David Mitchell on A Wizard of Earthsea

October 23, 2015 9:07 AM

Cloud Atlas author David Mitchell writes about first encountering Ursula Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea as a child, the power and depth of the story and everything he still loves about it as an adult.
posted by Otto the Magnificent (54 comments total)

I must revisit Earthsea with the kiddo.

I have to admit that for whatever reason I bounced off of it past the first book when I was a kid and didn't really revisit LeGuin until I read The Dispossesed and Left Hand of Darkness, both of which blew me away, so it'll be interesting going back and seeing what I missed. I believe she's written a whole slew of Earthsea YA books since then too.
posted by Artw at 9:10 AM on October 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

Also is the Studio Ghilbli film as bad as everyone says?
posted by Artw at 9:11 AM on October 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

They are truly wonderful books.

The training of wizards involves epigrams and parables that would not be out of place in a Buddhist monastery or a Taoist cell.

Worth noting that really, the entire series is extremely heavily influenced by the Tao Te Ching, to the point where it might actually become sort of annoying if you weren't into it.

As is The Lathe of Heaven, for that matter. Le Guin also wrote an English version of the Tao Te Ching, so clearly it's been on her mind.
posted by selfnoise at 9:14 AM on October 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

I think Wizard of Earthsea-Tombs of Atuan-Farthest Shore is a great trilogy (I reread Wizard of Earthsea every year), and Tehanu is a great followup (vastly different in tone), and the Tales From Earthsea collection has a couple of real gems, but I thought The Other Wind wasn't the followup I was looking for?

The Ghibli film is fun, but it sort of merges the first three books together, and doesn't really have a lot to do with the books.

The amazing thing about Wizard of Earthsea is how SHORT it is; my copy is 180ish pages, and so much happens. There's an economy to the storytelling you don't see anymore in this age of the 1000 page epic.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 9:16 AM on October 23, 2015 [7 favorites]

Artw: I quite liked the film. It's more inspired by the Earthsea books rather than based on them, but on its own terms it's pretty good.
posted by Otto the Magnificent at 9:25 AM on October 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

Also is the Studio Ghilbli film as bad as everyone says?

I thought it was a fun adaptation but I also watched it before I read the Earthsea books. The books are better. And if I recall correctly it feels more like a prequel and is not too related to the main story, but set in that same universe.
posted by Fizz at 9:25 AM on October 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

These are among my favorite books. I was never able to read the ones after the first trilogy, for whatever reason, but those first ones are magnificent.

And Elem Peng is absolutely correct, the books are so full and so short. They really are stupendous.

Strangely, I've never read any other LeGuin.
posted by OmieWise at 9:31 AM on October 23, 2015

I'd rate The Dispossessed as one of my all time favorite SF books, if that helps at all.
posted by Artw at 9:44 AM on October 23, 2015 [7 favorites]

I was never able to read the ones after the first trilogy, for whatever reason, but those first ones are magnificent

I think Tehanu is very good, and a necessary corrective to some of the assumptions LeGuin didn't realize she was making in the original trilogy. I didn't love The Other Wind, though, because it wraps things up too much. I preferred the open-endedness.

LeGuin is so awesome, and every time I see her mentioned in public now I get worried, as she's well into her 80s and we won't have her around for much longer.
posted by suelac at 9:45 AM on October 23, 2015 [4 favorites]

I always felt that LeGuin intentionally made the world of Earthsea sexist because it was what she needed to do to get the story published at the time. Tehanu is a good dissection of the unexamined bias in the trilogy. What makes The Other Wind so weak I think is that it does the modern "half a dozen viewpoint characters that all meet up for the finale" thing, whereas the first four books have one viewpoint character and that's it.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 9:52 AM on October 23, 2015

I would make a full stop after the first three volumes (which are indeed wonderful), and maybe pick up the Tales. Tehanu was a major disappointment to me, when it came out, and I have no plans to reread it (in a word: preachy). It seriously made me wonder if LeGuin had developed that sadly all too prevalent tendency among elderly sf/fantasy authors to revisit their old work.

The Ghibli movie is a bit of a mess – beautiful as any movie from that studio, but the story is not exactly coherent. Not the worst of Ghibli (I would reserve that spot to Only Yesterday), but not up to their usually stellar standards.
posted by bouvin at 9:54 AM on October 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

every time I see her mentioned in public now I get worried

Yep, every time there's a post about her on the blue that begins "Author Ursula LeGuin" my first thought is always "Please, God, no" and I don't relax until I get to the verb phrase and see that it's not "passed away today."

AWoE speaks to me in a way that no other novel in any genre ever has because I read it when I was about Ged's age as he starts his studies at Roke, and my life at that time mirrored his in so many ways. I'm thankful that my fierce pride didn't lead to anyone dying, but I definitely summoned a piece of shadow in my struggle to fit in, and I still find myself occasionally having to confront that shadow and call it by its true name, a name we share.
posted by lord_wolf at 10:00 AM on October 23, 2015 [4 favorites]

I can't find a citation online, but there's this great interview with Le Guin where the reporter mentions the live-action adaptation:

"It lived up to my expectations."
"It did?"
"Yes, I expected it to be terrible, and it was!"
posted by Ian A.T. at 10:03 AM on October 23, 2015 [10 favorites]

The original trilogy has such a beautiful sense of quiet. You don't find that much in prose. It really does read more like poetry, sometimes. I find myself turning to them when my mind and emotions are racing. The beautiful, deliberate language is like a meditation for me. I didn't know that about the Tao Te Ching, but now that I do I'm not surprised.
posted by irisclara at 10:11 AM on October 23, 2015 [5 favorites]

Earthsea is in my Audible wishlist and this post has just tipped it into the cart for me, thanks!
posted by iamkimiam at 10:12 AM on October 23, 2015

I guess that after waiting decades for another Earthsea book Tehanu was bound to be a disappointment. It not at the level of God Emperor or Episode I and is good on its own terms but I was expecting something different. I should probably go back and re-read them all now.
posted by octothorpe at 10:25 AM on October 23, 2015

I just reread the first book and it was great. So understated, so much implication, and so heartfelt despite reading like an old folktale. It's just nice to see someone thinking about wizards, too, you know? I have read a lot of fantasy, though it often annoys me as a genre, and partly because of all the tropes authors will use but not really investigate or make their own. One of the big ones is wizards and magic. I don't say LeGuin got too deep into the nuts and bolts of it, which would be silly, but she makes it hers and very evocative. Not sure it's really ever been matched in that area.

This reread was in the form of an audiobook, narrated by Ethan Phillips (Neelix of Star Trek Voyager) and hoo boy, he must be new to the reader gig. LeGuin is a quiet writer with quiet characters, and he just amped up everything. The voice he used for old people transcended caricature and become some weird new species. It was pretty rough and I'm glad it wasn't my first exposure to the book.
posted by picea at 10:25 AM on October 23, 2015

I read the first book in, oh, 6th grade, and it blew me away. The Shadow was terrifying!
posted by doctornemo at 10:32 AM on October 23, 2015

I also just reread A Wizard of Earthsea (must be in the air!), and the simplicity of the storytelling is indeed at complete odds with the contemporary fantasy epic. The same amount of plot requires only 20% as many pages. You know those videos people are fond of making now where the camera is strapped to and focused on the protagonist and the rest of the world sort of spins and jumps around them? That's what this book feels like to me, in a good way. It's so focused on Ged and his journey that it doesn't need to get bogged down in the details of every single thing around him. It's really refreshing and a really powerful way to tell this kind of story, I think.
posted by that's candlepin at 10:49 AM on October 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

Well I thought Tehanu was bloody brilliant & not preachy at all. YMMV of course.
posted by pharm at 10:54 AM on October 23, 2015 [7 favorites]

The problem with Tehanu is that it is not about wizards being awesome, but what it's like to be a normal person (and a powerless one! A woman without children) in a world where wizards exist and can just fuck with you for lulz and no one can help you. It is a good book, but if you liked the trilogy because of Ged being awesome then it's not what you're looking for.

Maybe in 20 years Lev Grossman can write the equivalent of Tehanu for the Magicians Cycle. That would be something.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 10:59 AM on October 23, 2015 [8 favorites]

A Doxxer of Earthsea.
posted by wam at 11:09 AM on October 23, 2015

I recently re-read Wizard Of Earthsea for the first time since I was twelve or thereabouts, and sadly I didn't enjoy it as much I as I thought I was going to. I still liked the melancholic tone and the gorgeous prose, but I didn't get much out of it as a story.

On the other hand, last year I read The Lathe of Heaven for the first time and I think it might be one of the best books I've ever read. Can't stop thinking about it.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:37 AM on October 23, 2015

I never made it past the first book. It was good - very good - but it's been decades since I read it, and I still can't forgive Ged for getting his otak killed. Hubris and cowardice.

Of course, how many other stories have I read that generate this much of an emotional response from me, this long afterwards?
posted by caution live frogs at 11:54 AM on October 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

If you liked Lathe, you should dig up a copy of the PBS version from 1980. It had a budget of about $200 so it's not exactly the Matrix but it does a pretty great job of adapting the novel. Bruce Davidson is very good as George Orr. Avoid the remake from 2002 which throws out half of the story and adds nothing in its place.
posted by octothorpe at 11:54 AM on October 23, 2015

The day before yesterday was her 86th birthday. Happy birthday, Little Bear Woman!
posted by ottereroticist at 11:55 AM on October 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yep, every time there's a post about her on the blue that begins "Author Ursula LeGuin" my first thought is always "Please, God, no"

Wow. I do exactly that.

Like several right-minded folk above, I'm a Lathe person myself, but I also think Always Coming Home deserves also more respect than it gets.
posted by rokusan at 12:08 PM on October 23, 2015 [3 favorites]

It had a budget of about $200 so it's not exactly the Matrix

All right, octothorpe. Now I need to see a $200 remake of the Matrix.

($100 of which would probably be spent on fishing line for the rooftop bullet-dodging shot.)
posted by rokusan at 12:10 PM on October 23, 2015

I raised an eyebrow at the PBS Lathe when it made this list of 50 SF shows everyone should watch, maybe I shouldn't have.
posted by Artw at 12:53 PM on October 23, 2015

Damnit, now all I can think about is that alien selling hotdogs.
posted by ethansr at 12:54 PM on October 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

I could read literary criticism by David Mitchell all day. (although this is actually the forward to the Folio Society edition and not, perhaps true criticism...still)
posted by OHenryPacey at 1:13 PM on October 23, 2015

I could read literary criticism by David Mitchell all day. (although this is actually the forward to the Folio Society edition and not, perhaps true criticism…still)

Ha! I ordered that very book yesterday. Folio do tend to have rather good forewords, though.

I should think that there is more to the trilogy than "Ged being awesome". Authors revisiting their works decades later, especially when carrying axes in need of grinding, are not my cup of tea.
posted by bouvin at 3:00 PM on October 23, 2015

Nthing the PBS Lathe. One of the best visual adaptations of a science fiction novel.
posted by larrybob at 3:42 PM on October 23, 2015

The Earthsea trilogy is one of the few books I read as a child and carried with me through every move and are still with me 30 years later. I reread them very 5 years or so and at every stage of life I've gotten something new out of them.
posted by Requiax at 3:52 PM on October 23, 2015

i'm in the middle of a reread of all the U.K. LeGuin books that i own. I just took a break in the middle of the Earthsea books to do a quick run through the Rocanon's World canon before i finish the rest of the books i currently own and then start on my Amazon list that i plan to order myself for my birthday. I really do love her. Geez, the Dispossessed alone. Not to mention all the Hainish books and stories. Great mind, great heart.
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 4:07 PM on October 23, 2015 [4 favorites]

Orm Embar, Kalessin, Yevaud -- I loved the dragons.

Not to mention, she has the gift for creating believable but otherly names unparalleled by any other science fiction and fantasy author save Jack Vance.
posted by y2karl at 4:26 PM on October 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

Also she wrote a kids book about her cat, which our kids adore.
posted by Artw at 4:36 PM on October 23, 2015

I love Ursula K. Leguin so much and A Wizard of Earthsea is one of my favourite books. I do, however, find Mitchell's novels intolerable and this article is no different.
posted by 256 at 4:51 PM on October 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

I basically argue with Le Guin all day in my head when I read her books and short stories and her poetry. I have a secret desperate need to own the cassette tape that was apparently released with Always Coming Home originally, and I am not a completist for books. I don't agree with her on so many things when I read her critical reviews and her poems and her works, but it feels like arguing with a shadow-sister, with someone that I'm walking halfway around a known world with and will continue arguing with because the argument is the conversation, and there is so much trust that what she writes will give back.

Like - if you dig deeper and deeper into Orson Scott Card, his work eventually crumbles into a sort of meanness. There are moments, Pastime, and that one set in Russia and Ender's Game, where he takes an idea or a character and creates, but usually the world he makes unravels under examination to the same narrow tropes throughout his works, the same shallowness.

But with Le Guin, you can go back to the well over and over. There's always something new to consider when I reread her writing, and the worlds she constructs and the people, as sparsely as they may be constructed, are still whole within their world and span very different value systems and ideas and beliefs. She's an amazing stylist, very sparse and fluid. Her older books don't feel dated the way similar 1970s scifi does, and I would not be surprised if she ends up being considered in fifty years to be the equivalent of Tolkein, with our grandchildren puzzling over how she wasn't celebrated and recognised more in her lifetime.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 7:00 PM on October 23, 2015 [10 favorites]

If you don't mind digital, dorothy, you can buy the official Always Coming Home audio here. It includes both the MP3s and the liner notes / diagrams that accompanied the book.
posted by rokusan at 7:17 PM on October 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

LeGuin is someone I tried as a kid with the Earthsea books, didn't take (I liked my fantasy to be more wish-fulfillment and didn't know what to make of her) but then later when I realized a few of my favorite short stories were hers, I couldn't read enough. I think I'm caught up on her (well, not the children's book). But Always Coming Home has served me as a sort of holy book, in that I read it to obtain a certain state of mind, in bits, and often read the same bits over and over to absorb them. I can't think of another work of fiction I've ever related to in that way. I'm taking a break from it now, but still think about it often.

She can let herself descend into cuteness and pat-ness in some of her short stories, but then in the very next one, she will turn your mind inside out with a new idea. And even her clumsiest stories are more elegant than most of what's out there.

I liked Cloud Atlas very much when it came out, but the thrill seemed to wear off when I tried to reread it. My Tom Hanks aversion meant I didn't see the movie, either. Mitchell seems to be doing a very brilliant thought-experiment that leaves you with nothing to hold on to at the end, but possibly I'm just not the right audience, and there's nothing wrong with brilliant thought-experiments.
posted by emjaybee at 7:23 PM on October 23, 2015 [3 favorites]

I do, however, find Mitchell's novels intolerable and this article is no different.

I've only read the one and it was kind of a weird patchwork. The more effective bits were where it was trying to be Clive Barkerish but those were broken up by these vignettes of what seemed like an attempt to be "serious literature", except they didn't seem to be very good at being serious literature, and TBH the whole thing though fun enough would have been better if written by a Kim Newman or a Neil Gaiman, and midway through it became apparent it was a sequel to another book which is a thing I detest being surprised by, and there was a segment set in the future that just really didn't work.

Anyway, that is my review of The Bone Clocks, a frustrating book that other people seemed to like. This bit on Le Guin seems fine though.
posted by Artw at 7:24 PM on October 23, 2015

I have a secret desperate need to own the cassette tape that was apparently released with Always Coming Home originally...

I am really curious to hear how they interpreted the old tribal hippy folk music on the cassette for 'Always Coming Home', but no-one has shared it You Tube so far...

Le Guin also wrote an English version of the Tao Te Ching, so clearly it's been on her mind.

I'm a fan of Le Guin and I've got a copy of her interpretation of the Tao, but I didn't love it, it seemed a bit stilted.

I believe that everyone here agrees that after a decade, the world is now ready for a new and more faithful interpretation of the Earthsea Saga as a new miniseries produced by Netflix/HBO/someone. Please inform the lawyers.
posted by ovvl at 9:00 PM on October 23, 2015

I love her writing. Tehanu really resonated with me but I'm a middle aged woman and was when I read it - it came around after the inherent (and as others have mentioned, required to publish) sexism in the first 3 books.

Fun story - I met my husband-to-be at a party where we bonded in part over our love of Le Guin's writing. I called him to borrow The Wind's Twelve Quarters which was the only book of her's that I hadn't read at the time and that was the reason for our first date. Years later our daughter, a budding writer, met Le Guin at a signing and brought the tattered old copy of The Wind's Twelve Quarters to have her sign it. The bookseller came up and urged R to buy a nice new copy. She and LeGuin as one said NO - that one had history. (we haven't managed to get it back from our daughter yet).
posted by leslies at 6:34 AM on October 24, 2015 [5 favorites]

My copy of Lathe is an old paperback assigned to me in a high school course by a fabulous teacher. Full of my class notes and lots of versions of the name of the boy I had a thing for. It's in about three pieces from constant rereading over the next thirty years. I love that book so much.
posted by Cocodrillo at 6:57 AM on October 24, 2015

Reread Wizard of Earthsea a few weeks ago. I loved this as a kid but I see how that I had no idea how good it was when I was a kid. When those of us who love SF and love so-called "literature" say we wish there were more SF that were more literary? This is what we mean.
posted by escabeche at 7:01 AM on October 24, 2015 [5 favorites]

Welcome to Portland, the Sunshine City.

Rewatching Lathe of Heaven (1980) for the many-ith time but the first time in about fifteen years. I made a comment about the low budget above but it's really a master class in how to produce science fiction with few resources using existing locations, stock footage and creative lighting. More importantly, it's a great example of how to write a screenplay*
that respects the source material.

I'm pretty sure that I've read that Lathe was LeGuin's tribute to Philip Dick with layered realities in a dystopian future. That makes sense since it doesn't seems much like her other works. I should dig out my copy from our archives (100 boxes of books in the garage) and re-read it.

* Trivia: The screenplay was written by Diane English who went on to create Murphy Brown.
posted by octothorpe at 7:13 AM on October 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

Authors on the authors who inspired them is a genre I can never get enough of.
posted by Segundus at 1:50 PM on October 24, 2015

*sigh* Looking at the illustrations in the Folio Society edition Mitchell's piece is from, it looks like Ged has been white-washed again.
posted by KingEdRa at 7:11 PM on October 24, 2015

I thought Tehanu and The Other Wind were bloody brilliant *and* feministy preachy, but it was fascinating to see her go back and revist the world, and while the first three books are the best, I can't tell anyone they should not go on.

By the end, even though The Other Wind is more a meditation than a plot, all six books are worth reading.

Not so much the film or the SyFy series.
posted by Mezentian at 4:40 AM on October 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

KingEdRa, I'm not sure how this jibes with other Le Guin comments concerning Ged, but the link you posted claims:

The Folio Society worked closely with the author to produce illustrations that would do her creation justice; David Lupton’s deeply atmospheric paintings show Earthsea and Ged as the author intended – a place of sea and salt, a hero of light and shadow.

posted by Ian A.T. at 3:42 PM on October 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

ovvl: "I am really curious to hear how they interpreted the old tribal hippy folk music on the cassette for 'Always Coming Home', but no-one has shared it You Tube so far... "

It looks like the music from Always Coming Home is available here.

LeGuin is an author who I admire from a technical standpoint, but with some exceptions - The Lathe of Heaven being one - generally leaves me cold. The Dispossessed is a perfect example - I think it's an impressive work that I have no desire to re-read. Caveat lector.
posted by Chrysostom at 5:15 PM on October 25, 2015

Chrysostom, the scene where his daughter (and part of me wants to type the child who is his daughter) solemnly offers to share the handkerchief with him and he realises that to her the handkerchief is a shared piece already and her generosity already exists, that it isn't tied to ownership of the item for her, and waaaah, it's making me well up just remembering that passage.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 8:08 PM on October 25, 2015

And I respect that! I know it has a big impact on many people. And I'm not impugning her technical skills as a writer at all.

But for me: I didn't feel any attachment to the characters - Shevek is kind of a dick, but no one else was super-appealing, either. I found the Anarres society unpleasant as well as implausible in a way I had difficulty suspending disbelief over (not that the US analogue and USSR analogue cultures on Urras are attractive, either). I know the phrase "an ambiguous utopia" got attached to it along the way, but it went past ambiguity into actively unpleasant for me.

I've got to give Left Hand of Darkness another shot, though.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:03 PM on October 25, 2015 [2 favorites]