`All the Respect in the World for Reality'

Bryan Appleyard talked with Marilynne Robinson at her home in Iowa City, and gives us a splendid account of his visit in The Sunday Times. Here's something she told him:

“The assumptions of realism as it has been practised are simply wrong. People bring a great deal of memory and also a sense of present experience to everything that they do. If you see someone doing a simple action like hanging sheets on a line, there is absolutely no reason in that person’s perception that there is anything simple about it at all. I have all the respect in the world for reality, but I think the general assumptions about it are wrong.”