Going Back 'Home'

Marilynne Robinson, novelist and teacher at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, is the author of five books, three of them works of fiction. Her 1980 novel, "Housekeeping," is a modern classic. Her 2004 work, "Gilead," written as a love letter from a dying Iowan pastor to his son, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. This week marks the publication of "Home," a follow up to her last work which also takes place in the fictional town of Gilead, Iowa, in the 1950s. "Home" centers around the Boughton family, as the prodigal son, Jack, returns home after 20 years away to visit his dying father and his younger sister.

"Home" is a lyrical meditation on devout faith in the face of death, as well as the inescapable bonds that tie families together, and the complexities of the father-son relationship. Adam de Jong caught up with Robinson to discuss her new book, the role religion plays in her fiction, what it was like to win the Pulitzer, and teaching the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: What brought you back to the characters of "Home" and, more specifically, the town of Gilead? While you were writing "Gilead," did you think there was another story there? 
Marilynne Robinson: The place and the people, especially the three Boughtons, were still in my mind after I had published "Gilead." I didn't want to write a sequel, but I did want to give them their own lives.

Much was made of the fact that 24 years had passed between the publication of your first and second novel. Why do you think you were able to follow up with your third novel so quickly?
Between my first two novels, I wrote nonfiction. I pursued interests  in history and theology. I have always enjoyed that kind of writing, and I felt the need to broaden my education. There was no hiatus, from my point of view. I was simply working in a different genre.

One thing that was very clear while reading "Home" is that it is written with an authorial voice that is very different from the first-person letter form of "Gilead." Was it difficult to return to Gilead, yet find a new voice--presumably your own--to tell this story?
The voice of "Home" is Glory's. Of course there is a difference in tone, since John Ames is writing for his son, while the convention of the narrative in "Home" is that we are close to Glory's thoughts, which are not considered and composed in the same way his would be. I have no autobiographical impulse, and would never put my voice or anything else of mine in fiction. It was not difficult to write her voice because I felt as though I knew it.

The new book seems less like a sequel than a sort of Faulknerian return to Gilead. How conscious were you of the notion that the town itself is a central character to the story? Was that the intention?
To me it seems true that towns are always characters and that landscapes are as well. Gilead has resonance for me as a repository of a certain history, and as the kind of commonplace, self-forgetful little town you might find anywhere and not even bother to wonder about. These places are full of history and full of meaning. I am not particularly interested in creating my own Yoknapatawpha, but Gilead is where these characters live, and that was the reason I returned there.