# Cosmos Café: Marilynne Robinson's Gilead \[12/18\]
**URL:** https://www.infiniteconversations.com/t/cosmos-cafe-marilynne-robinsons-gilead-12-18/2728
**Category:** Cosmos Café
**Tags:** event, gilead, marilynne-robinson
**Created:** [December 7, 2018, 7:24pm UTC](https://www.infiniteconversations.com/t/cosmos-cafe-marilynne-robinsons-gilead-12-18/2728 "2018-12-07T19:24:57Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Douggins](https://www.infiniteconversations.com/u/Douggins)
#### Post date: [December 7, 2018, 7:24pm UTC](https://www.infiniteconversations.com/t/cosmos-cafe-marilynne-robinsons-gilead-12-18/2728/1 "2018-12-07T19:24:57Z")
[ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frmYKr4PbAw)
[https://wp.cosmos.media/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2019/03/IC-Cosmos-Cafe-050-Gilead-by-Marilynne-Robinson\_128kbps-stereo.m4a](https://wp.cosmos.media/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2019/03/IC-Cosmos-Cafe-050-Gilead-by-Marilynne-Robinson_128kbps-stereo.m4a)
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#### This is a placeholder for a group discussion on Gilead by Marilynne Robinson on December 18th. Participants will be expected to have read/to have started reading/to have wanted to read the novel or for those interested in Marilynne Robinson’s depth as an author.
Note: this is a one session discussion on the book, not a series of discussions as is typical of he Readers Underground. We have used the Café time slot for this discussion.
# Reading / Watching / Listening
> **[Gilead (novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilead_(novel))**
>
> Gilead is a novel by Marilynne Robinson published in 2004. It won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It is Robinson's second novel, following Housekeeping (1980). Gilead is an epistolary novel, as the entire narrative is a single, continuing, albeit episodic, document, written on several occasions in a form combining a journal and a memoir. It comprises the fictional autobiography of John Ames, an elderly, white Congregationalist pastor in the small,...
# Seed Questions
- How do you understand the narrator John Ames’ sense of ‘vision’ compared to the visions of his grandfather?
- In what ways (if he is) is John Ames (aka Jack) Boughton a mirror to John Ames the narrator?
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# Context, Backstory, and Related topics
- [https://www.infiniteconversations.com/t/reading-suggestions/330/104?u=madrush](https://www.infiniteconversations.com/t/reading-suggestions/330/104)
- [Marilynne Robinson and the Perception of the Ordinary | Los Angeles Review of Books](https://lareviewofbooks.org/entitled-opinions/marilynne-robinson-perception-ordinary)
- [Season 2 premiere of With a Side of Knowledge podcast features Pulitzer-winner Marilynne Robinson | News | Office of the Provost | University of Notre Dame](https://provost.nd.edu/news/season-2-premiere-of-with-a-side-of-knowledge-podcast-features-pulitzer-winner-marilynne-robinson/)
# Agenda items
- Check-ins
- Discuss _Gilead_
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_Cosmos Café_ is a weekly virtual dialogue series that focuses on deep questions of cosmology, consciousness, and culture. Our conversations are designed (and intended) to be open-ended, inclusive, and creative—going nowhere in particular (or seemingly everywhere) yet arriving at the heart of the matter over time. These are performative experiments in cooperative intelligence, grounded in deep reading, mutual listening, embodied experience, and speaking our minds!
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### Author:  [@madrush](https://www.infiniteconversations.com/u/madrush)
#### Post date: [December 17, 2018, 3:27pm UTC](https://www.infiniteconversations.com/t/cosmos-cafe-marilynne-robinsons-gilead-12-18/2728/2 "2018-12-17T15:27:21Z")
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### Author:  [@Mark\_Jabbour](https://www.infiniteconversations.com/u/Mark_Jabbour)
#### Post date: [December 17, 2018, 5:48pm UTC](https://www.infiniteconversations.com/t/cosmos-cafe-marilynne-robinsons-gilead-12-18/2728/3 "2018-12-17T17:48:29Z")
Here’s a 30 minute video of Robinson reading 2 passages from the book, which I haven’t read, but I did read up on it. I think the second passage, about halfway into the reading is interesting for several reasons, and will be interested in what y’all have to say about Robinson’s style, voice, and subject matter. See you tomorrow.
[ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV9SXj4GZE4)