Monthly Archives: January 2010

The Death of Adam

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I’ve seen Marilynne Robinson’s novels in bookstores before, but the covers never stood out to me (unfair? yes.) But I came across an excerpt from one of her essays — having no idea she wrote such things — and was impressed enough to put The Death of Adam on hold at the library. I haven’t been dissapointed.

All the essays are, as she states in her introduction, “contrarian in method and spirit.”1 In other words, they are polemics. This is important to remember, since they will seem hyperbolic if considered otherwise. She is similar in style and temperament to Joan Didion: sober almost to melancholy, but not quite.

The introduction immerses the reader in Robinson’s way of understanding and discussing things. Her views are contrarian, not because she has firmly taken sides in any existing conflict, but because “contemporary discourse feels to [her] empty and false.”2 This leads her to attack diverse aspects of American culture, with the overarching goal of saving it from itself.

I want to overhear passionate arguments about what we are and what we are doing and what we ought to do. I want to feel that art is an utterance made in good faith by one human being to another. I want to believe that there are geniuses scheming to astonish the rest of us, just for the pleasure of it. I miss civilization, and I want it back.3

Robinson has been strongly influenced by John Calvin, the Puritans and protestant theology, and this informs everything she writes. It is especially important to her critique of American culture, which centers on its neglect of history and its formative traditions.

In several of the essays in this book I talk about John Calvin, a figure of the greatest historical consequence, especially for our culture, who is more or less entirely unread. Learned-looking books on subjects to which he is entirely germane typically do not include a single work of his immense corpus in their bibliographies, nor indicate in their allusions to him a better knowledge than folklore can provide of what he thought and said. I have encountered an odd sort of social pressure as often as I have read him. One does not read Calvin. One does not think of reading him. The prohibition is as absolute as it ever was against Marx, who always had the glamour of the subversive or the forbidden about him. Calvin seems to be neglected on principle. This is interesting. It is such a good example of the oddness of our approach to history, and to knowledge more generally, that it bears looking into. Everything always bears looking into, astonishing as that fact is.4

It’s worth noting that the essays in the book were all published in the 1990s. It’s amazing to see how little has changed, the essays aren’t dated or immaterial to America’s present state. They certainly deserve thorough, attentive reading, both for their content and style.

  1. p.1 [↩]
  2. p.2 [↩]
  3. p.4 [↩]
  4. p.12 [↩]

Tokens of Trust

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Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief sounds pretty straightforward, and, by Rowan Williams’ standards, it is. He basically explains the meanings of the Nicene and Apostle’s creeds. This gives the book a tight overall structure, which balances the conversational, often digressive writing (the book is based on a series of talks.)

There were two passages that I found especially interesting. In the final chapter, Williams offers a critique of contemporary culture.

One of the oddest things in our culture is that we seem to be tolerant of all sorts of behaviour, yet are deeply unforgiving. The popular media mercilessly display the failings of politicians and celebrities; attitudes to prisoners and ex-prisoners are often harsh; people demand legal redress for human errors and oversights. We shouldn’t be mislead by an easygoing atmosphere in manners and morals; under the surface there is a hardness that ought to worry us.1

It’s not uncommon to hear such criticism, especially from religious figures. But Williams offers something incisive and constructive. He’s not bemoaning the state of culture out of prudery or superiority, but diagnosing a serious, underlying problem. He goes on to say that the Church’s Creed (and, ideally, the Church itself) is countercultural, not because it’s more moral than the culture, but because it’s forgiving, rather than merely tolerant.

The other interesting passage concerns George Herbert’s poem, “Love (3).” Williams says it’s the “greatest Christian poem in the English language.”2 That’s bold, when many others would turn to T.S. Eliot (I would have picked Auden’s Horae Canonicae.) His judgment is influenced by theological as well as artistic considerations, but — after rereading it — I think I may agree.

  1. p.152 [↩]
  2. p.149 [↩]

The Age of Wonder

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I’ve been sucked in by Richard Holmes’ The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science. The stories in this book are intoxicating. It’s similar in effect to Romantic poetry, especially Keats. Herschel’s cosmological speculations are the highlight in this regard.

But the Romantic Age was not all discovery and progress. Holmes knows and acknowledges this; he’s not naive. Nevertheless, screw-ups are relegated to second fiddle; Holmes acknowledge the Terror, but only as a coda to the Wonder. This bothers me because one purpose of the book is to reinvigorate that Romantic attitude towards science. This strikes me as naive atavism. It’s true that the influence of the Romantic age persists, and could be reinvigorated. But what would grow out of such a project would develop uniquely, unpredictably — just as the Romantic Age itself did.

Holmes certainly, however, deserves great credit for even recognizing the existence of “Romantic Science” as something distinct from “Enlightenment Science.” The Age of Wonder also serves as an excellent reminder that science does not stand apart from the rest of human cultural activity. This is not always acknowledged.