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Words Are My Matter: Writings on Life and Books
A collection of essays on life and literature, from one of the most iconic authors and astute critics in contemporary letters.
Words Are My Matter is essential reading: a collection of talks, essays, and criticism by Ursula K. Le Guin, a literary legend and unparalleled voice of our social conscience. Here she investigates the depth and breadth of contemporary fiction—and, through the lens of literature, gives us a way of exploring the world around us.
In “Freedom,” Le Guin notes: “Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now … to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom—poets, visionaries—realists of a larger reality.”
Le Guin was one of those authors and in Words Are My Matter she gives us just that: a vision of a better reality, fueled by the power and might and hope of language and literature.
Words Are My Matter is essential reading: a collection of talks, essays, and criticism by Ursula K. Le Guin, a literary legend and unparalleled voice of our social conscience. Here she investigates the depth and breadth of contemporary fiction—and, through the lens of literature, gives us a way of exploring the world around us.
In “Freedom,” Le Guin notes: “Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now … to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom—poets, visionaries—realists of a larger reality.”
Le Guin was one of those authors and in Words Are My Matter she gives us just that: a vision of a better reality, fueled by the power and might and hope of language and literature.
336 pages, Paperback
First published September 26, 2016
About the author
Ursula K. Le Guin
971 books26.5k followersUrsula K. Le Guin published twenty-two novels, eleven volumes of short stories, four collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry and four of translation, and has received many awards: Hugo, Nebula, National Book Award, PEN-Malamud, etc. Her recent publications include the novel Lavinia, an essay collection, Cheek by Jowl, and The Wild Girls. She lived in Portland, Oregon.
She was known for her treatment of gender (The Left Hand of Darkness, The Matter of Seggri), political systems (The Telling, The Dispossessed) and difference/otherness in any other form. Her interest in non-Western philosophies was reflected in works such as "Solitude" and The Telling but even more interesting are her imagined societies, often mixing traits extracted from her profound knowledge of anthropology acquired from growing up with her father, the famous anthropologist, Alfred Kroeber. The Hainish Cycle reflects the anthropologist's experience of immersing themselves in new strange cultures since most of their main characters and narrators (Le Guin favoured the first-person narration) are envoys from a humanitarian organization, the Ekumen, sent to investigate or ally themselves with the people of a different world and learn their ways.
She was known for her treatment of gender (The Left Hand of Darkness, The Matter of Seggri), political systems (The Telling, The Dispossessed) and difference/otherness in any other form. Her interest in non-Western philosophies was reflected in works such as "Solitude" and The Telling but even more interesting are her imagined societies, often mixing traits extracted from her profound knowledge of anthropology acquired from growing up with her father, the famous anthropologist, Alfred Kroeber. The Hainish Cycle reflects the anthropologist's experience of immersing themselves in new strange cultures since most of their main characters and narrators (Le Guin favoured the first-person narration) are envoys from a humanitarian organization, the Ekumen, sent to investigate or ally themselves with the people of a different world and learn their ways.
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November 24, 2023
Another book of Ursula K. Le Guin’s collected works of nonfiction. You’d think I’d get tired of it but that’s just impossible.
The best part about the book is the first section, “Talks, Essays, and Occasional Pieces”, as well as the closing essay talking about Le Guin’s time at a writers’ retreat. This is my favorite Le Guin, talking passionately and yet in a very logical and measured way about everything - from snobbery of critics towards science fiction to sleep to her childhood home to consumerism and genres and publishing trends. A lot of it is about writing - “words are my matter”, her title says - invented languages in books, animals in fiction, “messages” in literature, women’s writing and its historical marginalization, and the great importance of imagination.
The essay that I remembered the most even after the years since first reading this book was What It Was Like, the candid talk about the time before legalized abortion and making that choice when she was very young, and how it allowed her to have the life and the children she chose instead of being punished with — the essay that should have been required reading for everyone who wants to take the choice out of the woman’s hands.
The second and third parts of the book, “Book Introductions and Notes on Writers” and “Book Reviews” are basically what you’d read had Le Guin been a Goodreads reviewer. It’s her book reviews, enjoyable even if I haven’t ever heard of some of these writers or books. Some of her favorites I wasn’t surprised by - somehow it’s fitting that she likes Jose Saramago - but I almost squealed with delight as her review of China Miéville’s Embassytown and I agree with everything she said about his short story “The Rope is the World” from Three Moments of an Explosion. And she likes Stanislaw Lem, so everything is alright with the world.
This is a book for those like me, hardcore Ursula K. Le Guin fans; those of us who’d love to have a passionate discussion with her on a long leisurely hike or over a cup of coffee by the fireplace. Her narrative voice is full of her usual mesmerizing quality and her insights pack the wisdom of the mind honed with years of experience behind it.
4.5 stars.
——————
Also posted on my blog.
“Words are what matter. The sharing of words. The activation of imagination through the reading of words. The reason literacy is important is that literature *is* the operating instructions. The best manual we have. The most useful guide to the country we’re visiting, life.”
The best part about the book is the first section, “Talks, Essays, and Occasional Pieces”, as well as the closing essay talking about Le Guin’s time at a writers’ retreat. This is my favorite Le Guin, talking passionately and yet in a very logical and measured way about everything - from snobbery of critics towards science fiction to sleep to her childhood home to consumerism and genres and publishing trends. A lot of it is about writing - “words are my matter”, her title says - invented languages in books, animals in fiction, “messages” in literature, women’s writing and its historical marginalization, and the great importance of imagination.
“So the kids ask me, “When you write a story, do you decide on the message first or do you begin with the story and put the message in it?”
No, I say, I don’t. I don’t do messages. I write stories and poems. That’s all. What the story or the poem means to you—its “message” to you—may be entirely different from what it means to me.
The kids are often disappointed, even shocked. I think they see me as irresponsible. I know their teachers do.”
———
“Art reveals something beyond the message. A story or poem may reveal truths to me as I write it. I don’t put them there. I find them in the story as I work.”
The essay that I remembered the most even after the years since first reading this book was What It Was Like, the candid talk about the time before legalized abortion and making that choice when she was very young, and how it allowed her to have the life and the children she chose instead of being punished with — the essay that should have been required reading for everyone who wants to take the choice out of the woman’s hands.
“But I can tell you what it is like, for me, right now. It’s like this: If I had dropped out of college, thrown away my education, depended on my parents through the pregnancy, birth, and infancy, till I could get some kind of work and gain some kind of independence for myself and the child, if I had done all that, which is what the anti-abortion people want me to have done, I would have borne a child for them, for the anti-abortion people, the authorities, the theorists, the fundamentalists; I would have borne a child for them, their child.
But I would not have borne my own first child, or second child, or third child. My children.”
The second and third parts of the book, “Book Introductions and Notes on Writers” and “Book Reviews” are basically what you’d read had Le Guin been a Goodreads reviewer. It’s her book reviews, enjoyable even if I haven’t ever heard of some of these writers or books. Some of her favorites I wasn’t surprised by - somehow it’s fitting that she likes Jose Saramago - but I almost squealed with delight as her review of China Miéville’s Embassytown and I agree with everything she said about his short story “The Rope is the World” from Three Moments of an Explosion. And she likes Stanislaw Lem, so everything is alright with the world.
“If critics and teachers gave up insisting that one kind of literature is the only one worth reading, it would free up more time for them to think about the different things novels do and how they do it, and above all, to consider why certain individual books in every genre are, have been for centuries, and will continue to be more worth reading than most of the others.”
This is a book for those like me, hardcore Ursula K. Le Guin fans; those of us who’d love to have a passionate discussion with her on a long leisurely hike or over a cup of coffee by the fireplace. Her narrative voice is full of her usual mesmerizing quality and her insights pack the wisdom of the mind honed with years of experience behind it.
“I think the imagination is the single most useful tool mankind possesses. It beats the opposable thumb. I can imagine living without my thumbs, but not without my imagination.”
4.5 stars.
——————
Also posted on my blog.
June 18, 2017
Nonfiction nom for the 2017 Hugos, this collection of essays and book reviews are good for what they are, being honest and rooted very firmly in Le Guin's mindset and fierce defense of Science Fiction in general.
Hell, I was rooting for the same points the entire time! Mainstream Lit-fiction stealing old and traditional SF ideas and then having the nerve to say it's not SF and has nothing to do with it, all the while thumbing its nose at a long tradition is NOT COOL, yo. Give credit where credit is due. Don't write SF and call it something else just because you think the genre is trash.
No genre is trash. Individual writing can be trash, and that's true for EVERYTHING. But the converse is true, too. There are really fantastic examples of good writing everywhere, in any genre, lit-fic, mainstream, or any number of subcategories. Even erotica.
I added the erotica point and the rest is based on Sturgeon's Law, but we share the same point. Don't be a dick.
Le Guin's book reviews were fun for what they are. They're book reviews! I think there's some sort of website out there that is really popular for just this kind of thing... but I can't quite put my finger on it. Still, it's true that we like to see what others think about books both neglected and hugely popular. :) I find myself liking Le Guin more and more and more as I read this book.
Still, as a work of non-fiction, it's mostly just a collection of defenses and book reviews. Pleasurable for what it is but hardly more than that. I'm not being won over to a cause because I'm already a staunch defender, and I love to read book reviews, so this was, in the end, a light read.
Does it deserve a Hugo? Frankly... no. But it was fun and I'm glad to have read it. Did it serve to make me want to read more and more of her works? Yes. It did. I've just bumped up her Earthsea books. :)
Hell, I was rooting for the same points the entire time! Mainstream Lit-fiction stealing old and traditional SF ideas and then having the nerve to say it's not SF and has nothing to do with it, all the while thumbing its nose at a long tradition is NOT COOL, yo. Give credit where credit is due. Don't write SF and call it something else just because you think the genre is trash.
No genre is trash. Individual writing can be trash, and that's true for EVERYTHING. But the converse is true, too. There are really fantastic examples of good writing everywhere, in any genre, lit-fic, mainstream, or any number of subcategories. Even erotica.
I added the erotica point and the rest is based on Sturgeon's Law, but we share the same point. Don't be a dick.
Le Guin's book reviews were fun for what they are. They're book reviews! I think there's some sort of website out there that is really popular for just this kind of thing... but I can't quite put my finger on it. Still, it's true that we like to see what others think about books both neglected and hugely popular. :) I find myself liking Le Guin more and more and more as I read this book.
Still, as a work of non-fiction, it's mostly just a collection of defenses and book reviews. Pleasurable for what it is but hardly more than that. I'm not being won over to a cause because I'm already a staunch defender, and I love to read book reviews, so this was, in the end, a light read.
Does it deserve a Hugo? Frankly... no. But it was fun and I'm glad to have read it. Did it serve to make me want to read more and more of her works? Yes. It did. I've just bumped up her Earthsea books. :)
March 31, 2018
Hep Kitap'ın beğendiğim "Atölye Serisi" kapsamında yayınladığı son kitaplardan Ursula K. Le Guin imzalı "Sözcüklerdir Bütün Derdim" Damla Göl tarafından çevrilmiş. Öncelikle bu başarılı, 413 sayfa boyunca aksamayan, Le Guin'in sesinin sindiği çeviri için kendisini tebrik ederim. Kitap Ursula K. Le Guin'in 2000'li yıllarda yaptığı konuşmalar, yazdığı makaleler, yazdığı kitap tanıtımları, yazarlar üzerine notlar, kitap incelemerli ve bir dinlenme / çalışma kampında tuttuğu günlükten oluşuyor. "Konuşmalar, makaleler ve özel parçalar" başlığı altındaki kayıtlar yazmak isteyenler ve yazanlar için gerçekten altı çizilecek güzel ipuçları barındırıyor. Kitabın 159'uncu sayfasından sonra ise konu okuduğumuz / okumadığımız / bazıları dilimize hiç çevrilmemiş kitaplara dair düşüncelerle tempoyu düşüren, artık altını çizemediğiniz bir aşamaya geçiyor. Bunu kitap incelemeleri takip ediyor. Açıkcası bu kısmın kitabı çok hantallaştırdığını, pek çok okuyucu için bezdirici olabileceğini düşünüyorum. Fakat, evet; fakat Ursula K. Le Guin'in her cümleye, sayfaya sinmiş makyajsız, samimi, neşeli, öğretici, iktidar hissi barındırmayan, tepeden asla bakmayan tavrı yine de insanda yazma isteği uyandırıyor. Naçizane düşüncem "Atölye Serisi"sin yazanlar için değil ama yazmak isteyenler için daha özendirici, daha hedefe yönelik olması yönünde. bu kitabı yazma serüveni için yakıt etmek isteyenler adına bezdirici bir tarafı olabilir. Ama o "fakat"ı tekrarlamak istiyorum ve "yazmak isteyenler"e; yazma isteği/fiili oturup beklenen, bulutların arasından yanınıza inmesi beklenen bir süreç olmadığını tekrardan hatırlatmak istiyorum. bu yolda ne kadar zorlayıcı olursa olsun yapılan her iş, okunan her cümle hedefinize giden yorucu, kimi zaman yıpratıcı, bol çalışma ve bol sabır gerektiren bir süreçtir. Ne olursa olsun "Atölye Serisi" beğendiğim, takip ettiğim ve takip edeceğim güzel bir çalışma.
October 14, 2019
It's always so nice to read essays from Le Guin. She is so intelligent, and expresses her opinions with such logic and clarity that it amazes me. If I knew her in person, I'm sure I'd be tongue-tied around her because I'm in such awe of her abilities. This is my third book of essays by her. Now to get over my prejudiced mindset of science fiction and read one of her novels.
February 1, 2017
I respect Le Guin as an imaginative writer, feminist rule-bender, and wise crone, but I ended up skimming and skipping through many of these essays and book reviews once their sameness became apparent. I don't feel guilty about that, and she'd probably not care about my "skim and gobble" reading (as she calls it), particularly if her own disclaimers and ambivalence about writing nonfiction are truthful.
Le Guin is the great defender of the science fiction genre, of course, and that is a recurring theme of all her nonfiction pieces. She complains of what she sees as a 'cool' trend of mainstream novelists ("formerly deep-dyed realists") using the tropes and plot lines of science fiction without giving credit.
She loves China Miéville, Kent Haruf, Barbara Kingsolver; she claims not to understand David Mitchell; she's kind of petty-mean about Geraldine Brooks's historical fiction; and she seems scornful of Cormac McCarthy and Chang-Rae Lee for veering into her sacrosanct territory. Not the most elevated or insightful book reviews (nor is mine, especially), and somewhat tiresome. But I certainly came away with a sense of Le Guin's current tastes and sensibilities.
Le Guin is the great defender of the science fiction genre, of course, and that is a recurring theme of all her nonfiction pieces. She complains of what she sees as a 'cool' trend of mainstream novelists ("formerly deep-dyed realists") using the tropes and plot lines of science fiction without giving credit.
I am bothered [...] by the curious ingratitude of authors who exploit a common fund of imagery while pretending to have nothing to do with the fellow authors who created it and left it open to all who want to use it. A little return generosity would hardly come amiss.This little screed pertained to Jeanette Winterson's Gap of Time but would apply to many of the novelists she critiques, though not Margaret Atwood, even though Atwood insists that her Oryx & Crake series not be called science fiction. Whatever.
She loves China Miéville, Kent Haruf, Barbara Kingsolver; she claims not to understand David Mitchell; she's kind of petty-mean about Geraldine Brooks's historical fiction; and she seems scornful of Cormac McCarthy and Chang-Rae Lee for veering into her sacrosanct territory. Not the most elevated or insightful book reviews (nor is mine, especially), and somewhat tiresome. But I certainly came away with a sense of Le Guin's current tastes and sensibilities.
January 8, 2024
Ursula Le Guin’in denemeleri yine çok güzel. Edebiyat aşkını tetikleyen yazılar hepsi. Özellikle ilk bölümde edebiyata ve sanata dair ayakları yere basan çok iyi yazıları var. Kitap tanıtımı ve kitap incelemeleri bölümlerinden de epey yararlandığımı söyleyebilirim. Ama kitap incelemelerinde tekrara düşüyor. Bu kadar fazla ve bu kadar uzun süre yazan birinin tekrara düşmesi çok doğal sanırım. Edebiyatla ilgilenen herkesin yararlanıp, keyif alacağı bir derleme.
August 17, 2017
4.5 stars
I do absolutely love reading Le Guin's critical work. I had no idea she wrote book reviews, so that entire section in this collection was wonderful. She makes me want to read H.G. Wells and Jose Saramago, which I never thought I'd say!
I do absolutely love reading Le Guin's critical work. I had no idea she wrote book reviews, so that entire section in this collection was wonderful. She makes me want to read H.G. Wells and Jose Saramago, which I never thought I'd say!
Read
July 13, 2021I will not rate this book because I only skimmed it, and every single point she makes is absolutely valid and necessary. So rather than taking the rest of the time to finish reading her book I'm going to take her advice and finish writing my rough draft.
April 10, 2018
I don't love Ursula Le Guin's non-fiction as much as her fiction, but at least it's always a pleasure to read. This book has a rather charming diary of a writer's week when she attended a writing retreat, including some very nice observations of rabbits which chime well with what I know of my domestic buns. There's also various essays on genre, and her other usual preoccupations. And then there's her book reviews -- I could wish there weren't as many of Atwood's work, who I don't have much interest in, but it was interesting to see her thoughts on books and authors I know, and especially to see her glowing piece on Jo Walton's Among Others.
I still prefer her fiction -- as she did herself -- but I cherished reading this, too.
Reviewed for The Bibliophibian.
I still prefer her fiction -- as she did herself -- but I cherished reading this, too.
Reviewed for The Bibliophibian.
July 12, 2024
Pretty much required reading for UKL fans, although you can count on being annoyed from time to time, which was probably her intention. Best read a bit at a time, or that's how I did. Now it's due back, and I didn't quite finish. That's OK -- I'll get it out again, later. Partly reread & finished, early 2024.
The essay that's pretty much worth the price of the book is "A Report, by Ansible, from Tau Ceti": her reactions to critical reactions to her work, especially academic crits: For anyone who's been driven "slightly lunatic" by formal academic criticism of SF/F. (It's not online, btw; I looked.) Specifically, "The Dispossessed", her "ambiguous utopia". For which book Darko Suvin [!] was her first reader & first critic. Anarchist vs. Marxist; see below. If you aren't smiling when you're reading this, you're in the wrong book.
UKL was such a good writer, you won't mind her bosky bolshy excesses (much). In the salad days of rec.arts.sf.written, there was a years-long running discussion of "Good Ursula" vs."Bad Ursula." I don't recall her participating, but I suspect she'd have found that entertaining. Boy is she missed.
The essay that's pretty much worth the price of the book is "A Report, by Ansible, from Tau Ceti": her reactions to critical reactions to her work, especially academic crits: For anyone who's been driven "slightly lunatic" by formal academic criticism of SF/F. (It's not online, btw; I looked.) Specifically, "The Dispossessed", her "ambiguous utopia". For which book Darko Suvin [!] was her first reader & first critic. Anarchist vs. Marxist; see below. If you aren't smiling when you're reading this, you're in the wrong book.
UKL was such a good writer, you won't mind her bosky bolshy excesses (much). In the salad days of rec.arts.sf.written, there was a years-long running discussion of "Good Ursula" vs."Bad Ursula." I don't recall her participating, but I suspect she'd have found that entertaining. Boy is she missed.
July 24, 2021
Q:
It seems to be a fact that everybody, everywhere, even if they haven’t met one before, recognises a dragon. (c)
Q:
So long as we hear about “women’s writing” but not about “men’s writing”—because the latter is assumed to be the norm—the balance is not just. The same signal of privilege and prejudice is reflected in the common use of the word feminism and the almost total absence of its natural counterpart, masculinism. I long for the day when neither word is necessary. (c) I need to hang this on my wall or smth.
Q:
I seldom have as much pleasure in reading nonfiction as I do in a poem or a story. I can admire a well-made essay, but I’d rather follow a narrative than a thought, and the more abstract the thought the less I comprehend it. Philosophy inhabits my mind only as parables, and logic never enters it at all. Yet my grasp of syntax, which seems to me the logic of a language, is excellent. So I imagine that this limitation in my thinking is related to my abysmal mathematical incompetence, my inability to play chess or even checkers, perhaps my incomprehension of key in music. There seems to be a firewall in my mind against ideas expressed in numbers and graphs rather than words, or in abstract words such as Sin or Creativity. I just don’t understand. And incomprehension is boredom. (c)
Q:
I think the imagination is the single most useful tool mankind possesses. It beats the opposable thumb. (c)
Q:
the word creative can hardly be degraded further. I don’t use it any more, yielding it to capitalists and academics to abuse as they like. But they can’t have imagination. (c)
Q:
A people that doesn’t live at the center of the world, as defined and described by its poets and storytellers, is in a bad way. The center of the world is where you live fully, where you know how things are done, how things are done rightly, done well. (c)
Q:
This signifies reader addiction. The most harm I can see in it is that it may keep addicts from reading good stuff, though they might not read the good stuff anyway, because they’ve been scared into thinking that literature can’t include anything about horses, space ships, dragons, dreams, spies, monsters, animals, aliens, or dark, handsome, taciturn men who own large houses in remote bits of England. Fitzwilliam Darcy, they need you! But they’ve been scared away from Darcy, or never allowed a glimpse of him. (c)
Q:
Listening is an act of community, which takes space, time, and silence.
Reading is a means of listening.
Reading is not as passive as hearing or viewing. It’s an act: you do it. You read at your pace, your own speed, not the ceaseless, incoherent, gabbling, shouting rush of the media. You take in what you can and want to take in, not what they shove at you fast and hard and loud in order to overwhelm and control you. Reading a story, you may be told something, but you’re not being sold anything. And though you’re usually alone when you read, you are in communion with another mind. You aren’t being brainwashed or co-opted or used; you’ve joined in an act of the imagination. (с)
Q:
Jorge Luis Borge... His poems and stories, his images of reflections, libraries, labyrinths, forking paths, his books of tigers, of rivers, of sand, of mysteries, of changes, are everywhere honored, because they are beautiful, because they are nourishing, because they fulfill the most ancient, urgent function of words: to form for us “mental representations of things not actually present,” so that we can form a judgment of what world we live in and where we might be going in it, what we can celebrate, what we must fear. (c)
It seems to be a fact that everybody, everywhere, even if they haven’t met one before, recognises a dragon. (c)
Q:
So long as we hear about “women’s writing” but not about “men’s writing”—because the latter is assumed to be the norm—the balance is not just. The same signal of privilege and prejudice is reflected in the common use of the word feminism and the almost total absence of its natural counterpart, masculinism. I long for the day when neither word is necessary. (c) I need to hang this on my wall or smth.
Q:
I seldom have as much pleasure in reading nonfiction as I do in a poem or a story. I can admire a well-made essay, but I’d rather follow a narrative than a thought, and the more abstract the thought the less I comprehend it. Philosophy inhabits my mind only as parables, and logic never enters it at all. Yet my grasp of syntax, which seems to me the logic of a language, is excellent. So I imagine that this limitation in my thinking is related to my abysmal mathematical incompetence, my inability to play chess or even checkers, perhaps my incomprehension of key in music. There seems to be a firewall in my mind against ideas expressed in numbers and graphs rather than words, or in abstract words such as Sin or Creativity. I just don’t understand. And incomprehension is boredom. (c)
Q:
I think the imagination is the single most useful tool mankind possesses. It beats the opposable thumb. (c)
Q:
the word creative can hardly be degraded further. I don’t use it any more, yielding it to capitalists and academics to abuse as they like. But they can’t have imagination. (c)
Q:
A people that doesn’t live at the center of the world, as defined and described by its poets and storytellers, is in a bad way. The center of the world is where you live fully, where you know how things are done, how things are done rightly, done well. (c)
Q:
This signifies reader addiction. The most harm I can see in it is that it may keep addicts from reading good stuff, though they might not read the good stuff anyway, because they’ve been scared into thinking that literature can’t include anything about horses, space ships, dragons, dreams, spies, monsters, animals, aliens, or dark, handsome, taciturn men who own large houses in remote bits of England. Fitzwilliam Darcy, they need you! But they’ve been scared away from Darcy, or never allowed a glimpse of him. (c)
Q:
Listening is an act of community, which takes space, time, and silence.
Reading is a means of listening.
Reading is not as passive as hearing or viewing. It’s an act: you do it. You read at your pace, your own speed, not the ceaseless, incoherent, gabbling, shouting rush of the media. You take in what you can and want to take in, not what they shove at you fast and hard and loud in order to overwhelm and control you. Reading a story, you may be told something, but you’re not being sold anything. And though you’re usually alone when you read, you are in communion with another mind. You aren’t being brainwashed or co-opted or used; you’ve joined in an act of the imagination. (с)
Q:
Jorge Luis Borge... His poems and stories, his images of reflections, libraries, labyrinths, forking paths, his books of tigers, of rivers, of sand, of mysteries, of changes, are everywhere honored, because they are beautiful, because they are nourishing, because they fulfill the most ancient, urgent function of words: to form for us “mental representations of things not actually present,” so that we can form a judgment of what world we live in and where we might be going in it, what we can celebrate, what we must fear. (c)
February 2, 2017
Full review at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books
The collection is organized into sections: “Talks, Essays, and Occasional Pieces,” “Book Introductions and Notes on Writers,” “Book Reviews,” and “The Hope of Rabbits: A Journal of a Writer’s Week.” The last section, the journal of a week, is about a week she spent at a retreat for women who are artists.
While I enjoyed everything in the book, the most electric section is “Talks, Essays, and Occasional Pieces.” When Le Guin speaks, she imparts warmth and humor while also conveying an unwavering devotion to fighting injustice. She is not malicious but neither does she mince words. Everyone, regardless of their feelings about abortion, should read her short piece “What It Was Like.” a transcript of a speech she made to the Oregon chapter of NARAL in 2004, about the times before abortion was legal. This speech, when read in its entirety, is so powerful that I had to take a break after reading it; it made me woozy.
Le Guin’s book reviews and other commentary will mostly be of interest to long-time fans who love to see what she thinks and above all how she thinks. Le Guin’s review of Jo Walton’s Among Others was interesting mostly because I had previously read Among Others. However, although I have never read a book by Jan Morris, I’m still captivated by Le Guin’s review of Morris’ Hav, because I like seeing how Le Guin thinks. She writes conversationally enough that I almost feel like we could hang out in her kitchen, and I could reply with, “Well I think…” and then we would talk about books and also raising children and pets.
The reason I open with talking about my life and my connection with Le Guin’s work is that many Le Guin fans are not casual fans. We are maybe just a teeny bit obsessive, but not in a bad way. This book is, for the most part, for fans on the obsessive-but-not-in-a-bad-way end of the spectrum. Le Guin’s books brought me comfort when I was enduring something terrible and they’ve gone on to nurture my soul and challenge my mind. So for me, this collection is solid gold. The only reason I’m giving it a B and not an A is that it’s not cohesive work (intentionally). It’s like a collection of special features on a DVD.
- Carrie S.
The collection is organized into sections: “Talks, Essays, and Occasional Pieces,” “Book Introductions and Notes on Writers,” “Book Reviews,” and “The Hope of Rabbits: A Journal of a Writer’s Week.” The last section, the journal of a week, is about a week she spent at a retreat for women who are artists.
While I enjoyed everything in the book, the most electric section is “Talks, Essays, and Occasional Pieces.” When Le Guin speaks, she imparts warmth and humor while also conveying an unwavering devotion to fighting injustice. She is not malicious but neither does she mince words. Everyone, regardless of their feelings about abortion, should read her short piece “What It Was Like.” a transcript of a speech she made to the Oregon chapter of NARAL in 2004, about the times before abortion was legal. This speech, when read in its entirety, is so powerful that I had to take a break after reading it; it made me woozy.
Le Guin’s book reviews and other commentary will mostly be of interest to long-time fans who love to see what she thinks and above all how she thinks. Le Guin’s review of Jo Walton’s Among Others was interesting mostly because I had previously read Among Others. However, although I have never read a book by Jan Morris, I’m still captivated by Le Guin’s review of Morris’ Hav, because I like seeing how Le Guin thinks. She writes conversationally enough that I almost feel like we could hang out in her kitchen, and I could reply with, “Well I think…” and then we would talk about books and also raising children and pets.
The reason I open with talking about my life and my connection with Le Guin’s work is that many Le Guin fans are not casual fans. We are maybe just a teeny bit obsessive, but not in a bad way. This book is, for the most part, for fans on the obsessive-but-not-in-a-bad-way end of the spectrum. Le Guin’s books brought me comfort when I was enduring something terrible and they’ve gone on to nurture my soul and challenge my mind. So for me, this collection is solid gold. The only reason I’m giving it a B and not an A is that it’s not cohesive work (intentionally). It’s like a collection of special features on a DVD.
- Carrie S.
Read
August 5, 2022If anything, this book was a great reminder of the fact that most (if not all) white leftists, while well-intentioned, will inevitably still be chained to many biases they have regarding their own perception of the West as equivalent to progress. I'm glad this collection of writings at the least exposed me to the fact that even someone as beloved and revered as Ursula K. Le Guin can be flawed in her worldview, in her idealism of the West as a bastion of progress which it has progressively lost, as if it wasn't birthed on the stones of oppression. This isn't to say Le Guin was all-consumingly naïve, but she was with respect to certain topics, and there were at times trains of thought she would meander into that would inexplicably expose a quite bizarre prejudice she possessed (mostly in relation to her views of Muslim societies and her contention with the ever-prevalent social dilemmas presented by the existence of a gender binary). Nonetheless, as a whole, these writings were very enjoyable to read, and there are still aspects of Le Guin's worldview that I admire and hope to adhere to. I also managed to find a good chunk of intriguing book recommendations from her section dedicated to book reviews. My favorite essays are as follows:
Inventing Languages, What Women Know, Living in a Work of Art, The Death of the Book, Freedom, and The Hope of Rabbits: A Journal of a Writer's Week.
Inventing Languages, What Women Know, Living in a Work of Art, The Death of the Book, Freedom, and The Hope of Rabbits: A Journal of a Writer's Week.
March 8, 2022
“Listening is an act of community, which requires space, time, and silence. Reading is a means of listening.”
I wanted to like this book because I respect Le Guin as an author and a person, but two stars was a gift. This drivel seems tossed together to justify the selling price. It won awards perhaps because it says all the right things. Or it was her turn. (Good heavens, this was nominated for a 2017 Hugo. That being a popularity contest, folks will vote for it without reading it.)
“There seems to be a firewall in my mind against ideas expressed in numbers and graphs rather than words, or in abstract words such as Sin and Gravity.”
She has opinions and states them well, but with precious few facts. She feels rather than thinks, and she’s proud of it. Yet she perfers “the fierce reality of true fiction” over “wishful thinking.”
“I’d rather follow a narrative than a thought, and the more abstract the thought the less I understand it. Philosophy inhabits my mind only as parables and logic never enters it at all.”
Le Guin admits she writes fantasy because she can’t do the math for real science fiction. That’s legitimate. Others should be as honest. But then she degrades hard science fiction as elitist and reactionary. That’s hardly fair. I like fantasy--her kind of fantasy--but I like science fiction that makes me think about velocity vectors and Hohmann transfer orbits.
“… the critics increasing restriction of literary fiction to social and psychological realism, all else being brushed aside as sub literary entertainment.”
Skip the reviews. They’re good but she both tells you too much and tells you how to think. Many folks like to be told how to think, but even when I agree with her I’d rather find my own way.
“The New York/East Coast literary scene is so inward-looking and provincial that I’ve always been glad not to be part of it.”
Her defense of abortion, whatever you may think on the topic, is among the best I’ve ever read. I wonder what her child would have thought.
“It’s hard to ask a child to find a way through all that [reproduced voices, images and words used for commercial and political profit] alone.”
I wanted to like this book because I respect Le Guin as an author and a person, but two stars was a gift. This drivel seems tossed together to justify the selling price. It won awards perhaps because it says all the right things. Or it was her turn. (Good heavens, this was nominated for a 2017 Hugo. That being a popularity contest, folks will vote for it without reading it.)
“There seems to be a firewall in my mind against ideas expressed in numbers and graphs rather than words, or in abstract words such as Sin and Gravity.”
She has opinions and states them well, but with precious few facts. She feels rather than thinks, and she’s proud of it. Yet she perfers “the fierce reality of true fiction” over “wishful thinking.”
“I’d rather follow a narrative than a thought, and the more abstract the thought the less I understand it. Philosophy inhabits my mind only as parables and logic never enters it at all.”
Le Guin admits she writes fantasy because she can’t do the math for real science fiction. That’s legitimate. Others should be as honest. But then she degrades hard science fiction as elitist and reactionary. That’s hardly fair. I like fantasy--her kind of fantasy--but I like science fiction that makes me think about velocity vectors and Hohmann transfer orbits.
“… the critics increasing restriction of literary fiction to social and psychological realism, all else being brushed aside as sub literary entertainment.”
Skip the reviews. They’re good but she both tells you too much and tells you how to think. Many folks like to be told how to think, but even when I agree with her I’d rather find my own way.
“The New York/East Coast literary scene is so inward-looking and provincial that I’ve always been glad not to be part of it.”
Her defense of abortion, whatever you may think on the topic, is among the best I’ve ever read. I wonder what her child would have thought.
“It’s hard to ask a child to find a way through all that [reproduced voices, images and words used for commercial and political profit] alone.”
March 7, 2023
Ursula LeGuin (1929-2018) has been one of my favorite authors since I began reading her books and short stories in the 70s. I picked up this book, published in 2016, because I was interested in what she might have to say about her life and her books. The contents are divided into three main parts--her talks and essays, her book introductions, and her book reviews.
In the first section, she reiterates several themes. She defends "genre," that is science fiction, against the sneers of the literary types. Good books with good stories are good, no matter what genre they're written in. As she states in an essay, "Judgment of literature by category or genre is worthless." She also believes that "story" is more important than "message." She certainly does not believe in imposing some sort of message on her readers but one of the things I most like about LeGuin is that she has a social conscience which comes through in her stories. She speaks strongly on behalf of what is the greatest power of the writer and artist--and all humanity?--the power of imagination.
I found LeGuin's book introductions and book reviews to be interesting. She mentions a number of authors I have read, such as Philip K. Dick (for his "The Man in the High Castle"), Margaret Atwood, and H.G. Wells. And she also mentions authors whom I've heard of and never read, such as Salman Rushdie and David Mitchell--and she has gotten me interested in reading them. She speaks very highly of one author, Jose Saramago, whom I have never heard of, but now I feel I should look into a book or two of his. She also mentions authors whom I have very little interest in, based on her reviews--and that's useful as well. I'm thinking of Doris Lessing in particular (LeGuin's review of "The Cleft" by Lessing makes it sound like it's a perfectly awful book!).
I enjoyed this book, although there was very little about her life, which, after all, is why I wanted to read it. There is an essay, "Living in a Work of Art," about the house she grew up in Berkeley, which is beautifully written and was the best essay in the book. And, at the end, there is her journal writing from her week at a lovely writer's retreat, which gave a little more insight into this most remarkable writer of our times.
4 solid stars. I recommend that you read Ursula LeGuin's books!
In the first section, she reiterates several themes. She defends "genre," that is science fiction, against the sneers of the literary types. Good books with good stories are good, no matter what genre they're written in. As she states in an essay, "Judgment of literature by category or genre is worthless." She also believes that "story" is more important than "message." She certainly does not believe in imposing some sort of message on her readers but one of the things I most like about LeGuin is that she has a social conscience which comes through in her stories. She speaks strongly on behalf of what is the greatest power of the writer and artist--and all humanity?--the power of imagination.
I found LeGuin's book introductions and book reviews to be interesting. She mentions a number of authors I have read, such as Philip K. Dick (for his "The Man in the High Castle"), Margaret Atwood, and H.G. Wells. And she also mentions authors whom I've heard of and never read, such as Salman Rushdie and David Mitchell--and she has gotten me interested in reading them. She speaks very highly of one author, Jose Saramago, whom I have never heard of, but now I feel I should look into a book or two of his. She also mentions authors whom I have very little interest in, based on her reviews--and that's useful as well. I'm thinking of Doris Lessing in particular (LeGuin's review of "The Cleft" by Lessing makes it sound like it's a perfectly awful book!).
I enjoyed this book, although there was very little about her life, which, after all, is why I wanted to read it. There is an essay, "Living in a Work of Art," about the house she grew up in Berkeley, which is beautifully written and was the best essay in the book. And, at the end, there is her journal writing from her week at a lovely writer's retreat, which gave a little more insight into this most remarkable writer of our times.
4 solid stars. I recommend that you read Ursula LeGuin's books!
May 7, 2018
4 stars instead of 5 because although some sections were amazing, other sections didn't grab my interest.
UKLG is the QUEEN of all things. The two stars of this compilation of essays, reviews, etc. are What Women Know and Disappearing Grandmothers. Both are *PERFECT*.
-----------WHAT WOMEN KNOW-----------
What do we learn from women? How to be human: what to fear, what to love, social skills, culture. Basically, "the whole amazing, complicated business of staying alive and being a member of society." Women are life-scholars, teachers of the most complex curriculum possible. They teach their children genderless skills.
Men teach their children gendered skills: how to be manly to their sons, how to be womanly to their daughters. How to fit into hierarchies, uphold the status quo.
Men teach to fit into the status quo, and yet: "a very frequently repeated story tells us that women, innately unadventurous and conservative, are the great upholders of traditional values. Is that true? May it be a story men tell in order to be able to see themselves as great innovaters, the movers and shakers, the ones who get to change society's ways, the teachers of what is new and important? I think it's worth thinking about."
"Women, come up out of that basement and the kitchen and the kids' room; this whole house is our house. And men, it's time you learned to live in that dark basement that you seem to be so afraid of, and the kitchen and the kids' room, too. And when you've done that, come on, let's talk, all of us, around the hearth, in the living room of our shared house. We have a lot to tell each other, a lot to learn."
-----------Disappearing Grandmothers-----------
Fun fact she gives: the percentage of women professors drops as the prestige of the position and institution rise.
Four Ways Women's Literature is Excluded from the Literary Canon
1. Denigration: Not as obvious as it used to be, it's just as pervasive, only more subtle. For instance, critics can dismiss entire genres unread if they're associated with women (see the terrible label "chick lit" or romance- you don't see inane machismo war books being dismissed by critics as "prick lit" though God well knows I'll be using that phrase from now on).
Women's writing is called "charming, elegant, poignant, sensitive" but rarely "powerful, rugged, masterful." It's as if the journalists and critics can't think about anything BUT the writer's gender (and, therefore, sexual attractiveness) if she's a woman. For instance, it's pretty rare to find a discussion of George Eliot that doesn't describe her as "plain." How often are men authors' attractiveness commented on? But "the sin of not having a pretty face is held against women even when they're dead."
"Comparing a book written by a woman to work by other women, but not to work by men, is a subtle and effective form of denigration. It allows the reviewer to never say a woman's book is better than a man's, and helps keep women's achievement safely out of the mainstream, off in the hen coop."
2. Omission: Periodicals universally review many more men's books than women's, and at greater length. Books by women are grouped together in reviews, while men's books are reviewed individually. Literary prize shortlists sometimes include books by both men and women, but the prize nearly always goes to a man: from 2 times out of three, to 9 times out of 10, depending on the prize.
3. Exception: First off, reviews of books by men usually don't talk about the fact that the writer is a man. Reviews of books by women usually talk about her gender. She is the exception. A critic may be forced to admit Virginia Woolf is good, but talk about her as if she's "a wonderful fluke." The exception that proves the rule.
"The woman writer's writing is "unique" but has no influence on later writers; she is the object of a 'cult'; she is a (charming, elegant, poignant, sensitive) fragile hothouse flower that should not be seen as competing with the (rugged, powerful, masterful) vigor of the male novelist."
4. Disappearance: the absolute most effective. Think of Elizabeth Gaskell and Margaret Oliphant. Even now they are called "Mrs. Gaskell" and "Mrs. Oliphant" to hammer home their gender. They were taken seriously when they lived, and now are nearly invisible compared to male counterparts. Gaskell has been brought back by feminists in recent years, but not powerfully so, and Oliphant not at all (despite her similarities to Trollope, who remains in the forefront of literary attention).
"It won't do. We really can't go on letting good writers be disappeared and buried because they weren't men, while writers who should be left to rot in peace are endlessly resurrected, the zombies of criticism and curriculum, because they weren't women. I'm no beauty, but don't give me a headstone that says She Was Plain. I am a grandmother, but don't give me a headstone that says Somebody's Grandmother. If I have a headstone, I want my name on it."
UKLG is the QUEEN of all things. The two stars of this compilation of essays, reviews, etc. are What Women Know and Disappearing Grandmothers. Both are *PERFECT*.
-----------WHAT WOMEN KNOW-----------
What do we learn from women? How to be human: what to fear, what to love, social skills, culture. Basically, "the whole amazing, complicated business of staying alive and being a member of society." Women are life-scholars, teachers of the most complex curriculum possible. They teach their children genderless skills.
Men teach their children gendered skills: how to be manly to their sons, how to be womanly to their daughters. How to fit into hierarchies, uphold the status quo.
Men teach to fit into the status quo, and yet: "a very frequently repeated story tells us that women, innately unadventurous and conservative, are the great upholders of traditional values. Is that true? May it be a story men tell in order to be able to see themselves as great innovaters, the movers and shakers, the ones who get to change society's ways, the teachers of what is new and important? I think it's worth thinking about."
"Women, come up out of that basement and the kitchen and the kids' room; this whole house is our house. And men, it's time you learned to live in that dark basement that you seem to be so afraid of, and the kitchen and the kids' room, too. And when you've done that, come on, let's talk, all of us, around the hearth, in the living room of our shared house. We have a lot to tell each other, a lot to learn."
-----------Disappearing Grandmothers-----------
Fun fact she gives: the percentage of women professors drops as the prestige of the position and institution rise.
Four Ways Women's Literature is Excluded from the Literary Canon
1. Denigration: Not as obvious as it used to be, it's just as pervasive, only more subtle. For instance, critics can dismiss entire genres unread if they're associated with women (see the terrible label "chick lit" or romance- you don't see inane machismo war books being dismissed by critics as "prick lit" though God well knows I'll be using that phrase from now on).
Women's writing is called "charming, elegant, poignant, sensitive" but rarely "powerful, rugged, masterful." It's as if the journalists and critics can't think about anything BUT the writer's gender (and, therefore, sexual attractiveness) if she's a woman. For instance, it's pretty rare to find a discussion of George Eliot that doesn't describe her as "plain." How often are men authors' attractiveness commented on? But "the sin of not having a pretty face is held against women even when they're dead."
"Comparing a book written by a woman to work by other women, but not to work by men, is a subtle and effective form of denigration. It allows the reviewer to never say a woman's book is better than a man's, and helps keep women's achievement safely out of the mainstream, off in the hen coop."
2. Omission: Periodicals universally review many more men's books than women's, and at greater length. Books by women are grouped together in reviews, while men's books are reviewed individually. Literary prize shortlists sometimes include books by both men and women, but the prize nearly always goes to a man: from 2 times out of three, to 9 times out of 10, depending on the prize.
3. Exception: First off, reviews of books by men usually don't talk about the fact that the writer is a man. Reviews of books by women usually talk about her gender. She is the exception. A critic may be forced to admit Virginia Woolf is good, but talk about her as if she's "a wonderful fluke." The exception that proves the rule.
"The woman writer's writing is "unique" but has no influence on later writers; she is the object of a 'cult'; she is a (charming, elegant, poignant, sensitive) fragile hothouse flower that should not be seen as competing with the (rugged, powerful, masterful) vigor of the male novelist."
4. Disappearance: the absolute most effective. Think of Elizabeth Gaskell and Margaret Oliphant. Even now they are called "Mrs. Gaskell" and "Mrs. Oliphant" to hammer home their gender. They were taken seriously when they lived, and now are nearly invisible compared to male counterparts. Gaskell has been brought back by feminists in recent years, but not powerfully so, and Oliphant not at all (despite her similarities to Trollope, who remains in the forefront of literary attention).
"It won't do. We really can't go on letting good writers be disappeared and buried because they weren't men, while writers who should be left to rot in peace are endlessly resurrected, the zombies of criticism and curriculum, because they weren't women. I'm no beauty, but don't give me a headstone that says She Was Plain. I am a grandmother, but don't give me a headstone that says Somebody's Grandmother. If I have a headstone, I want my name on it."
June 7, 2018
I've never read a Le Guin book, but I really enjoyed her essays and book reviews. I mean, there was some repetitive content and some that just didn't interest me at all, but I really enjoyed her voice and felt invigorated and angry at the same time--especially when she talks about the hidden female writers, the discrimination on literary genre (she hates Cormac McCarthy and JK Rowlings, apparently). I am not a sci-fi reader, but so many of her essays made me think that perhaps I am being narrowminded and am missing something essential.
Also, I've always hated Wallace Stegnar and her essay on him stealing a woman's work to create Angle of Repose was super validating.
Also, I've always hated Wallace Stegnar and her essay on him stealing a woman's work to create Angle of Repose was super validating.
February 16, 2018
While not being in any way autobiographical, this book gives surprising insight into Ursula K. Le Guin as a person. I like her very much. I especially liked the tentative modesty of her introduction to this rag-tag collection of essays, speeches, introductions, book reviews, and diary excerpts. She's keen to assert that she's no non-fiction writer, and doubts both her skill and her subject matter. I find her non-fiction to be skillful in just the way that her fiction is: surgically precise and unnervingly insightful, so the modesty is rather endearing.
Le Guin ranges across a number of topics: writing, reading, art, and being human. She issues more than one passionate defence of SF and all genre fiction; the uses and abuses of genre definitions; memories of childhood homes; the future of publishing. These selections were never intended as a collection, so there is a fair amount of over-lap, and it allows Le Guin's personality - or at least various concerns of hers - to shine through. I never knew that Le Guin was descended from people we might call 'Wild Westerners', those who won the west: cowboys, gunslingers, cattle ranchers and the like. There's a protectiveness of the desert life that emerges in her essays whenever Hollywood or the East Coast elite bowdlerise or romantise those people. She'll stand up for regionalism just as staunchly as she'll stand up for SF. There's also a thread of environmentalism running through the essays, and a deep contempt for Amazon and the goliath publishers who prefer best-sellers to honest art.
I was surprised at how much of a feminist she is in these essays. Positively strident. I know her fiction touches on gender a lot, but it always seemed to me that Le Guin was occasionally essentialist, acknowledging the large difference between men and women when it comes to violence and aggression, but above all an individualist. She seemed impatient, more than anything else, at generalisations about sex, both feminist and anti-feminist. Her characters alway defy easy pigeon-holes; her utopias are ambiguous.
But her essay What it Was Like is a powerful plea in defence of abortion, in defence of the children she has now who could never have been if she'd been forced to bear an earlier pregnancy and live the life of inescapable poverty that would've been a certain result of a bastard child in those days. Disappearing Grandmothers, written in 2011, reminds me very strongly of Joanna Russ's hilarious and furious How to Suppress Women's Writing. When great female authors like Le Guin and Russ point out how women disappear from print and from memory nevermind how respected and influential they were in their lifetime, it always gives me chills to think that Dale Spenders Women of Ideas: And What Men Have Done to Them is currently out of print.
Her book reviews are excellent. I suppose it's hard to be objective about that. After all, the opinions of people we respect on the things we love can hardly be anything but fascinating. Nevermind the enormous pleasure to be had just from being introduced to new authors and adding them to the ever-growing TBR pile. The authors she reviews are more likely to be literary authors than SF, and as most of them are reviews for The Manchester Guardian, they're not necessarily even the authors she would've chosen, given the choice - no Virginia Woolf! I rather enjoyed that; it's very educational to see a woman so gracefully walk the line of honesty and kindness. Tact - that's what it is, and there's not enough to go round these days. I should know; I'm positively ashamed to think back on some of my reviews after reading Le Guin letting down bad books so gently.
And yet, despite each item being excellent and interesting individually, it doesn't quite hang together as a whole. The only unifying factor is that everything herein was written within a certain timeframe and is nonfiction. So it can be a little repetitive, the themes are accidental, and the order occasionally feels arbitrary. This is a book for lovers of Le Guin, I think, who want to know her better - and for anyone who love writing, just for the peak into the mind of one the greatest writers: both as craftsman and as artist.
Le Guin ranges across a number of topics: writing, reading, art, and being human. She issues more than one passionate defence of SF and all genre fiction; the uses and abuses of genre definitions; memories of childhood homes; the future of publishing. These selections were never intended as a collection, so there is a fair amount of over-lap, and it allows Le Guin's personality - or at least various concerns of hers - to shine through. I never knew that Le Guin was descended from people we might call 'Wild Westerners', those who won the west: cowboys, gunslingers, cattle ranchers and the like. There's a protectiveness of the desert life that emerges in her essays whenever Hollywood or the East Coast elite bowdlerise or romantise those people. She'll stand up for regionalism just as staunchly as she'll stand up for SF. There's also a thread of environmentalism running through the essays, and a deep contempt for Amazon and the goliath publishers who prefer best-sellers to honest art.
I was surprised at how much of a feminist she is in these essays. Positively strident. I know her fiction touches on gender a lot, but it always seemed to me that Le Guin was occasionally essentialist, acknowledging the large difference between men and women when it comes to violence and aggression, but above all an individualist. She seemed impatient, more than anything else, at generalisations about sex, both feminist and anti-feminist. Her characters alway defy easy pigeon-holes; her utopias are ambiguous.
But her essay What it Was Like is a powerful plea in defence of abortion, in defence of the children she has now who could never have been if she'd been forced to bear an earlier pregnancy and live the life of inescapable poverty that would've been a certain result of a bastard child in those days. Disappearing Grandmothers, written in 2011, reminds me very strongly of Joanna Russ's hilarious and furious How to Suppress Women's Writing. When great female authors like Le Guin and Russ point out how women disappear from print and from memory nevermind how respected and influential they were in their lifetime, it always gives me chills to think that Dale Spenders Women of Ideas: And What Men Have Done to Them is currently out of print.
Her book reviews are excellent. I suppose it's hard to be objective about that. After all, the opinions of people we respect on the things we love can hardly be anything but fascinating. Nevermind the enormous pleasure to be had just from being introduced to new authors and adding them to the ever-growing TBR pile. The authors she reviews are more likely to be literary authors than SF, and as most of them are reviews for The Manchester Guardian, they're not necessarily even the authors she would've chosen, given the choice - no Virginia Woolf! I rather enjoyed that; it's very educational to see a woman so gracefully walk the line of honesty and kindness. Tact - that's what it is, and there's not enough to go round these days. I should know; I'm positively ashamed to think back on some of my reviews after reading Le Guin letting down bad books so gently.
And yet, despite each item being excellent and interesting individually, it doesn't quite hang together as a whole. The only unifying factor is that everything herein was written within a certain timeframe and is nonfiction. So it can be a little repetitive, the themes are accidental, and the order occasionally feels arbitrary. This is a book for lovers of Le Guin, I think, who want to know her better - and for anyone who love writing, just for the peak into the mind of one the greatest writers: both as craftsman and as artist.
April 18, 2019
This lovely book is about one-third general essays, one-third essays on specific books and writers, and one-third book reviews, plus a little coda journal from Le Guin's week at a women's writing retreat in the Pacific Northwest.
I found it delightful from start to finish. I've always been a fan of Le Guin essays, and these from the last 15 years of her life held up beautifully. There's some repetition of themes, especially her resentment that science fiction isn't (or didn't used to be) considered literature, and her responses to people who think the book is dying. But she's such a fine writer that even when she's repeating themes, she says things differently.
Special treats include "Living in a Work of Art," her essay about growing up in a home designed by Bernard Maybeck; her essays on H. L. Davis's Honey in the Horn and Charles McNichols' Crazy Weather (two books and writers I had never heard of), her long essay on Jose Saramago, and a couple of reviews of favorites of mine, including the heart-wrenching review of Dreamsnake by the recently deceased Vonda N. McIntyre, a friend of mine and a very close friend of Le Guin's.
You get a real feel for who she was and how she read. I was especially taken by her putting down Saramago's Blindness because it was getting dark and violent and she didn't trust him enough--so she went back and read everything else he had ever written, built up the trust, and returned to Blindness, a book I read decades ago and remember vividly.
All in all, this is a window into Le Guin, into writing, reading, books, and the environments we live in.
I found it delightful from start to finish. I've always been a fan of Le Guin essays, and these from the last 15 years of her life held up beautifully. There's some repetition of themes, especially her resentment that science fiction isn't (or didn't used to be) considered literature, and her responses to people who think the book is dying. But she's such a fine writer that even when she's repeating themes, she says things differently.
Special treats include "Living in a Work of Art," her essay about growing up in a home designed by Bernard Maybeck; her essays on H. L. Davis's Honey in the Horn and Charles McNichols' Crazy Weather (two books and writers I had never heard of), her long essay on Jose Saramago, and a couple of reviews of favorites of mine, including the heart-wrenching review of Dreamsnake by the recently deceased Vonda N. McIntyre, a friend of mine and a very close friend of Le Guin's.
You get a real feel for who she was and how she read. I was especially taken by her putting down Saramago's Blindness because it was getting dark and violent and she didn't trust him enough--so she went back and read everything else he had ever written, built up the trust, and returned to Blindness, a book I read decades ago and remember vividly.
All in all, this is a window into Le Guin, into writing, reading, books, and the environments we live in.
April 3, 2019
What a pleasure. This book is repetitive at times, as it is a collection of her nonfiction works, most of which are speeches and so have some overlap with each other. She champions the imagination, and its work and growth, and opposes stifling genre snobbiness. She thinks that nonfiction gets too much respect and that fiction of all sorts is underrated, but especially fiction which is especially imaginative: fantasy or science fiction. One of the reasons for this she insists begins with schooling, and what we consider important, we write, “what I did on my summer vacation” rather than “what I did not do on my summer vacation” focusing our energy and attention on our limited experience, rather than spreading your imagination wide to consider all the things that might have been. Another thing I found especially interesting was her thoughts about the messages that people find in literature. She is often asked, “do you think of the story first and then add in the message or do you start with the message and then make a story to hold it?” and she says this question does not even make sense. The story is the message-- that there isn’t a particular message she wants her readers to take away from it. She doesn’t make a jar full of candy, she makes the jar, and her readers both bring and find candy in it. Anything else is putting the art as servile to a project, it gets to be not art but preaching, and she doesn’t like to preach.
January 29, 2018
This is a difficult book to review because it is not what I was hoping it would be. It provided a few gems of insight and I am grateful for them. I am delighted to have finally picked up a book by Ursula Le Guin and, frankly, it was an unusual first book to use as an introduction to her work. I started reading it a few days before she died and intend to read something else by her.
There are two primary sections to this book. The first I'll put into the category of discussions of genre and the publishing world. In this section there is also a lovely essay written as a call to develop the imagination. The latter section consists of her introductions to various scifi books. Since scifi is not in my wheelhouse, reading all of these pieces would not have enriched me. (It is typically difficult for me to skip sections of a book.) I did read about half of them and am now curious to read a couple of scifi classics.
I don't think I would have chosen this book had I better known what was between the cover. And, like most things that end up different than what we imagine, I'm glad I didn't know. Also, as a writer now writing to a new audience, her insights into the publishing world empowered me to keep forging my own unique path.
There are two primary sections to this book. The first I'll put into the category of discussions of genre and the publishing world. In this section there is also a lovely essay written as a call to develop the imagination. The latter section consists of her introductions to various scifi books. Since scifi is not in my wheelhouse, reading all of these pieces would not have enriched me. (It is typically difficult for me to skip sections of a book.) I did read about half of them and am now curious to read a couple of scifi classics.
I don't think I would have chosen this book had I better known what was between the cover. And, like most things that end up different than what we imagine, I'm glad I didn't know. Also, as a writer now writing to a new audience, her insights into the publishing world empowered me to keep forging my own unique path.
March 28, 2019
Lidos os seguintes Ensaios e Outros
The Mind Is Still
The Operating Instructions
What It Was Like
Genre: A Word Only a Frenchman Could Love
“Things Not Actually Present”: On Fantasy, with a Tribute to Jorge Luis Borges
A Response, by Ansible, from Tau Ceti
The Beast in the Book
Inventing Languages
On David Hensel’s Submission to the Royal Academy of Art
On Serious Literature
Teasing Myself Out of Thought
Living in a Work of Art
Staying Awake
Great Nature’s Second Course
What Women Know
Disappearing Grandmothers
Learning to Write Science Fiction from Virginia Woolf
The Death of the Book
Le Guin’s Hypothesis
Making Up Stories
Freedom
Philip K. Dick: The Man in the High Castle
Huxley’s Bad Trip
Stanislaw Lem: Solaris
George MacDonald: The Princess and the Goblin
Examples of Dignity: Thoughts on the Work of José Saramago
H. G. Wells: The First Men in the Moon
H. G. Wells: The Time Machine
Italo Calvino: The Complete Cosmicomics
The Mind Is Still
The Operating Instructions
What It Was Like
Genre: A Word Only a Frenchman Could Love
“Things Not Actually Present”: On Fantasy, with a Tribute to Jorge Luis Borges
A Response, by Ansible, from Tau Ceti
The Beast in the Book
Inventing Languages
On David Hensel’s Submission to the Royal Academy of Art
On Serious Literature
Teasing Myself Out of Thought
Living in a Work of Art
Staying Awake
Great Nature’s Second Course
What Women Know
Disappearing Grandmothers
Learning to Write Science Fiction from Virginia Woolf
The Death of the Book
Le Guin’s Hypothesis
Making Up Stories
Freedom
Philip K. Dick: The Man in the High Castle
Huxley’s Bad Trip
Stanislaw Lem: Solaris
George MacDonald: The Princess and the Goblin
Examples of Dignity: Thoughts on the Work of José Saramago
H. G. Wells: The First Men in the Moon
H. G. Wells: The Time Machine
Italo Calvino: The Complete Cosmicomics
July 8, 2018
Samples of Talks, Essays, and Occasional Pieces:
Teasing Myself Out of Thought
Living in a Work of Art
Learning to Write Science Fiction from Virginia Woolf
Le Guin's Hypothesis
Samples of Book Reviews:
Margaret Atwood: The Year of the Flood
Roberto Bolano: Monsieur Pain
Kent Haruf: Our Souls at Night
David Mitchell: The Bone Clocks
Stefan Zweig: The Post Office Girl
Teasing Myself Out of Thought
Living in a Work of Art
Learning to Write Science Fiction from Virginia Woolf
Le Guin's Hypothesis
Samples of Book Reviews:
Margaret Atwood: The Year of the Flood
Roberto Bolano: Monsieur Pain
Kent Haruf: Our Souls at Night
David Mitchell: The Bone Clocks
Stefan Zweig: The Post Office Girl
February 28, 2024
”All of us have to learn how to invent our lives, make them up, imagine them. We need to be taught these skills; we need guides to show us how. Without them, our lives get made up for us by other people…The reason literacy is important is that literature is the operating instructions. The best manual we have. The most useful guide to the country we’re visiting: life.”
This was a DELIGHTFUL collection of essays by the late Ursula K. LeGuin. I’m surprised it took me this long to read her, honestly; her voice carries depths of wit, gentle honestly, and a perfect balance of searing truth with tongue-in-cheek playfulness. This book was a wonderful collection ranging from the value of reading to gender differences in the literary canon, from invented languages to a tour of her childhood house, to finally (and most consistently throughout the collection) a thorough, varied defense of science fiction and fantasy as literature. I feel like you really get to know LeGuin as you read this book; her personality shines through clear as day, making me feel like I was spending time with a new friend as I progressed through these works. Would recommend to anyone who loves her fiction or with a vested interest in genre within the umbrella of fiction!
I didn’t realize when I bought this how much of the book was filled with book reviews and introductions LeGuin wrote for other editions, but it really does feel like a treasurehouse of critique for good literature (most of which I have not read). I look forward to returning to these essays as I inevitably read some of these works over the years!
This was a DELIGHTFUL collection of essays by the late Ursula K. LeGuin. I’m surprised it took me this long to read her, honestly; her voice carries depths of wit, gentle honestly, and a perfect balance of searing truth with tongue-in-cheek playfulness. This book was a wonderful collection ranging from the value of reading to gender differences in the literary canon, from invented languages to a tour of her childhood house, to finally (and most consistently throughout the collection) a thorough, varied defense of science fiction and fantasy as literature. I feel like you really get to know LeGuin as you read this book; her personality shines through clear as day, making me feel like I was spending time with a new friend as I progressed through these works. Would recommend to anyone who loves her fiction or with a vested interest in genre within the umbrella of fiction!
I didn’t realize when I bought this how much of the book was filled with book reviews and introductions LeGuin wrote for other editions, but it really does feel like a treasurehouse of critique for good literature (most of which I have not read). I look forward to returning to these essays as I inevitably read some of these works over the years!
April 20, 2024
Dear reader: How are you doing? I am fairly obsolete, but by no means, at the moment, dead.
I came to this book with some sense of urgency after reading The Dispossessed and The Tombs of Atuan. Of Le Guin's non-fiction and speeches, probably the most well-known soundbyte (with the most pop cultural currency) is from her at the National Book Foundation,
Books aren’t just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words. ,
collected in this volume under the title "Freedom".
"Freedom" might be the strongest piece in this collection. Some of the other topics touched on by Le Guin in this volume (gender, publishing, genre) have been addressed, much more incisively by other critics and writers. Reading this volume in 2024, I am struck by how much the lit scene has changed since Le Guin's day; surely much of Le Guin's writing in defence of genre has paved the way for a world in which the place of genre-fiction and sci-fi in fiction is taken for granted. Funnily enough our prof did not put Le Guin on the syllabus for the survey of science-fiction course, which feels like an unfortunate omission to me.
Reading some of the essays and speeches, and flipping through the rest of the book, it struck me how much Le Guin isn't difficult or obscure at all in her non-fiction. More people, especially non-readers, should read her non-fiction (and fiction!). It was fun finding out who Le Guin reads: she writes effusively about her love for T. H. White, and Virginia Woolf (and her fondness for Flush, which features in an essay on Woolf and science-fiction, and also rather bizarrely in this Paris Review Interview), and many others I have forgotten.
Might revisit sporadically, but am returning it to the library for now.
I came to this book with some sense of urgency after reading The Dispossessed and The Tombs of Atuan. Of Le Guin's non-fiction and speeches, probably the most well-known soundbyte (with the most pop cultural currency) is from her at the National Book Foundation,
Books aren’t just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words. ,
collected in this volume under the title "Freedom".
"Freedom" might be the strongest piece in this collection. Some of the other topics touched on by Le Guin in this volume (gender, publishing, genre) have been addressed, much more incisively by other critics and writers. Reading this volume in 2024, I am struck by how much the lit scene has changed since Le Guin's day; surely much of Le Guin's writing in defence of genre has paved the way for a world in which the place of genre-fiction and sci-fi in fiction is taken for granted. Funnily enough our prof did not put Le Guin on the syllabus for the survey of science-fiction course, which feels like an unfortunate omission to me.
Reading some of the essays and speeches, and flipping through the rest of the book, it struck me how much Le Guin isn't difficult or obscure at all in her non-fiction. More people, especially non-readers, should read her non-fiction (and fiction!). It was fun finding out who Le Guin reads: she writes effusively about her love for T. H. White, and Virginia Woolf (and her fondness for Flush, which features in an essay on Woolf and science-fiction, and also rather bizarrely in this Paris Review Interview), and many others I have forgotten.
Might revisit sporadically, but am returning it to the library for now.
January 24, 2022
I saw this book in the library during my last visit. Since I am a fan of books about writing, I was intrigued by the title. This book is divided into four sections - essays, book introductions, reviews and a week's worth of journal entries. I recall having read some of Ursula Le Guin's most well-known books when I was younger, but she really hasn't been on my radar for awhile. I have to admit that I regret that now. While reading her essays, it became apparent to me that she was a forceful writer and thinker. She had very strong opinions about women, writing, science fiction, and the publishing industry.
I enjoyed reading her essays, as well her introductions and her book reviews. I was not familiar with most of the books and authors that she wrote about, but her reviews were very well-written. I'm surprised that I haven't added all the books she reviewed to my tbr. (I am trying to be good.) With that said, I got the most enjoyment from the journal. Ms. Le Guin was invited to a writers' retreat for a week. So, while she spent a majority of her day working on her writing, she also wrote in a journal for the week. She shared little private observations of her days, especially when she went for walks and watched the rabbits out of her window. The descriptions of the rabbits were so detailed, I could almost see them out my window.
One of the views she stressed in her essays is that lesser-known women writers sometimes get lost in history once they pass away. Their books go out of print and they are frequently ignored by educational institutions that tend to focus on male writers. I hope that outcome can't be possible for Ursula Le Guin. Her works are so well-established that they should live on for a long time. Even if I don't add any of the authors she wrote about her book, I will have to add some Le Guin books to my tbr.
I enjoyed reading her essays, as well her introductions and her book reviews. I was not familiar with most of the books and authors that she wrote about, but her reviews were very well-written. I'm surprised that I haven't added all the books she reviewed to my tbr. (I am trying to be good.) With that said, I got the most enjoyment from the journal. Ms. Le Guin was invited to a writers' retreat for a week. So, while she spent a majority of her day working on her writing, she also wrote in a journal for the week. She shared little private observations of her days, especially when she went for walks and watched the rabbits out of her window. The descriptions of the rabbits were so detailed, I could almost see them out my window.
One of the views she stressed in her essays is that lesser-known women writers sometimes get lost in history once they pass away. Their books go out of print and they are frequently ignored by educational institutions that tend to focus on male writers. I hope that outcome can't be possible for Ursula Le Guin. Her works are so well-established that they should live on for a long time. Even if I don't add any of the authors she wrote about her book, I will have to add some Le Guin books to my tbr.
March 31, 2023
So, let me gush for a bit, because I’m not really impartial here. Ursula K. Le Guin was my first favorite author, ever since I had Catwings read to me at a library story time when I was a small child. A look inside of the mind of such an author, by looking at such seemingly small thing such as collected book reviews, essays, talks, and even reflections on a writing retreat, is probably much more interesting to me than most other people.
Her loss is honestly, still hitting home, as the books, articles, and other work she would have been making fails to turn up year after year. An author never really dies though, not one like her, who has shared so much of her mind and soul with her readers for so many decades. In this way, this book is less a farewell, than it is an ascendancy into literary immortality.
Her loss is honestly, still hitting home, as the books, articles, and other work she would have been making fails to turn up year after year. An author never really dies though, not one like her, who has shared so much of her mind and soul with her readers for so many decades. In this way, this book is less a farewell, than it is an ascendancy into literary immortality.
Read
July 4, 2022yazımını sevdiğim yazarların gerçek sesini duymayı çok seviyorum ve bu kitabı bu yüzden aldım. istediğim sesi duydum ama kitap bana hitap etti mi? tam anlamıyla emin değilim. kitabın başındaki edebiyat yazıları ve edebiyat ile alakalı konuşmalar gerçekten ufuk açıyor ama kitap eleştirileri ile alakalı kitabın hacmini arttıran bölümleri okumama gerek var mıydı emin değilim: kitapların bazılarını özellikle goodreadsten veya internetten arattığımda fazlasıyla lokal kitaplar olduğunu gördüm. başka kitaplara yelken açmak için fırsat da yaratmadı bana, sadece kitapları ele alış şeklini takip edebildim. ursula k. le guin'i seviyorum, yarattığı evreleri ve sözcüklerini seviyorum. yazarı sevenlerin okumasını tavsiye ederim. ancak yazara herhangi bir yazara duyulandan daha büyük ilgisi olmayan birisine tavsiye etmem sanırım.
September 16, 2018
This is a collection of nonfiction by Le Guin, a combination of essays (mostly texts from speeches and presentations) and book forewords and reviews, with a diary excerpt finale, all written between 2000 and 2016. I found everything but the diary interesting.
There’s two main themes I found running through this book, both of them aimed directly at those who would guard the gates of literature. Unlike some others who began their career writing imaginative literature, Le Guin never apologized for it, tried to hide it or call it something else, and continued to write it, and publish under that label, even after she had acquired enough fame that she could basically write what she wanted to. As a writer who grew up in California and made her home in Oregon, she also decried the literati who thought Western literature was all horse opera.
I can’t disagree with either sentiment, but the problem with a collection like this that pulls all of these diversely published (in places, for the essays, and in time, for the review, which mostly appeared in Britain’s Guardian newspaper) pieces is that these complaints, repeated at the beginning of most of these, or even the main subject of some, becomes somewhat tiresome. Le Guin shines when she finally gets to actually discussing the book or subject in question, and is genuinely effusive and generous about many other writers. When she does decide to deride a book, she provides a caveat about how it might just not be to her taste, while others may enjoy it (in one case, a review of Chang-Rae Lee’s On Such a Full Sea, wherein she ends the review by saying, “Readers who find anachronism and implausibility easy to swallow will enjoy the story and perhaps find in it the fresh vision, the new take on dreary old Dystopia, that I could not.”).
A couple of the essays have some controversy attached to them. “On Serious Literature” was a quick response she wrote in regard to a review on Slate in 2007 in which the reviewer described genre fiction as a “decaying corpse” that “writers of serious literature” and abandoned in a “shallow grave.” The piece, which Le Guin posted on her own website, portrayed genre fiction coming to visit that reviewer like a zombie, and is quite funny. So funny, that one of the editors of the blog boingboing reproduced it there without her permission, and were roundly thrashed by the e-literati once she complained about it, not the first time that that publication was hoisted by its own petard. “Freedom,” the speech it took her a year to write and which she agonized over the most, was given in acceptance of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in November 2014. It was a shot fired across the bow of contemporary publishing, notably the rise of Amazon, and laments the control of sales over editorial following Amazon’s feud with the publisher Hachette over the pricing of ebooks. It is a manifesto for writers who see themselves as artists, not merely creators of a commodity to be hawked.
The one truly surprising essay to me, and the one that I still think on, was “What It Was Like,” a talk given at a meeting of the Oregon NARAL in January 2004. In it, Le Guin revealed that she had gotten pregnant in 1950, when she was twenty, and what that was like before Roe vs. Wade. Looking back, 54 years later, she described how her entire life would have been different, had she not had that abortion; how she would have had to drop out of college, depend on her parents through the pregnancy, birth, and infancy of that child until she could obtain work and gain some kind of independence for herself and the child. And, in doing so, she wouldn’t have been a Fulbright student heading to France on the Queen Mary in 1953, she wouldn’t have met her husband on that voyage, and she wouldn’t have born the three children she had with him. As she puts it, “If I had not broken the law [against abortion in 1950] and aborted that life nobody wanted, [her current three children] would have been aborted by a cruel, bigoted, and senseless law. They would never have been born.” It’s a tough argument, one that balances unborn life against unborn life, and one that I’m still trying to digest. But that’s the kind of thing Le Guin was good at: putting you in a position to question your beliefs and biases and confront the difficult choices in life.
There’s two main themes I found running through this book, both of them aimed directly at those who would guard the gates of literature. Unlike some others who began their career writing imaginative literature, Le Guin never apologized for it, tried to hide it or call it something else, and continued to write it, and publish under that label, even after she had acquired enough fame that she could basically write what she wanted to. As a writer who grew up in California and made her home in Oregon, she also decried the literati who thought Western literature was all horse opera.
I can’t disagree with either sentiment, but the problem with a collection like this that pulls all of these diversely published (in places, for the essays, and in time, for the review, which mostly appeared in Britain’s Guardian newspaper) pieces is that these complaints, repeated at the beginning of most of these, or even the main subject of some, becomes somewhat tiresome. Le Guin shines when she finally gets to actually discussing the book or subject in question, and is genuinely effusive and generous about many other writers. When she does decide to deride a book, she provides a caveat about how it might just not be to her taste, while others may enjoy it (in one case, a review of Chang-Rae Lee’s On Such a Full Sea, wherein she ends the review by saying, “Readers who find anachronism and implausibility easy to swallow will enjoy the story and perhaps find in it the fresh vision, the new take on dreary old Dystopia, that I could not.”).
A couple of the essays have some controversy attached to them. “On Serious Literature” was a quick response she wrote in regard to a review on Slate in 2007 in which the reviewer described genre fiction as a “decaying corpse” that “writers of serious literature” and abandoned in a “shallow grave.” The piece, which Le Guin posted on her own website, portrayed genre fiction coming to visit that reviewer like a zombie, and is quite funny. So funny, that one of the editors of the blog boingboing reproduced it there without her permission, and were roundly thrashed by the e-literati once she complained about it, not the first time that that publication was hoisted by its own petard. “Freedom,” the speech it took her a year to write and which she agonized over the most, was given in acceptance of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in November 2014. It was a shot fired across the bow of contemporary publishing, notably the rise of Amazon, and laments the control of sales over editorial following Amazon’s feud with the publisher Hachette over the pricing of ebooks. It is a manifesto for writers who see themselves as artists, not merely creators of a commodity to be hawked.
The one truly surprising essay to me, and the one that I still think on, was “What It Was Like,” a talk given at a meeting of the Oregon NARAL in January 2004. In it, Le Guin revealed that she had gotten pregnant in 1950, when she was twenty, and what that was like before Roe vs. Wade. Looking back, 54 years later, she described how her entire life would have been different, had she not had that abortion; how she would have had to drop out of college, depend on her parents through the pregnancy, birth, and infancy of that child until she could obtain work and gain some kind of independence for herself and the child. And, in doing so, she wouldn’t have been a Fulbright student heading to France on the Queen Mary in 1953, she wouldn’t have met her husband on that voyage, and she wouldn’t have born the three children she had with him. As she puts it, “If I had not broken the law [against abortion in 1950] and aborted that life nobody wanted, [her current three children] would have been aborted by a cruel, bigoted, and senseless law. They would never have been born.” It’s a tough argument, one that balances unborn life against unborn life, and one that I’m still trying to digest. But that’s the kind of thing Le Guin was good at: putting you in a position to question your beliefs and biases and confront the difficult choices in life.
June 19, 2017
Ursula Le Guin is fluent in fiction (short, long, and children's), poetry, drama, and nonfiction, but she notes in the foreword to this, her 2016 nonfiction collection: "Writing fiction or poetry is natural to me. I do it, want to do it, am fulfilled in doing it, the way a dancer dances or a tree grows. . . . Writing talks or essays, however, is always more like doing schoolwork. It's going to be assessed for style and content, and rightly so. Nobody knows better than I do what my stories are about, but my essays may be judged by people who know a lot more than I do about what I'm talking about."
Given Le Guin's perceptive abilities, her ability to make connections, and the wisdom she's got stored in her head, it's hard to imagine anyone knowing more about what she's talking about than she does. More facts, perhaps, or maybe another perspective, but not more. Not surprisingly, most of these writings deal directly or indirectly with writing, reading, books, and/or publishing, but also not surprisingly, they're dealing with the wider world at the same time.
So (to take a random example) "Great Nature's Second Course," about sleep, moves from "When a character actually goes to sleep, the novelist tiptoes quietly out of the room . . ." to sleeplessness to Macbeth murdering sleep to the innocence of sleep -- to this: "I wish war could cease with darkness, as it used to until less than two centuries ago, so the people under the bombing planes and the people who fly them could be allowed some hours of innocence out of every murderous day."
Most of the pieces in this collection are short enough to read at a sitting -- if you're willing to sit for a while with the book open in your lap, letting the words sink in, resonate, reverberate in your mind. As a sometime book reviewer, I especially admire -- hell, I'm in awe of -- Le Guin's ability to convey the essence of a work in a thousand words or less. Her reviews and intros to other writers' works are like good travel writing: they arouse my curiosity enough to want to go there myself, but (because in many cases this won't ever happen) they give me a taste of what would greet me if I did so. And if I've been there already, they show me wonders I didn't notice the first time.
Given Le Guin's perceptive abilities, her ability to make connections, and the wisdom she's got stored in her head, it's hard to imagine anyone knowing more about what she's talking about than she does. More facts, perhaps, or maybe another perspective, but not more. Not surprisingly, most of these writings deal directly or indirectly with writing, reading, books, and/or publishing, but also not surprisingly, they're dealing with the wider world at the same time.
So (to take a random example) "Great Nature's Second Course," about sleep, moves from "When a character actually goes to sleep, the novelist tiptoes quietly out of the room . . ." to sleeplessness to Macbeth murdering sleep to the innocence of sleep -- to this: "I wish war could cease with darkness, as it used to until less than two centuries ago, so the people under the bombing planes and the people who fly them could be allowed some hours of innocence out of every murderous day."
Most of the pieces in this collection are short enough to read at a sitting -- if you're willing to sit for a while with the book open in your lap, letting the words sink in, resonate, reverberate in your mind. As a sometime book reviewer, I especially admire -- hell, I'm in awe of -- Le Guin's ability to convey the essence of a work in a thousand words or less. Her reviews and intros to other writers' works are like good travel writing: they arouse my curiosity enough to want to go there myself, but (because in many cases this won't ever happen) they give me a taste of what would greet me if I did so. And if I've been there already, they show me wonders I didn't notice the first time.
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