Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson is a...haunting book. Her descriptions of ordinary things reveals something almost...supernatural about them, and just how much significance actions and things can hold. How everything sane can hang on the edge of insanity. Calm with disorder. Nature and civilization. I got swept up in the language at certain points, even though I was also a little lost at the same time. Her prose is very poetic, beautiful, but sometimes strays so far into lucidity that I couldn't remember our point of departure.
Here is one interesting passage I'll share -
"Cain killed Abel...a story so sad even God took notice of it. Maybe it was not the sadness of the story, since worse things have happened every minute since that day, but its novelty that God found striking. In the newness of the world God was young, and grew indignant over the slightest things. In the newness of the world God had perhaps not realized the ramifications of certain Laws..."
Setting aside the cliche of God being a figure and a person, more the Catholic idea of God, what I find so interesting about this perspective is thinking of God...as new. As someone who could make mistakes. Someone learning the ropes. Someone prone to tempers or joys or other emotions that might influence actions in a split second, not someone who always thinks everything out. If I fully believed in a Catholic image/idea of God this notion might help explain a lot of things about the Bible and Gods actions in the early days.
Close to Godliness in the world of information search and retrieval is Google. Reading over a Wired Magazine I came across some awesome search features I didn't know about and thought, hey, maybe you don't either!
* to find sites in the government or education sector, add :gov or :edu to the end of your search terms
* Google will convert currency and units. their example - "12 par secs in light years."
* Enter a ticker symbol to check out how your stocks are doing
* Limit your search to file type by adding :PPT or :doc to the end of your search term
Google just keeps getting better and better. You GO Google. You go...
I knew I'd just read something else about Marilynne Robinson--turns out that one of the books that Barack Obama says he has most recently read is her Gilead.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reviewing Housekeeping, Erikka. I'll just trek on over to Shelfari and put both of these titles on my list of books to read.