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The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought

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Required Reading For Adults
beautiful and liberal thought expressed beautifully
"I really take Nitezsche to town."
Tackling a Century's-Worth of Thinking
Apologia pro libris

The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought
Marilynne Robinson
Manufacturer: Picador
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Gilead: A Novel
Housekeeping: A Novel
Mother Country
Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith
Paul: In Fresh Perspective

ASIN: 0312425325
Release Date: 2005-10-13

Book Description

In this award-winning collection, the bestselling author of Gilead offers us other ways of thinking about history, religion, and society. Whether rescuing Calvinism and its creator Jean Cauvin from the repressive puritan stereotype, or considering how the McGuffey readers were inspired by Midwestern abolitionists, or the divide between the Bible and Darwinism, Marilynne Robinson repeatedly sends her reader back to the primary texts that are central to the development of American culture but little read or acknowledged today. A passionate and provocative celebration of ideas, the old arts of civilization, and lifes mystery, The Death of Adam is, in the words of Robert D. Richardson, Jr., a grand, sweeping, blazing, brilliant, life-changing book.

Customer Reviews:

Required Reading For Adults.......2007-04-04

"The Death of Adam" is unapologetically written for folks who actually value the activity of thinking. Robinson's writing style, as with her novels, requires some adjusting. She actually expects us to hold a thought in our head as she rambles a bit as the muse of reflection gathers her thoughts, but her penetration is exquisite.

I am a Christian of conservative persuasion, though Robinson is not. There are points of departure in her thought that run counter to my own inclination. But Robinson's iron sharpened mine in distinct areas and I greatly profited by her thought. I have not found a better debunking of Darwinism (in contrast to evolution) written anywhere. Her insistence that people ought to actually read Calvin and Darwin and others before they ridicule or embrace them is refreshing in the extreme. Her winsome insistence that intellectual courage begins by standing against the "Petty Coercion" of faddish opinion takes the best thought that could be gleaned from Jean Paul Sartre (though she does not trace her thought there) and firmly takes it captive under a Christian banner. These essays are a reminder that people can think and a moral admonition that it is an activity we ought to undertake more often.

Warning: Robinson warns you up front that she will not stoop to using simplistic language when nuanced thought demands complex phrasing. If you are looking for "bumper sticker" philosophy you will not find it here. If you are up to the challenge of pondering what she says and why she says it as she does, the fruit is well worth the effort.

beautiful and liberal thought expressed beautifully.......2007-03-11

i read this collection of essays on the strength of MR's novel Housekeeping. it is very rare indeed to find prose as strong and elegantly written in 20th century america - mostly we must turn to emerson, thoreau, fuller, hawthorne, to find such good writing, which by definition must be elegant, exact and tuned to its own pitch, as this collection surely is. again, to compare this work with emerson, reading this is much like reading Nature for the first time. Maybe you will not agree with MR, but if you read her rightly, your disagreement will be your own, not your newschannel's or your professor's opinion. her essay on darwinism (as distinct from evolution) is a masterwork of radical liberalism.

"I really take Nitezsche to town." .......2006-04-25

"I really take Nietzsche to town"--this is a quote from Marilynne Robinson. I heard her say this once at a writer's workshop in Saratoga Springs shortly before this collection, The Death of Adam, was printed. Who would SAY such a thing? It's not that one cannot argue with Nietzsche's thought--but "take him to town"? One may recall Rush Limbaugh, for instance, who, whenever he is under fire for getting someone angry, responds, "That's because I'M RIGHT."

Her book never gets much more intelligent than her quote.

The reviewer who said Robinson has an axe to grind here was right! These essays are well written but often full of a grudging and largely uninformed conservative viewpoint. Like many books that espouse such views, this one seems to see itself as some kind of enlightening alternative to the "accepted" wisdom about contemporary science and morality. Bosh!

This book was written out of sheer discomfort. Robinson doesn't seem to have given writers such as Darwin and Nietzsche the kind of reading they deserve--that is, the type in which the reader does not immediately discount all ideas that seem like they will lead to undesirable consequences (Nietzsche and Darwin led to Hitler, that kind of tiresome cliche). Come now Marilynne, didn't we get enough of that kind of thing listening to the frat boys argue with the professor in Humanities Seminar back in freshman year? For one who sets out to undermine accepted wisdom, Robinson espouses it in ludicrous amounts.

If you don't happen to agree with Robinson already, most of her thinking will jump out as the usual smokescreen behind which essentially conservative thinkers carry out their specious assault on everything that makes them uncomfortable.

Tackling a Century's-Worth of Thinking.......2006-02-22

Marilynne Robinson, in this fascinating book, tackles a century's-worth of thinking, and comes out with hardly a scratch. In learned, clear-minded, and engaging essays, she does damage to assumptions, and provides convincing alternative views. Read it.

Apologia pro libris.......2004-12-14

How pretentious of me to think that I should defend someone as brilliant as Marilynne Robinson. Having sat under her masterful teaching at the University of Iowa, I can say with utter certitude that these negative reviews are not only wrong, they're downright pigheaded in their oblivion to Marilynne's topic and methods. Poor Mr. Conover of San Francisco seems never to have read anything other than the first chapter. And this deliberate blindness is matched perhaps only by his positively Martian ignorace of the existence of supply-side economists. The reviewer who recommends less Calvin and more Prozac obviously has never developed a taste for thoughtful writing, and thus sees obtuseness in a prose that only a century ago would have seemed deliberately humane and overtly accessible.

The pleasure of Marilynne's prose and thought is comparable perhaps only to the self-indulgence of chocolate. But this analogy fails when one considers the content--it's mostly a warning against priggish self-indulgence, a sharp reminder that we will only understand the problems of our time after we've recognised and owned up to our contributions to them. Marilynne is without doubt one of the few great mavericks of our time. If you read her even with the slight generosity you might show a common garden slug, you'll find yourself flat on your back, reeling from a solid wallop of sanity and--dare I say it?--human goodness.

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The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought
Marilynne Robinson
Manufacturer: Picador
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OTDD2E

THE DEATH OF ADAM: ESSAYS ON MODERN THOUGHT.(Review): An article from: American Scholar

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THE DEATH OF ADAM: ESSAYS ON MODERN THOUGHT.(Review): An article from: American Scholar
Tess Lewis
Manufacturer: Phi Beta Kappa Society
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B00098MWGI
Release Date: 2005-07-28

Book Description

This digital document is an article from American Scholar, published by Phi Beta Kappa Society on January 1, 1999. The length of the article is 1331 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: THE DEATH OF ADAM: ESSAYS ON MODERN THOUGHT.(Review)
Author: Tess Lewis
Publication: American Scholar (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 1999
Publisher: Phi Beta Kappa Society
Volume: 68 Issue: 1 Page: 147(1)

Article Type: Book Review

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