Pulitzer pace

IOWA CITY, Iowa – Unlike most Americans, Marilynne Robinson never suffers the agonies of the modern traffic jam, rising gas prices or a dearth of downtown parking.

Robinson, who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction last week for her novel “Gilead” – a gentle, moving story about a small-town preacher from Iowa – prefers the rhythms of a slower, simpler life. She doesn’t own a car or drive, preferring instead to walk to class, church or anywhere else in this small, Midwestern college town.

“I’m so happy not to have a car,” says the Sandpoint native, who also doesn’t own a television set but concedes to using a cell phone.

“I don’t like cars. There is just something ridiculous about them. They are noisy … clumsy, they choke towns. I just love walking.”

Robinson, who moved here in 1989 to teach at the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, is also unapologetic about the 24 years that passed between her highly acclaimed first novel, “Housekeeping” – set in a fictionalized version of Sandpoint – and her latest.

With little pressure to appease publisher Farar, Straus & Giroux, Robinson took her time working on “Gilead.” And another long wait may be in store for fans eager for her next novel.

“I don’t feel I’m under any pressure to write a book I’m not fully interested in,” says Robinson, whose next project will be a nonfiction book.

“I think you can tell when a novel is forced … or written under the pressure of a deadline from a contract or publisher. I have never wanted to write that way.”

The 61-year-old writer lives in a World War II-era home about a mile from her office. She moved into the 1 1/2 -story dwelling last summer with her white toy poodle, 10-year-old Otis.

The house, meticulously kept with antique bookshelves scattered throughout, provides two key features absent from her last home: a quiet, isolated study for writing and extra square footage when her two sons visit with their families.

“I’ve upsized,” says Robinson, who speaks in a manner much like her writing – soft, deliberate and economical. “I just needed some extra space for myself and the times my family comes back.”

Family is also a critical theme in “Gilead,” whose narrator John Ames realizes at 77 that his health is failing and his days are numbered. He then sets out to recount the story of his life and that of his family in a letter to his young son, the unexpected blessing of a second marriage.

Ames unspools a rich family history, steeped in ministry and laced with timeless moral questions, family tensions, and the nuances and complexities of relationships among friends, spouses and children.

A minister like his father and grandfather, Ames tells of his grandfather’s decision to side with Kansas abolitionists who fought to make the state free and how he used the pulpit to goad men into fighting against the Confederates.

Ames’ father, meanwhile, is a pacifist who struggles with sending men to war, regardless of cause, and lives most of his life in tension with his own father.

“It’s a quiet, gentle book,” says Robinson, using her hand as she often does to push her long hair – a mix of gray and light brown – from her eyes.

She is deeply religious, and through Ames explores themes of moral responsibility, redemption and the challenges of heeding the Fifth Commandment: to honor thy father and mother.

Robinson’s own father, John, worked in the timber industry, while her mother, Ellen, was a stay-at-home mom. Her lone sibling, David, is on the art faculty at the University of Virginia.

After she was born in Sandpoint, her family moved around the Inland Northwest, from Clarkston to Spokane to Coeur d’Alene, where she graduated from high school.

Bent on pursuing a writing career, Robinson headed east and enrolled in Pembroke College, which at the time was a part of Brown University.

She began writing “Housekeeping” while working on her doctorate at the University of Washington, but was living in Massachusetts at the time while her husband, whom she divorced several years ago, taught at the local university.

The novel won the PEN/Faulkner Award, was nominated for a Pulitzer and is regarded by many as a modern classic.

Set in rural Idaho, “Housekeeping” tells a haunting tale of two lonely girls who are raised by their aunt in the mid-1900s, and explores themes of loss, coming of age and transience.

The book is framed by landscape and history – concepts Robinson says are essential to her own well-being and sense of place.

“Landscapes have always been very important to me,” she says. “People say the Midwest is a little blank. You just have to bring a finer gauge to it. …

“It takes a while to interpret space here. I don’t feel emotionally comfortable in a landscape if I don’t know about the history of it.”

Robinson accepted an invitation to teach at the Writer’s Workshop in 1989, in part so her two sons, James and Joseph, could take advantage of Iowa’s renowned public school system.

The same year, she was nominated for the National Book Award for “Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State and Nuclear Pollution.” A critical look at the handling of nuclear waste at a processing plant in Great Britain, it also gave an unflattering commentary about the environmental group Greenpeace’s policies and strategy toward the plant.

In 1998, Robinson published a collection of essays, “The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought.”

It was two years ago, during a Christmas visit to Massachusetts, that she began experimenting with the character of John Ames and realized a novel was lurking in his voice.

“It’s one of those things you can feel if it is there or not,” she says.

Less than two years later, she surprised her publisher with the manuscript for “Gilead.” Besides the Pulitzer, the novel won the National Book Critics’ Circle prize and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award.

“I’m pleased that this book, which is very theological in many ways, seems to be interesting to a lot of people,” Robinson says.

Raised a Presbyterian, Robinson joined the Congregationalist church when she moved to Iowa City and for several years was an elected deacon. She also regularly teaches courses for members on literature, history and religion.

On a brief tour of her home, she points to a built-in bookshelf in the dining room that contains her favorite collection. The white shelf, wall-to-wall, is filled with scholarly theological texts, encyclopedias and a collection of worn, leather-bound works on religion and spirituality.

“It is my strongest single interest,” she says.