For years, I had a secondhand paperback copy of Marilynne Robinson’s 1980 novel, “Housekeeping,” on my bookshelf that I never got around to reading. Then one day I picked it up. Not altogether too long later, I put it down, finished. In the plain-spokenness of its language, the grace and dignity of its characters, the simplicity of its story and its intimations of spiritual transcendence, “Housekeeping” is a book that transformed how I see my place in the world. (And I’m not alone: Former President Barack Obama has talked about how Robinson’s work influenced him.) Robinson, who for years taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, hasn’t given us a new novel since “Jack” in 2020, but she does have a new nonfiction book that will be published next month. “Reading Genesis” is, as the title suggests, Robinson’s literary analysis of the first book of the Old Testament — one writer’s appreciation of the enduring work of others. Like so much of Robinson’s writing, the book is alive with questions of kindness, community and how to express what we so often struggle to put into words. “An argument that I make in the book,” Robinson says, puckishly implying a counterargument to contemporary mores, “is that God is patient, loves human beings, suspends judgment and is not inclined toward punitive behaviors.”

To start, I don’t think I’m making any great leap in saying that the subject of goodness is something you often write about. I think that’s true.

Looking around our country right now, goodness and grace and mercy feel in short supply. I wonder if that makes you think any differently about the work that you do or have done. Maybe it makes it feel more urgent? Maybe it feels more difficult? Well, I have to say I’m very surprised, shocked, disillusioned perhaps by the turn that things have taken in this country in the last decade or so. The vulgarity and mercilessness that have entered public conversation, and a kind of meagerness and unwillingness to be a source of benefit to the people in the country at large. A stinginess has settled in that’s intellectual and economic and very appalling to me, and contrary to any notion that I have of what is good.

What do you think we could do about it? We have to rethink some very basic things. Genesis has a lot to do with the way people who claim to be religious understand the nature of God. I think it has in various ways been badly misinterpreted. I think that idea that people can claim the word “God,” often in association with something bizarre, like the word “guns,” and feel that they’ve taken the position of righteousness, that’s just a terrible corruption of the whole idea of religion.

Tell me about participating in your church through streaming. You know, there’s a good choir; there’s a good sermon. The environment is familiar and reassuring. But there’s something about actually going to a church, the bother involved, that by itself is a huge concession that you make to the meaningfulness of what will happen there. It’s a very modest discipline, really. It’s too easy to see the service on my computer.

You’re 80? I’m 80. The clock is ticking.

Has what you get out of church changed as you’ve gotten older? People often comment that a lot of older people are in congregations, and I think it’s just partly a fact that the mysteries of existence compound themselves. You always have another question.

You mean you’re not getting closer to answers?! [Laughs.] No.

That’s what I’m banking on! No, my answer is that questions are beautiful. You just think more about life, the brevity of it, the complexity of it, the incredible richness that enters into it accidentally or intentionally. There’s something about youth that is wonderful: You really do think you’re immortal. Then you find out that there is a shelf life. The date approaches. That shapes your conception of life. It gives it a dramatic arc that is hard to anticipate so long as your body is not telling you that this is true.

Can you tell me more about that arc? One thing I think about is what have you done that actually outlives you? One of the things that you could do would be to enable other people. That’s probably the immortality that anyone can hope for. Also, frankly, sometimes I think about what I’ve missed. I’m a very reclusive person by temperament and choice, but there are lots of interesting people I could have known.

People you actually had the opportunity to have known? Or are you talking in a more abstract sense? I’m talking quite specifically.

Can you tell me — No. I won’t tell you. I will not name names.

I don’t mean to — well, no, I do mean to challenge you a little. Have at it.

The idea that we’re freer than we’re led to believe — I’m thinking of that in the light of much more scrutiny about the choices artists make and what they represent and the language they use and their stance toward their subjects. You think we have more leeway than we might believe? A lot of freedom is curtailed by people assuming that their freedom is curtailed. I hear people saying: “I wouldn’t dare say that. Someone might object.” That’s how tyrannies operate. Artists and writers have, during my whole life, presented themselves as if they were flying in the face of bourgeois expectation. That’s the black turtleneck of the whole thing. And here they are, perhaps flying in the face of somebody’s expectations, and they act as if they have to be intimidated by that, as if they have to mold their behavior around it. If, for the first time in my life, it’s actually true that there is some risk involved in being contrarian, well, take the risk! That’s the point!

It does require a degree of courage. So? Who decided we shouldn’t have courage? That kind of appalls me to think that people need not expect that of themselves.

You referred to moral deficits in the country. At the same time, in our day-to-day lives, we encounter so much goodness. Why does that seem absent from how we think about our social life together? That’s a very profound question. I worry about the country at the same time that I’m aware, day to day, of how much I have benefited from kindness and honesty and consideration. You so rarely have a really bad experience, and you hope other people have a good experience of you, but some idea has swept the country that to say that people are good is naïve. It’s as if we’re all supposed to be cynical, even though, as you say, many of us have excellent grounds not to be cynical at all. It’s a mannerism; it’s a pose. It’s perhaps more characteristic of privileged people than of people who really might wonder about justice and mercy. It’s terrible to say that a great civilization could collapse from the force of a fad, but sometimes I feel as if that’s what’s happening.

That cynicism is not totally unfounded. The distinction has to be made between skepticism and cynicism. Cynicism is a dead end. Skepticism is always justified.

Marilynne Robinson receiving the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama in 2013.

Pete Marovich/Getty Images

What might you put in a letter to him today? “Say something to cheer me up.” He has this wonderful optimism about the American people. We’ve had years of bad experiences, and I would like to know what he sees now. I know he would say that the people ultimately are wise, that the people ultimately are good.

What’s the last movie you saw? Gee, I don’t know. Oh, ha! I tried to watch “Barbie,” but it stopped in the middle. I didn’t deal with the problem.

What did you think of the parts you saw? It was not addressed to me, let’s say that. If pink by itself is a toxin, I think that was the effect that it had on me.

Are there still fundamental theological questions that you have? Or maybe more simply, what doubt do you have? My theological question is how to reconcile the cruelty of the world with the idea of God’s omnipotence, and I simply assume that’s something I will not understand in this life.

I think you should write a letter to Obama tomorrow. I should. I should. He’s gone gray, you know.

Don’t condescend. I don’t think I’ve ever been guilty of that where he was concerned.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity from two conversations.