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ISBN:
0300145187
ISBN-13:
9780300145182
PUB. DATE:
May 2010
PUBLISHER:
Yale University Press

Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self by Marilynne Robinson

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One of today's great public intellectualsby Woolman

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Marilynne Robinson is one of today's great public intellectuals. Her published works are few in number but their substance outweighs just about anyone else who writes on serious topics. One of the reasons for that is her honesty in having actually read and studied what she comments on. It's a mark of how far in decline Anglo American culture is that the basic fact of serious scholarship, knowing what...

This is one of our most forceful, convincing commentators on the impact of Christianity on society.by cripbook

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A different and equally powerful commentary, touching both liberal and conservative views of our times is found in The Death of Adam, especially in the included essay on Puritans and Prigs.

Overview -

Absence of Mind

Product Details

Pub. Date: May 2010
Publisher: Yale University Press
Sales Rank: 572,051

Synopsis

In this ambitious book, acclaimed writer Marilynne Robinson applies her astute intellect to some of the most vexing topics in the history of human thought—science, religion, and consciousness. Crafted with the same care and insight as her award-winning novels, Absence of Mind challenges postmodern atheists who crusade against religion under the banner of science. In Robinson’s view, scientific reasoning does not denote a sense of logical infallibility, as thinkers like Richard Dawkins might suggest. Instead, in its purest form, science represents a search for answers. It engages the problem of knowledge, an aspect of the mystery of consciousness, rather than providing a simple and final model of reality.

By defending the importance of individual reflection, Robinson celebrates the power and variety of human consciousness in the tradition of William James. She explores the nature of subjectivity and considers the culture in which Sigmund Freud was situated and its influence on his model of self and civilization. Through keen interpretations of language, emotion, science, and poetry, Absence of Mind restores human consciousness to its central place in the religion-science debate.

The Barnes & Noble Review - Thomas De Pietro

The much-admired Marilynne Robinson, best known for her two recent theologically-minded novels (Gilead , 2004, and Home, 2008), assays some straightforward religious thinking in Absence of Mind, a dense and challenging short work, originally delivered as a lecture series at Yale. Robinson’s sharp reasoning goes directly to the heart of the current debate between the neo-Darwinian atheists and those, like Robinson, who hope to preserve our sense of self and soul. She wisely ignores the distracting "religion versus science" argument and locates the origins of the present-day conflict in a wider philosophical frame. Post-enlightenment positivism encouraged thinkers to believe that metaphysics was outdated, and that specific material forces could account for human behavior. If Marx posited an economic base, Freud would argue for the importance of the unconscious; such reductive thinking became the hallmark of modern thought. In more recent days, neurologists have claimed to locate all human activity in specific areas of our brains, while evolutionary biologists have found explanations for behavior in some kind of programmatic nature. All these theories rely, in Robinson’s words, on the same sort of parascientific reasoning. Her discussions of well-known neurologists, biologists, and psychologists -- from Richard Dawkins and Antonio Damasio to Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennett -- are trenchant, and often devastatingly on target. She gets to the heart of the matter -- and that heart, she finds, is one with our soul, that dimension of ourselves that defies material explanation.

Don’t mistake this brief but challenging book for an anti-scientific jeremiad. Quite the contrary, for Robinson admires all that genuine science continues to offer us. What she rejects is the intellectual arrogance of overly deterministic thought. Her wonderful defense of an expansive self in a diminishing age deserves a wide readership -- among other virtues, it is the perfect antidote to all those pop atheist screeds.

--Thomas De Pietro

More Reviews and Recommendations

The Washington Post - Michael Dirda

…these impassioned pages require and reward very close attention.

More Reviews and Recommendations

Biography

Pulitzer Prize winner Marilynne Robinson writes "quiet" novels of astonishing beauty, peopled with unforgettable characters, and suffused in deeply spiritual themes like faith, atonement, and redemption.

More About the Author

Editorial Reviews -

Absence of Mind

From Barnes & Noble

In her first nonfiction book in a dozen years, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson addresses the junctures and disjunctions of science, religion, and consciousness. While others have jumped into the fray with cleavers, the author of Housekeeping, Gilead, and Home offers calm reflections on the limits of scientific reasoning and the central importance of individual reflection. Her measured appraisal reminds one of a critic's description of Robinson as "a miraculous anomaly: a writer who thoughtfully, carefully, and tenaciously explores some of the deepest questions confronting the human species." An apt suggestion for crossover readers.

The Washington Post - Michael Dirda

…these impassioned pages require and reward very close attention.

Publishers Weekly

Robinson's new nonfiction work is drawn from her 2009 Terry lectures at Yale. More precisely, they are "lectures on religion in the light of science and philosophy." The charge is ambitious, and Robinson brings to the task a suitably wide-ranging perspective. She takes aim at the modern scholarly propensity to debunk, a practice she calls "flawed learnedness." It pitches out the babies of human insight with the bathwater of the past, preferring what she calls "parascience," a kind of pseudoscience that prizes certainty. This "parascience" is a latecomer in human thought, the product of only the last 150 years or so. Because it closes off questions, it's not even scientific. Nor does it allow space for the human mind and all the mind has produced in history and civilization. This is heady stuff that will particularly appeal to those familiar with the history of ideas and the many thinkers she cites, and to anyone willing to ponder broadly and humanistically about imponderable matters. Those who savor Robinson's clear prose will also be gratified; her mind, in thought, is elegant.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“Marilynne Robinson asks hard questions. She challenges readers with a severe, sophisticated and spellbinding style and a determination to change the conversation about contemporary American culture. . . . Absence of Mind is important not so much as a brief for religion but as a tenacious and often trenchant critique of modern Western thought.”—Glenn Altschuler, Minneapolis Star-Tribune

— Glenn Altschuler

Maclean's

“[Robinson] is one of the best thinkers in American letters. Her new (nonfiction) work is a slashing attack on scientific fundamentalism, not on behalf of religion but of human consciousness and our traditional concept of mind.”--Maclean’s

Ingrid Rowland - American Scholar

"[Robinson reveals] how deep a debt both science and religion owe to art. . . . It is a rare treat to have a novelist express herself so forcefully, and so eloquently, in another medium."—Ingrid Rowland, American Scholar

Linda McCullough Moore - Books & Culture

"The scope of Robinson''s erudition is stunning, and she shares it with generosity and no dissembling."—Linda McCullough Moore, Books & Culture

The Living Church

"Absense of Mind is a succinct and carefully reasoned challenge to those who would say that all our thoughts, beliefs, aspirations, and intimations of immortality are only a combination of wishful thinking and outdated primitive beliefs."—Dr. Jean McCurdy Meade, The Living Church

— Jean McCurdy Meade

Catholic Herald

"Robinson is one of the greatest Christian thinkers alive today. She is also one of the world''s best novelists. . . . Absence of Mind is a slim but compelling volume."—Luke Coppen, Catholic Herald

— Luke Coppen

Big Questions Online

"Marked by a luminous intelligence and a rather attractive intellectual severity. . . . One really must read it to appreciate how powerful a counterinsurgency it mounts against many of the peculiar superstitions of our age."—David B. Hart, Big Questions Online

— David B. Hart

IrishTimes

"This is a wonderful little book, full of wisdom, warmth and wit. . . . [Robinson] is able to apply her astute intellect, delicious sense of humour, incisive insight into human nature and down-to-earth philosophy of life."—Mark Patrick Hederman, Irish Times

— Mark Patrick Hederman

The Revealer

“What Robinson has over both the parascientific writers whose work she rejects and the religion writers with whom she finds common ground is a long career (though few books) as a fiction writer, where she has demonstrated—and in her way, provided evidence of—the very contemplative, subjective lives of the faithful she defends in her new book.”—Scott Korb, The Revealer

— Scott Korb

Kurt Armstrong - Christian Week

"A book of dense philosophy from a brilliant novelist with a poet''s ear. It is stunning. It places Robinson among the very brightest of Christian history''s thinkers and writers. . . . I cannot praise it too highly."—Kurt Armstrong, Christian Week

The National

"Following the inward-looking path of her award-winning fiction, Marilynne Robinson''s Absence of Mind is a finely wrought treatise in favour of religious belief."—Chris Lehmann, The National

— Chris Lehmann

The Weekly Standard

"One of the best things about the literature of the New Atheists is that, for all the supercilious question-begging, it has provoked a number of highly literate and memorable responses. This is one of them."—Barton Swaim, The Weekly Standard

— Barton Swaim

Karen Armstrong - The Guardian

"Robinson''s argument is prophetic, profound, eloquent, succinct, powerful and timely." — Karen Armstrong, The Guardian

Zadie Smith - The Observer

"I''m enjoying arguing and agreeing with Marilynne Robinson''s Absence of Mind."— Zadie Smith, The Observer

Daily Telegraph

"[Robinson] makes the case with exceptional elegance and authority--the authority not only of one of the unmistakably great novelists of the age but of a clear and logical mind that is wholly intolerant of intellectual cliché. . . . This book has a greater density (and sophistication) of argument than many three times its length; but it is one of the most significant contributions yet to the current quarrels about faith, science and rationality."—Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, Daily Telegraph

— Rowan Williams

San Francisco Chronicle

“This deeply informed essay affirms mystery, imagination and wonder against the 19th-century remnants of positivism still delimiting the human in the name of a reduced and reductive science.”—San Francisco Chronicle

Michael Dirda - Washington Post

"These impassioned pages require and reward very close attention."—Michael Dirda, Washington Post

Los Angeles Times

“Robinson''s arguments [are] so much more interesting, capacious, and informed than most. . . . Robinson makes a strong, unapologetic case, not for mystery but for self-respect.”—Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

— Susan Salter Reynolds

CHOICE

"Readers interested in seriously thinking about science, culture, and religion, and their interrelationships, will find this book rewarding."—S. C. Pearson, CHOICE

— S. C. Pearson

Washington Times

"Robinson applies her astute intellect to . . . science, religion and consciousness. Crafted with the same care and insight as her award-winning novels, the book challenges postmodern atheists who crusade against religion under the banner of science."—Washington Times

Globe & Mail

Named a Best Book of 2010--Globe & Mail, "2010 Globe 100"

Geordie Williamson - The Australian

"It is worth admiring Robinson''s bravery and intellectual independence, and noting the sheer force and capacity of language like hers to persuade." — Geordie Williamson, The Australian

Bryan Appleyard - Literary Review

"I have barely scratched the surface of this dense and yet endlessly entertaining little book. Marilynne Robinson is herself the best evidence of her own thesis--the exceptional mystery of the human mind." — Bryan Appleyard, Literary Review

Adam Kirsch - Boston Globe

"There is much to admire, and even to agree with, in Robinson''s humanist passion. Her defense of the insights to be gained from religion and literature is as convincing as her attacks on the facile generalizations of parascience."--Adam Kirsch, Boston Globe

Financial Times

"I enjoyed reading Absence of Mind. The reason: it is always a pleasure to keep company with a person who takes ideas seriously." — Siri Hustvedt, Financial Times

— Siri Hustvedt

The New Criterion

"Marilynne Robinson is one of those rare novelists whose work, though galvanized by a theological impulse, is adored by believers and atheists in equal measure. . . . We experience [her characters''] interiority almost as naturally as our own, and respond to it emotionally, intellectually, even spiritually. Robinson''s latest collection, Absence of Mind, gets to the hear of that creative force, while reminding us what little heed she pays intellectual fashion."—Stefan Beck, The New Criterion

— Stefan Beck

Meet the Writer -

Absence of Mind

Fact File

Name:
Marilynne Robinson

Current Home:
Iowa City, Iowa

Date of Birth:
November 26, 1943

Place of Birth:
Sandpoint, Idaho

Education:
B.A., Brown University, 1966

Awards:
National Book Critics Circle Award, 2004 and Pulitzer Prize for fiction, 2005 for Gilead

Biography

For someone who has labored long in the literary vineyard, Marilynne Robinson has produced a remarkably slim oeuvre. However, in this case, quality clearly trumps quantity. Her 1980 debut, Housekeeping, snagged the PEN/Hemingway Award for best first novel and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Twenty-four years later, her follow-up novel, Gilead, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Ambassador Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. And in between, her controversial extended essay Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State and Nuclear Pollution (1989) was shortlisted for the National Book Award.

Robinson is far from indolent. She teaches at several colleges and has written several articles for Harper's, Paris Review, The New York Times Book Review, and other publications. Still, one wonders -- especially in the face of her great critical acclaim -- why she hasn't produced more full-length works. When asked about these extended periods of literary dormancy, Robinson told Barnes & Noble.com, "I feel as if I have to locate my own thinking landscape... I have to do that by reading -- basically trying to get outside the set of assumptions that sometimes seems so small or inappropriate to me." What that entails is working through various ideas that often don't develop because, as she says, "I couldn't love them."

Still, occasionally Robinson is able to salvage something important from the detritus -- for example, Gilead's central character, Reverend John Ames. "I was just working on a piece of fiction that I had been fiddling with," Robinson explains. "There was a character whom I intended as a minor character... he was a minister, and he had written a little poem, and he transformed himself, and he became quite different -- he became the narrator. I suddenly knew a great deal about him that was very different from what I assumed when I created him as a character in the first place."

This tendency of Robinson's to regard her characters as living, thinking beings may help to explain why her fictional output is so small. While some authors feel a deep compulsion to write daily, approaching writing as a job, Robinson depends on inspiration which often comes from the characters themselves. She explains, "I have to have a narrator whose voice tells me what to do -- whose voice tells me how to write the novel."

As if to prove her point, in 2008, Robinson crafted the luminous novel Home around secondary characters from Gilead: John Ames's closest friend, Reverend Robert Boughton, his daughter Glory, and his reprobate son Jack. Paying Robinson the ultimate compliment, Kirkus Reviews declared that the novel "[c]omes astonishingly close to matching its amazing predecessor in beauty and power."

However, the deeply spiritual Robinson is motivated by a more personal directive than the desire for critical praise or bestsellerdom. Like the writing of Willa Cather -- or, more contemporaneously, Annie Dillard -- her novels are suffused with themes of faith, atonement, and redemption. She equates writing to prayer because "it's exploratory and you engage in it in the hope of having another perspective or seeing beyond what is initially obvious or apparent to you." To this sentiment, Robinson's many devoted fans can only add: Amen.

Good To Know

Robinson doesn't just address religion in her writing. She serves as a deacon at the Congregational Church to which she belongs.

One might think that winning a Pulitzer Prize could easily go to a writer's head, but Robinson continues to approach her work with surprising humility. In fact, her advice to aspiring writers is to always "assume your readers are smarter than you are."

Robinson is no stranger to controversy. Mother Country, her indictment of the destruction of the environment and those who feign to protect it, has raised the ire of Greenpeace, which attempted to sue her British publisher for libel.

Feature Interviews

answer a few of our questions.

What was the book that most influenced your life or your career as a writer?
I could not name any one book. I was read to as a small child, I read on my own as soon as I could, and I recall being more or less overwhelmed again and again -- if not by what the books actually said, by what they suggested, what they helped me to imagine. I do feel particularly indebted to the 19th century Americans, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Dickinson, Melville and Poe to name the most prominent of them. I have been very much influenced by their explorations of consciousness.

What types of music do you like? Is there any particular kind you like to listen to when you're writing?
I listen to Bach a great deal. In general I like to listen to hymns and liturgical music. I am interested in hearing music put to the uses of deeply meaningful utterance, whether or not it in fact incorporates words and voices. Language is itself music -- though the habit of reading print, together with the utilitarian and banal uses to which we put language, makes us forgetful of the fact -- and I like to hear the inflections of sound weighty with meaning. It enlarges my sense of the possible. Bach, in particular, writes in spacious, complex, beautifully balanced sentences and paragraphs, or so it seems to me.

Do you have any special writing rituals? For example, what do you have on your desk when you're writing?
I don't write at a desk. I used to write on a big old couch, but I gave that away. I was wise enough to give it to my son, so if it turns out that the couch was essential to my work, at least the decision to be rid of it is not irreversible.

Many writers are hardly "overnight success" stories. How long did it take for you to get where you are today? Any rejection-slip horror stories or inspirational anecdotes?
My first novel, Housekeeping, was accepted by the first agent who read it, and bought by the first editor who read it. In general, my experience with publication has been gentle and gratifying.

What tips or advice do you have for writers still looking to be discovered?
Write the book you would want to read, don't try to calculate on the basis of what you take to be "the market." Mean what you say. Respect your reader -- assume that he or she is smarter than you are.

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Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self by Marilynne Robinson

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Customer Reviews

One of today's great public intellectualsby Woolman

This is one of our most forceful, convincing commentators on the impact of Christianity on society.by cripbook

Overview -

Absence of Mind

Product Details

Synopsis

The Barnes & Noble Review - Thomas De Pietro

The Washington Post - Michael Dirda

Biography

Editorial Reviews -

Absence of Mind

From Barnes & Noble

The Washington Post - Michael Dirda

Publishers Weekly

Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Maclean's

Ingrid Rowland - American Scholar

Linda McCullough Moore - Books & Culture

The Living Church

Catholic Herald

Big Questions Online