The Los Angeles Review of Books is running an essay today by the director of First-Year Writing, Scott Korb—er, me—about Marilynne Robinson, love, God, and our democracy. Here are a few lines:

For all we say about love and its relationship to openness and our knowledge of the person we love (and vice versa), as it’s practiced day to day, love actually depends a great deal on what we all conceal from each other, both intentionally — out of a desire to be loved — and also because we are, in fact, mysteries not only to each other but often also to ourselves. Our basic privacy and inaccessibility is, in this way, essential to maintaining love. Or it is at least among those of us who wonder whether we’d be loved if our partners knew everything, if they knew all our selfishness and insecurity — the inside story: Ha-ha! — if they knew always why we acted as we do.