Marilynne Robinson in the Atlantic

Here is an interesting, albeit long, interview with Marilynne Robinson, primarily about her new essay collection When I Was A Child I Read Books, which is more a cultural commentary on America than it is about a life of reading books.

I like the part where she talks about being "unfashionable", and how, if done well, people let you be so. Marilynne has been known to say “I quote Calvin all the time. You’d think he was my father!”.

How would describe the "unfashionable" quality you say has been ascribed to you?

It's often a comment that's made about my prose, which—I mean, it just seems like prose to me—but to other people it seems formal. I use long sentences. I use an extended vocabulary, that sort of thing. And I do make references, especially in my essays, to subjects that are not terribly fashionable in their own right—like Calvinism, for example! That's an interest of mine. I've taken a great deal of pleasure from researching it. I find that people just let me have my obsessions, and I find that if I do reputable work, or if anybody does, the latitude we have is very broad.

The best part is, near the end of this interview, Marilynne says she is working on, and is very well into, another novel. Hoorah!