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The Givenness of Things: Essays Hardcover – October 27, 2015

by Marilynne Robinson (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars 40 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 304 pages
  • Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition edition (October 27, 2015)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0374298475
  • ISBN-13: 978-0374298470
  • Product Dimensions: 5.7 x 1.1 x 8.6 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #56,472 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsBrilliant and Heartwarming
By Wilson on October 30, 2015
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
In full disclosure I was already a huge Robinson fan. I read her first novel, Housekeeping, six times and would have read it twenty had Gilead and Lila not intervened. I've given the paperback editions as sort of shibboleths to prospective friends and I traveled a hundred miles in a Michigan winter to hear her lecture. I also share the author's keen interests in Cosmology and Theology, along with her respect for the Transcendentalists, especially Thoreau. But Robinson is not writing only for her fans. Anyone who has ever sensed "another reality ...beyond the grasp of our comprehension yet wholly immanent in all of being, powerful in every sense of the word, invisible to our sight, silent to our hearing, foolish to our wisdom, yet somehow steadfast, allowing us our days and years" will find much to ponder in these essays.
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5.0 out of 5 starsa unique book
By Mark bennett on October 27, 2015
Format: Hardcover
This is a really unique book. Marilynne Robinson is a contender for the last American intellectual. She manages in this book to produce 17 interesting, well thought out and occasionally provocative essays. She speaks against the growing American polarization, the "fear" culture and for the place of the humanities and religion in life. She also manages the extremely difficult matter of being critical but positive. As well, she tries to reconcile science into her worldview and offers analysis as far afield as the American Civil War and Marx. Being all over the map is part of what makes it all so interesting.

Its far from the case that I agree with her on every point she makes. But the points she makes are always interesting and somewhat original. To an extent, its not even what she says. Its how she thinks and how she manages to break through a great deal of intellectual stagnation in the modern United States. This book will not be for everyone. Especially for those who don't like to read things they might disagree with.
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5.0 out of 5 starspointed and humane essays from a fine writer
By Stanley Crowe TOP 1000 REVIEWER on December 7, 2015
Format: Hardcover
One of Marilynne Robinson's gifts is to be able to articulate a set of religious beliefs without making her readers feel that they are at the mercy of a dogmatist. Given that her beliefs are, self-confessedly, Calvinistic, it might strike readers that the lack of dogmatism is merely a trick of her rhetoric, but they would be wrong. She makes a case for Calvin's humanism that's based on interesting readings of his texts -- to which she brings her own humane critical intelligence and imagination to bear. Indeed, whenever she focuses on a particular text, whether from Calvin's works, from the Bible, or from anywhere else, she shows an alertness to language and an historical awareness of the circumstances out of which the text has come that is always interesting and revealing. What makes her writing about judgments and values deeply humane, however, is her sense of the limitations of our knowledge of the world -- visible and invisible, external and internal -- in which we have no choice but to make our way. It follows that her own commitments are admitted to be partial and provisional, just as the languages of her tradition (English and Calvin's Protestantism) have been shaped by their culture and history. That amounts to a kind of humility, which she doesn't parade, and it enables her to be clear about the differences between belief (which she claims) and knowledge (which she doesn't claim). It follows from that that she is distrustful, to put it mildly, of those who claim to know the mind of God (religious fundamentalists and absolutists of every stripe) or who claim to know the way things really are (anti-religious scientists and pundits of the Dennett, Hitchens and Dawkins kind, whom she sees as scientistic rather than genuinely scientific).Read more ›
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4.0 out of 5 starsProvides stimulating insight into the themes of Robinson's fiction
By Bookreporter on December 8, 2015
Format: Hardcover
The New York Review of Books recently published parts one and two of an extended conversation in September 2015 in Iowa between President Obama and Marilynne Robinson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award for GILEAD. Readers of that fascinating exchange whose familiarity with Robinson doesn't extend beyond a relatively small body of fiction --- which includes that novel and others like HOME and LILA --- learned that she's a close observer of America's culture and politics and someone whose life and writing are informed by a deep engagement with Christianity.

Those aspects of Robinson's thinking are explored in the 17 essays that compose THE GIVENNESS OF THINGS. This searching, at times daunting, collection exposes a great and restless mind grappling mightily (but with humility) with some of the most challenging aspects of human existence.

In its best moments, Robinson's book offers a passionate defense of her liberal Christian, humanistic worldview against both scientific materialism and capitalism's worship of the market. As to the former, Robinson is especially dismissive of the increasing dominance of neuroscience for the way it "greatly overreaches the implications of its evidence and is tendentious" (a favorite Robinson adjective). At the same time, she's no science denier. On the contrary, she's eager to give the theories of modern physics and cosmology their due in an effort to describe (if not explain) a complicated universe.

A "self-declared Calvinist from northern Idaho," Robinson leaves no doubt of her place on the political spectrum.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsWorth the effort it takes

I started this book because of the intriguing title and stayed with it for the deep insights and provocative ideas. Read more

Published 25 days ago by EveryLastWord
5.0 out of 5 starsa wonderful book in regard to it's defense of the substance of life.

A beautifully written book, though the author can't resist displaying her profound learning by using words that no-ones ever heard of, so keep a (good) dictionary at hand. Read more

Published 28 days ago by GlevumGuy.
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Brilliant, original, beautiful writing, as expected.

Published 2 months ago by M. Christensen
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Marvelous.

Published 2 months ago by Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Fantastic writing makes you think, but somewhat demeaning of the science community

Published 2 months ago by Pastor Ron Nelson
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Brilliant and thought provoking! A pure joy to read.

Published 2 months ago by Mac
5.0 out of 5 starsGraceful

Marilyn Robinson does not teach us about how human Christianity is, how graceful, she also reminds us the urgency for the tolerance and respect for difference in our cultures, no... Read more

Published 3 months ago by shetachai chatchoomsai
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

You will need a dictionary but this is an outstanding mind twist and an interesting read.

Published 3 months ago by John Safford
5.0 out of 5 starsMaterial for the Darkness to Misread - The Givenness of Things

If I were starting a seminary - Theological Seminary of St. Il'ja the Profane, say - I'd hire Marilynne Robinson for chair of the pastoral theology department. Read more

Published 4 months ago by Il'ja Rákoš
5.0 out of 5 starsDAZZLING CLARITY

THIS IS A STELLAR BOOK, ELEGANTLY WRITTEN. IT IS UNCOMMON TO FIND SUCH CLARITY OF SUBJECT MATTER JOINED WITH FELICITY OF PROSE. WORTH A RE-READ AND PASSING ON.

Published 4 months ago by WCW

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