Marilynne Robinson and the prodigal son
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Marilynne Robinson comes to Los Angeles later this month to talk about her new novel, ‘Home.’ A kind of companion/follow up to ‘Gilead,’ which won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, ‘Home’ is set in the same Iowa town and is narrated by Glory Boughton, a minor character from the first novel. Glory narrates the story of the return of her elder brother Jack. LA Times reviewer Emily Barton writes:
Glory recalls a childhood misdeed for which she and some of their other siblings had to apologize; she remembers that ‘somewhere along the way Jack caught up and walked along with them, as if penance must always include him.’ He disappears as a young man, cutting off all contact with his family and not even coming home for his mother’s funeral.
If you’re hearing echoes of the Biblical story of the prodigal son, you’re not alone. In a new podcast interview with Robinson, Ed Champion asked for her interpretation of the parable. Marilynne Robinson replied:
You notice that the prodigal son says, “I am no longer worthy to be called thy son.” But from the father’s point of view, this is never an issue. He doesn’t ask for the son to satisfy any standards of his. He doesn’t ask for confession. He doesn’t ask for some plea for forgiveness. He sees his son coming from a distance and wants to meet him before he knows anything about him, except that he’s his son coming home. And I think that the point of the parable really is grace rather than forgiveness. The fact that the father is always the father. Despite and without conditions. And this is true in Boughton’s case. As far as he concerned, Jack is his son. And that’s the beginning and the end of it. Jack is not able to accept his father’s embrace.
Marilynne Robinson will be interviewed by Michael Silverblatt at ALOUD at the Central Library on Thursday, October 23. All tickets -- which are free -- have been reserved, but generally there are seats released to the standby line. So it might be worth heading downtown and waiting for a place, instead of just staying home.
-- Carolyn Kellogg
