Recent reading

[luzula]

Unrelated to the rest of the post, today I have learned the word "anasyrma" and am delighted with it.

A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K Le Guin (1968 and 1971)
Yuletide canon review. It's been quite some time since I read these, and I much enjoyed the reread. Damn, but Le Guin could write! This is not news, I know, but it does very much strike you when you're trying to write fic for one of her books. I can really see why she revisited them later for reasons of feminism, though--I'm not sure how she could be so thoughtful about POC in Earthsea, and at the same time having women be so invisible: women who are mentioned casually are only ever the wives of men having professions, and don't professions of their own, and when women have larger roles, they are most often evil or unwittingly serve evil. I mean, yes, The Tombs of Atuan very much do pass the Bechdel test, but see: unwittingly serving evil, and having a man come in and release Tenar from that. Nevertheless, I do love these books! The worldbuilding is so vivid, and the first book is such a great story of coming of age and such a good twist on the "defeating the evil antagonist" trope. Also, there's such a sense of a rich past, too. I do respect the later books, but also I do kind of wish that (like Tolkien) she had filled in the stories of Morred and Elfarran and Erreth-Akbe...

I was talking to my beta reader cahn about the style of these books compared to her later ones, and cahn was saying that the Earthsea books are doing the high fantasy thing and that's why the style is more elaborate than her later books. I'm not so sure, though: if you look at The Left Hand of Darkness, which is written about the same time, it hasn't got a simpler style that I can see. I wonder if this is just part of a general trend across literature towards a simpler style, which she followed.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

I love your thinky thoughts. Thank you.

[luzula]

Thanks! I do love reading people's thinky thoughts about books, too. : )

[sanguinity]

Le Guin's feminism very much developed and deepened over her lifetime. When she was young, she sold stories to Playboy magazine, for instance, which she later came to regret as legitimizing a profoundly anti-feminist publication. And of course there's the whole thing with the pronouns in The Left Hand of Darkness, which she also came to regret.

As much as I could wish that her later feminism (and other ideals) were thoroughly instantiated in her earlier work, I do find it a useful exemplar of the fact that people learn and grow, and that if you learn and grow as you ought, then there's going to be early stuff that you wish you'd done differently. And that even someone I admire as much as I do Le Guin has public work that, while justly well-loved, she had a conflicted relationship with.

She was local to me, by the way. I got to see her speak a few times, and at least one of her books is set here in town, in locations I know well.

ETA: That's a delightful word, and so is the wikipedia article (which I totally looked at for the pictures more than the words).

[luzula]

OMG, you saw her speak? I am unutterably envious. I wrote fanmail to her once, obviously without any expectation of a reply, but I just knew I would regret it if I didn't do it before she died.

Yes, I have read most of her books over the years, and I do admire her for re-examining her own work, and that we got to see her work evolve over time!

I also had the joy of seeing her in person

[jesse_the_k]

...at my first WisCon in 1996.

I was delighted by her down-to-earth presentation style, utterly anarchist combination of careful thinking and humor and encouragement.

Re: I also had the joy of seeing her in person

[luzula]

Oh, wonderful. *wistful sigh*

[sanguinity]

Did she write back? I wrote fanmail to my favorite author not too long before he died, and I was thrilled when he wrote back the next day.

[luzula]

Nope! But as I say, I didn't expect her to. I wrote it by hand and sent it as a physical letter, so she couldn't have replied the next day, anyway. : )

[muccamukk]

Yeah, I always think about how she said she just hadn't *considered* that fantasy adventure stories could be about heroic women (or women at all), back when she was doing Earthsea. It's almost shocking to see such a powerful writer have such a massive gap in her worldview.

[luzula]

It is pretty jarring, but I admire her for admitting that and moving beyond it! Also interesting that the Earthsea books were written at around the same time as Left Hand of Darkness, which is thinking a lot about gender roles (even if that book too is a product of its time in various ways).

[cahn]

They're SO GOOD and yeah, I just despair that I will never write that well :)

I can really see why she revisited them later for reasons of feminism, though--I'm not sure how she could be so thoughtful about POC in Earthsea, and at the same time having women be so invisible

When I last reread, I was struck by Vetch and Yarrow -- Vetch is so condescending to Yarrow, in a way that to my grown-up self is rather disturbing, especially given that we've up until then seen Vetch as a really nice person. It's interesting because she's such an incisive observer of culture, she observes and writes it so well -- like, you could imagine her writing the same thing twenty years hence, because the observation is spot on, that's how it happens in a patriarchal society. It's just that twenty years on she would have more awareness of the implications of what she was writing, I think.

I mean, yes, The Tombs of Atuan very much do pass the Bechdel test, but see: unwittingly serving evil, and having a man come in and release Tenar from that.

When I did my last reread, it was also the first reread after having a daughter, and I couldn't help noticing that the main storyline of Atuan is "older man talks teenage girl into leaving her home and culture and running away with him." I mean... I get that Le Guin was working with some archetypes about growing up and sex and so on, but gosh.

I'm not so sure, though: if you look at The Left Hand of Darkness, which is written about the same time, it hasn't got a simpler style that I can see.

This is a good point! When I did my Le Guin dive a few years back, for some reason Left Hand was not one of the books I reread, which is I guess why I didn't pick up on it (but now that you mention(ed) it, I also get that stylistic feel from her earlier short stories, like "Nine Lives," and not from her later ones). I do find her later work more spare -- it's still great writing, but in sort of a harder and simpler way.

[luzula]

Maybe she was influenced by the "fantasy has to be based on the European middle ages which is patriarchal" thing? But OTOH she departed from that in having most people in the Archipelago not be white. I'm reading the third one now, and there is the female dyer in Lorbanery, who was a craftswoman in her own right, and had magic. I think that's the first such woman we see, who isn't just somebody's wife and also doesn't serve evil in some way. Well, all right, she kind of does serve evil at that point since she's lost her power to Cob's influence, but so have all the men in the South Reach.

I couldn't help noticing that the main storyline of Atuan is "older man talks teenage girl into leaving her home and culture and running away with him."
Yep. I'm pretty sure I didn't think of the story that way when I read it as a kid, but...yeah. I wonder how old Ged is at that point, do we know?

But despite all these things, I still love the books! We can love things and still admit their flaws, obviously.

[scribe]

I've tried to start Earthsea and bounced off it twice, once in high school and once recently...but your review makes me want to try pushing through the beginning again! Maybe not as an audiobook this time, so I can skim a little until it catches me.

[luzula]

There's an audiobook which is kind of famously bad, no wonder if you bounced off that one! If you skim past the beginning of the first one, you'll get the Magical School trope, perhaps that might interest you as a comparison point to other, later such books?

As for me, I'm captured by the lovely prose every time. : )

ETA: Wait, aren't you into fealty stuff, or am I mixing you up with someone else? There's great fealty in the third book, even a sort of mutual fealty, between the young king-to-be and the older mage.

[scribe]

Ooh yes that's me into fealty stuff! That is a very good recommendation to try it again. :D

[chestnut_pod]

Plural: anasyrmata! How delightful.

She sure could write. May we all ever become half a skilled, honestly.

[luzula]

Le Guin is an author who has really followed me through life--I was young when I first read Earthsea, and gradually made my way through her back catalog all my life.

Inquiring minds are dying to know

[jesse_the_k]

how and where you encountered anasyrma. (My system dictionary insisted on telling me about aneurysms, which was a disappointment.)

Re: Inquiring minds are dying to know

[luzula]

I encountered the word "sheela-na-gig" in this post of sovay's, and link-hopped from the Wikipedia entry on "sheela-na-gig" to "anasyrma". : )

Aneurysms are definitely less fun.

[regshoe]

I was just thinking of re-reading the Earthsea books after seeing your other Yuletide fic was for the fandom (and one of the Piranesi stories, which I liked very much, was a crossover!). Yes, I remember finding the writing very beautiful and rich in its sense of historical/worldbuilding detail.

[luzula]

Ah yes, the Piranesi crossover was great! I would never have thought of it myself. And yes, I did find a reread rewarding.