It’s confirmed. Claudia Rankine and Marilynne Robinson are amazing people! It was marvelous to be sitting in their thoughtful presence last night while Hillary and Donald went at it in their debate. Such a contrast! The event was held at the University of Minnesota campus in the Ted Mann Concert Hall. Several hundred people turned up and while the place didn’t fill up to the third floor balcony, it did fill up to the second.
The evening began with each of them giving a short, five minutes each reading. Rankine read a poem from Citizen and told us the story behind it. She also read a new poem that she explained came out of a conversation she had with a white friend who she asked “tell me something you only do because you are white.” Her friend replied, “I sit in the empty seat on the train next to the black man.”
Robinson read from the end of Gilead.
Then they sat down and the moderator began asking questions. Is it strange that perhaps the most memorable thing about the evening for me was not what they said but the character of their conversation? When the moderator asked a question neither of them jumped in to immediately begin talking and it wasn’t because of “I don’t want to be first.” Nor was it politeness or deference. Both would sit, comfortably silent, thinking. And when they were done thinking they would begin to speak. But even while speaking they would stop, especially Rankine, to search for the right words. And while one was speaking, the other was clearly listening. And more often than not, there would be a pause of thinking before the one who had been listening responded. This is what an intelligent conversation between two people who are comfortable in themselves and have nothing to prove looks like. It was a beautiful thing. And I left full of desire for conversations like that.
The first question was about optimism and anger. Rankine said she is not an optimist because that would mean things would be able to take care of themselves. But things don’t take care of themselves and if you want things to be better you have to poke at them and compel them to change.
Robinson is an optimist and she says it comes from watching other people because she finds people, for the most part, do good things. However, she worries about the U.S. and how easily we forget history, how our memory becomes selective, winnowing out the postive and forgetting the negative. She says this makes life too simple, that is leads to people demanding less complicated lives because it is easier than dealing with complexity.
As for anger, both agreed that it is a surface emotion that doesn’t, as Rankine put it, “touch the depths of ethical loneliness.” In other words, anger keeps us from looking past it and finding root causes that would then allow us to create solutions.
The next question was about the individual and community, real and imaginary. Rankine revealed that John Stuart Mill is one of her favorite authors. She believes that the individual and community are irreconcilable, that the individual always navigates her place in a community internally and emotionally, it is not something that happens outside the self.
They were asked about whether in this day of digital media and short attention spans whether they are concerned about readers’ attentiveness and if they thought about that while writing and did it affect how or what they wrote. Both said they don’t worry about it. Robinson said she has always written the way she wants to write because our capacity for attention has not changed but our willingness to allow ourselves to be distracted has.
Rankine said when Citizen was published her mother called her and asked her why there was so much white space on the pages as if, Rankine said, she were unable to write enough words to fill the page. The white space is deliberate because it allows the reader room to think and wonder.
The moderator asked what books or authors were early influences that they later outgrew or rebelled against. Rankine used to be in love with Yeats. She even went to Ireland specifically to study him. She loved the soound of his words. But then she learned his politics were questionable and the way he describes Maud Gonne is terrible and she has never been able to read him with the same fervor.
Robinson felt similarly. She also cited Garland, Faulkner and Hemingway and how she felt no one could ever write another book because of them. But she got over it, she said.
Both teach and agreed that when dealing with texts by writers who say questionable things or have questionable politics, that context is everything. Robinson beleives that problematic ideas in a text must be dealt with and not ignored because to ignore them allows them to be acculturated and then they cease to be scrutinized.
Someone from the audience asked about the idea of revolutionary love. Robinson said that if we loved our society it could revolutionize it. Rankine responded that she didn’t know how to understand the term love. She said, “you don’t have to love me, you just need to see me as another human being who deserves everything a human being deserves.” Robinson replied that to love society doesn’t require one to love individuals.
Another audience member asked about religion and its role in healing the nation. Robinson believes organized religion has a “potentially vast capacity” to enhance life. She is annoyed by people saying they are spiritual but not religious. One should be part of a specific religious beleif system whether or not you completely agree with it. She said to say you are spiritual refuses the burden and the lesson of fallibilty that identifying with a specific religion provides.
It was, as you can tell, a thoughtful and thought-provoking evening. I didn’t manage to capture half of what they talked about. I am grateful I got to attend the event and came away with even more respect and admiration for these two women than I had before.
How wonderful that you got to hear Marilynne Robinson speak. She is a gorgeous prose writer. Gilead was quiet but powerful.
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Fariba, it was really wonderful and i fell so lucky!
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Wow! That sounds like an amazing night! Do you know if the conversation was recorded or will be made available publicly?
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Allison, it was pretty darn amazing. Sadly, the lecture was not recorded, or if it was, it is not made available on the website http://cla.umn.edu/english/research/freier-lecture at least as far as I can discover.
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That sounds like the most wonderful evening. I’m with Allison in hoping for a recording so that I can also spend time with two writers I admire so much.
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Shoshi, it doesn’t look like the lectures are recorded and made available at least as far as I can tell, which is unfortunate because there are some past lectures I have not been able to attend that would be great to see! http://cla.umn.edu/english/research/freier-lecture
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What a fantastic post about two extraordinary women. As someone who views themselves as spiritual but not religious it’s also given me food for thought!
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Vicky, thanks! It was an amazing evening and I am very lucky. I found Robinson’s words regarding religion/spirituality really interesting. Throughout the evening I got the impression that history is very important to her and she finds great value in taking the good and bad together so that we can learn the lessons of the past. She thinks to say you are spiritual is letting yourself off the hook from dealing with the complications and ethical struggles of a particular religion. It is simplifying something that is complex and denying a person the benefits of the struggle to come to terms with issues. I think it would be fascinating to hear her speak specifically on just that topic.
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Absolutely and I love the fact they were so generous with each other and easy with silence. It’s what you’d expect from their writing but sometimes writers, in person, are nothing like their writing!
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generous is a nice way to describe it. If only we could all manage to be so generous in everyday life. What a difference that would make!
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What a great experience. Meeting two women who don’t allow ego to come in between and who have mastered the art of keeping silent and waiting, thus gifting their audience to experience the sheer power of that.
The thoughts about religion give me a lot to think about.
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Cath, it was a wonderful experience and I feel so lucky and grateful for it. Robinson’s comments on religion/spirituality were really interesting and I wish she could have said more.
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My favourite idea of the ones you’ve mentioned here is that to be spiritual but not religious is a way of shirking the burden of fallibility and specificity—not because I agree with it but because I don’t know whether I agree with it or not. It’s a way of considering religious identification that I had never even thought of before.
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Elle, I know it it an interesting take on religion, isn’t it? It goes along with her belief in the importance of history and and memory but placed in the context of religion it give it all a whole new twist.
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How wonderful that these ladies have not felt the need to bow to popular trends and change their writing approaches.
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BookerTalk, it really is. I wonder if it is in some way easier for them because they are well established? If they were younger and just starting out, I wonder if they would be more affected?
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Thats a good point – probably if they were just beginning they would be more circumspect and afraid to say anything controversial. or it might just be that they are not confident in speaking in public – its not a skill that comes naturally to many people
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Public speaking definitely doesn’t come naturally to me! 😀
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This is such a wonderful summary! thank you so much Stefanie for sharing! I really like the way both the writers approached the Q&A. It showed that words really mattered to them. Rankine story about the white woman is powerful!! I am sure it must have been such a brilliant experience!
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cirtnecce, thanks! Yes, it was wonderful to see how much words really matter them. Rankine told a few interesting and powerful stories, some that mad us gasp and some that made us laugh. She’s very good!
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It sounds wonderful, and the thing you describe where they would be asked a question and they’d both just sit with it for a little while is a terrific detail. That’s a thing I could be so much better at myself, and I think a lot of people in the country could — we have this awful tendency to think that we already know what the other person is going to say and how we’re going to respond, and it precludes good discourse.
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It sounds like a wonderful evening and a good advertisement for the live literary event which is a happening where things have a high chance of not quite working. Difficult to imagine Donald Trump being “easy with silence” in any way!
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Ian, ha! Yeah, I can’t imagine Trump being able to hold a conversation like Rankine and Robinson. He has too much ego and always has to be right about everything. And pausing to think and choose his words carefully, I don’t think he is capable!
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Jenny, I could be better at it too but I am so worried about gaps in the conversation that I’ll just rattle on about stupid stuff. I wonder if TV and film are to blame with the quick dialogue and we have come to think that is what a good conversation should be like? Plus, yeah, what you say, we think we know what the other person is going to say so we don’t even bother to listen.
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Sounds wonderful! I would pick a night like this any day over having to listen to politics!
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Danielle, it was wonderful. Too bad there aren’t any more events I can go to between now and election day in order to escape!
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How wonderful (and how envious I am)! Thank you so much for sharing all of this material with us!
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Carolyn, you bet! Glad to share and wish everyone could have been there with me!
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What a great read (rooted in a great experience). Thanks so much for sharing this with those of us who couldn’t attend!
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buried, thanks! It was a great evening and I am glad I could share a little of it with everyone.
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Thank you so much for sharing this! “You don’t have to love me, you just need to see me as another human being who deserves everything a human being deserves.” – Wow, that is so powerful and so true right? Lots of good points to think about for sure!
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Iliana, I know, right? They were both so thoughtful and full of wisdom. I feel lucky to have seen them!
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I’d never heard of Claudia Rankine, so I was particularly interested to read about her responses. I must check her out. It sounds like one one those really inspiring sessions that you feel better for having attended. I loved Rankine’s story about her love of Yeats – that old issue of an artist’s work versus their politics! And of course I loved Robinson’s getting over being scared off writing by Faulkner et al!
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It was a great evening. Do check out Rankine if you get the chance. Her poetry book Citizen is excellent and has won a number of awards. It was fun to hear that even a writer of Robinson’s stature has been intimidated by other writers. Something kind of comforting in that.
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Yes I will – and sure is!
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