comes across as so thoughtful, intelligent and possessive of grace that I would appreciate listening to them. I think, ultimately, any ideas about genuine alternative possibilities to the "global economic" cultural road we head down each and every day are tied up with her example - her approach to history, the directness, forcefulness and moral passion of her writing, and her belief in a moral ethic, Judeo-Christian or otherwise. An incredible book. Anyone who is remotely a serious thinker and wants some fresh ideas, buy this one. You may not be interested in all her topics, but you'll be in the grip of a terrific thinker, scholar and writer, and you will have discovered a real gem. I will reread this book and its various essays numerous times as I try to find a moral compass to guide myself in this world, and to give myself strength in facing our mass culture inanity as it spirals towards Lord knows where.
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