That mystery of ‘writing’

Marilynne Robinson, 80 years old last 26 November, was in Rome and agreed to an interview to discuss faith, imagination, and the contemporary world marked by aggressiveness and the “fragmented third world war” of which Pope Francis has been speaking for over 10 years. The conversation started with her novel “Gilead”, published in 2008, which she defined as “an exercise in contemplation”, adding, “I did not want to write anything that was not really true. Writing is a form of thought from within”. During our conversation, I mentioned to her the definition that Father Timothy Radcliffe gave of the Synod that took place in October at the Vatican: an “imaginative experience”, an occasion where many people gathered around the same table, comparing their own imagination with that of others and thus inevitably transforming it. “I think that ...