Great Contemporary Literature

Typically when I think of great stories, I think of books written 100+ years ago. Marilynne Robinson's books are perhaps the exceptions that prove the rule. I'm not saying that hers are the only truly fine contemporary novels. However, all three that she's written are very fine. Very fine indeed.

Yesterday afternoon I finished Home. There were tears in my eyes. Tears for Jack and Glory and Della. Especially tears for Jack, who's convinced that he is outside of the grace of God. But there were also tears of sadness because the book was over. Robinson's prose is stunning. I sit and shake my head because I'd like to say more, but lack words to elaborate. Just read it.

Home covers the same time period as Gilead - and the same characters, from a different perspective. I thought I would pick Gilead back up and read through it in light of what I know about Jack and Glory from Home. I had no particular thought about when I'd do it, however, until I went to the PCUSA's site to pull off today's Lectionary on-line and noticed several quotes from Gilead in the daily quotations section. So I reached for Gilead to see if I had the same passages marked - yes marked. These are the kind of novels with passages that demand to be marked so that they can be easily found.

This one's not on the PCUSA's site but is not only underlined in my copy, but underlined with a squiggly line (meaning that I especially liked it). This passage is found on page 124 of the hard cover edition:

"When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, this situation? If you confront insult or antagonism, your first impulse will be to respond in kind. But if you think, as it were, This is an emissary sent from the Lord, and some benefit is intended for me, first of all the occasion to demonstrate my faithfulness, the chance to show that I do in some small degree participate in the grace that saved me, you are free to act otherwise than the circumstances would seem to dictate. You are free to act by your own lights. You are freed at the same time of the impulse of to hate or resent that person. He would probably laugh at the thought that the Lord sent him to you for your benefit (and his), but that is the perfection of the disguise, his own ignorance of it....

Calvin says somewhere that each of us is an actor on a stage and God is the audience. That metaphor has always interested me, because it makes us artists of our behavior, and the reaction of God to us might be thought of as aesthetic rather than morally judgmental in the ordinary sense. How well do we understand our role? With how much assurance do we perform it?...I do like Calvin's image... because it suggests how God might actually enjoy us."

The above is not an example of the stunning prose that I referred to earlier, but is a very interesting thought. Don't you agree?