The Literary Calvinism of Marilynne Robinson

Peter J. Leithart on Marilynne Robinson :

Stylistic clarity and uncluttered simplicity are the qualities of Robinson’s work that puts her in the tradition of American literary Calvinism. As Wood says, “There is a familiar American simplicity . . . which is Puritan and colloquial in its origin,” found in “the Puritan sermon, in Jonathan Edwards, in Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs, in Mark Twain, in Willa Cather, in Hemingway.” And Robinson. Wood quotes a line from Robinson’s Pulizer Prize novel Gilead : Literary Calvinism possesses “a sort of ecstatic fire that takes things down to the essentials.”

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