"How are things in the Land of Youth?" Ursula Le Guin blogs from 85
October 21, 2014 1:53 PM   Subscribe

Legendary science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin blogs about her 85th birthday. For those who don't already know about her, here's a Wikipedia selected bibiography. For those who do, here's an Appreciation of Le Guin following her receiving the National Book Award Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters last month.
posted by aught (23 comments total) 52 users marked this as a favorite
 
Not a slight at aught, but I do find it disconcerting that we still have to explain to some people who Ursula le Guin is.
posted by lodurr at 1:54 PM on October 21, 2014 [9 favorites]


Likely there are few Mefites who don't know about Le Guin. Still, as I get older I am more and more conscious of how my cultural and literary heroes may not resonate through the years.
posted by aught at 1:58 PM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]


I seriously just got tingles down my spine remembering how my adolescent self responded to reading A Wizard of Earthsea. Le Guin rearranged the neurons in my developing brain, and I think she is to be thanked for helping me emerge from those years with a healthy sense of wonder.
posted by vverse23 at 2:00 PM on October 21, 2014 [15 favorites]


"...because I was rude to amazondotcom, the famous philanthropic organization dedicated to supporting publishers, encouraging writers, and greasing the skids of the American Dream"

That's some good blogging right there.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 2:08 PM on October 21, 2014 [16 favorites]


I remember reading The Dispossessed while waiting to vote in the 2004 Presidential Election. Le Guin is my favorite author. Her books are beautiful.
posted by ent at 2:32 PM on October 21, 2014


I don't know, that Bustle article was, uh weird. I don't associate her with "gurl" and don't think she owes much to Tolkein except a talent for noticing that there were so few women in his world and that he never paid attention to who was mending the clothes and doing the cooking.

Here is a recent interview with a little more meat in it.

But if someone doesn't know much about her, they should just read her. The Western Shore series is a good place to start, in the YA realm. If you prefer her version of sci-fi, The Dispossessed, The Left Hand of Darkness, or any Hain Cycle books are a good start.

I don't know if it's good or bad to recommend that a new reader grapple with Always Coming Home. Depends on the reader. It's very much its own thing.
posted by emjaybee at 2:40 PM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]


Ha, though she has kind words for Middle Earth in that interview I linked, so clearly she does get something from it. Hoisted on my own commentary.
posted by emjaybee at 2:47 PM on October 21, 2014


The Left Hand of Darkness will always have a place on my bookshelf.
posted by triage_lazarus at 2:47 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]


As well as being captivated by Earthsea as a 12 year old -- and finding it worth returning to over and over as an adult -- I've gotten a lot out of her commencement addresses at Bryn Mawr and Mills College.
posted by weston at 2:47 PM on October 21, 2014 [3 favorites]


I don't know if it's good or bad to recommend that a new reader grapple with Always Coming Home. Depends on the reader. It's very much its own thing.

I feel like that's a very advanced and optional book on the curriculum. But I'm sure there are a niche group of readers who would fall into it easily.

I love her short stories in particular, and I think "Semley's Necklace", which turned into the prologue to Rocannon's World, is maybe the quintessential SF story.
posted by selfnoise at 2:53 PM on October 21, 2014


When I first read Always Coming Home in a college SF lit course, I wasn't ready for it. Annoyed the hell out of me.

Nowadays, Le Guin is a writer-guru of mine, one of my favorites. I had to mature enough as a reader and person to be able to get what she's been about over the years.
posted by Celsius1414 at 2:56 PM on October 21, 2014


I think about "Omelas" almost weekly. It was a disturbing thing to read as a preteen but I am glad to have had to read it.
posted by Hermione Granger at 2:59 PM on October 21, 2014 [6 favorites]


The Western Shore series is a good place to start,

These are my least favorite LeGuin books, especially the last two. They felt like they were sacrificing story for proselytizing Buddhism. In fact, the first thing I thought of after the second one was Hadji Murat, by Tolstoy, (which was all simplistic platitudes when compared to Anna Karenina or War & Peace). How does someone who writes all the complexities of humanity in The Left Hand of Darkness, the EarthSea Trilogy, and The Dispossessed come up with hamfisted messaging in Voices?
posted by small_ruminant at 4:08 PM on October 21, 2014


Next time you're trying to figure out what book to get a lonely teenaged nerd, do them a favor and get them Very Far Away From Anywhere Else. My goodness that felt like it was speaking directly to me when I was 16. Kind of an anomaly since it isn't SFF; still really good (and a short read). Still trying to get my inner Owen to listen to my inner Natalie more often.
posted by rivenwanderer at 4:21 PM on October 21, 2014 [5 favorites]


Nth-ing rivenwanderer on Very Far Away From Anywhere Else. What a book. I found my copy in a library booksale about ten years ago by chance. It was exactly what nerdy teenage me needed. I might write her a letter about it while there's still time.
posted by hollyholly at 4:31 PM on October 21, 2014 [3 favorites]


I have taught "Omelas" to philosophy students more than a dozen times. The assignment is always, they have to write a short story of their own, as a citizen of Omelas, and whether they stay or walk away and it is usually my favorite assignment to read.

I read "The Rock That Changed Things" in junior high, I think, and that fable has stuck with me ever since and I have a great affection for it.

The one that nags at my mind, on and off, popping up at the oddest moments, is "Solitude" from The Birthday of the World, set on Eleven-Soro, where men live in individual hermitages and women live separately in huts in small villages of a dozen or so and it's taboo to enter another woman's hut; any sort or organization of people into large groups, or attempting to exert power over others, by force or persuasion or authority, is seen as taboo and evil magic (possibly, she suggests, because it was a huge dense high-technology planet that managed to self-destruct). I think the point of the story is more about the division between mother and daughter, but the idea of words and persuasion being evil magic is what haunts me.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:08 PM on October 21, 2014 [3 favorites]


Oh, golly ... I would shop with her every day if she would be my best friend.

Thanks for this.
posted by allthinky at 5:57 PM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]


I'm fairly sure I'll be getting a Catwings tattoo soon. I love her way with words.
posted by geek anachronism at 6:40 PM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]


I wish someone could show her and her husband how to use Uber or a similar service. It sounds like they are having a hard time with mobility.
posted by mecran01 at 8:18 PM on October 21, 2014


Aw, yay, just came in to recommend Very Far Away . . . such a charming book! And writer, too.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 9:01 PM on October 21, 2014


"The Fliers of Gy" is one of my all-time favorite short stories ever.
posted by newdaddy at 9:39 PM on October 21, 2014


As for doctors’ appointments, one of the finest paradoxes of senility is that the oftener you have to go to the doctor the harder it is to get there. And haircuts! Now I know how the world looks to those little dogs with the bangs all over their eyes. It looks hairy.

I will be quietly giggling over this for days
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 2:48 AM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]


her entire blog is brilliant tbh, thanks for posting this!
posted by lonefrontranger at 11:55 AM on October 22, 2014


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