Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson met up with President Barack Obama to discuss books and the role of reading on American culture last month.
The result is a two part conversation published in The New York Review of Books, in which the two discuss the current state of reading and writing in America and the importance of books. Here is an excerpt:
When I think about how I understand my role as citizen, setting aside being president, and the most important set of understandings that I bring to that position of citizen, the most important stuff I’ve learned I think I’ve learned from novels. It has to do with empathy. It has to do with being comfortable with the notion that the world is complicated and full of grays, but there’s still truth there to be found, and that you have to strive for that and work for that. And the notion that it’s possible to connect with some[one] else even though they’re very different from you.