SIMULTANEITIES IV: The Wind's Twelve Quarters

There's a paradox in Le Guin. One the one hand, she was seemingly an ardent believer in the communitarian ideals of anarchism. On the other hand, she was a libertarian-exemplifying individualist. 

The first assertion might be false in the realm of belief. Perhaps she did not believe in anarchism, but wrote about it as a fictional ideal in which her characters did the believing (but not her).

The second assertion might be factually false. On the other hand it might be borne out by a gap between actions and words.

Writers are a pretty self-reliant lot, on the whole. The writing of fiction requires loads of self-directed time through the fog of which no boss looms; there's no external cracking of the whip except that which, perhaps, the paying of bills and generally bringing home the bacon provides.

So she was one of those. That doesn't make her a right-winger. Look at all those writers on twitter: they're a bunch of lefties, creating an online non-hierarchical community both like-minded and supportive (at least the ones I follow are).

But Americans are a pretty individualistic lot. Le Guin's ancestors, alluded to both in stories like The Dispossessed, and in her non-fiction, where she describes her settler grandmother out on the frontier in the late 1800s, they had to be self-reliant. At the same time, none would've made it on their own.

There's a dialectic at the heart of Le Guin's fiction, epitomized in her stories of Martian settlement, of weird sentiences in far-flung solar systems, of pyschologies abnormalized by isolation, fear, and God (in the case of the excellent "Field of Vision").

Where, before, reading Le Guin I was reminded of how much her anthropoligist father must have influenced her world-view and by extension her writing; now, in reading the short stories, see the influence of Le Guin's psychologist mother.

These stories are really disturbing. I do mean every single one of them, as well as the volume taken as a whole. It is truly a story made of stories, a short-story collection that surpasses both congeries and fixes to excel at a whole other level of discourse.

The discursive psychological function of these stories is to present the dialectic of the individual against God, the universe, and the whole; and to break it down. Once broken down, the revolution can occur, as it does in the dual-story structure of "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" and "The Day Before the Revolution", both award-winning stories. 

I can't say a lot more beyond the existence of the individual/communitarian dialectic Le Guin performs in this collection; but I can say that naming performs a key function. One of the stories is explicitly about names. It is a fantasy story. The naming aspect has to do with not being able to tell others your real name (if they know it they know it, and that is fine), because to use the real name is to control the person/thing named.

An individual exists in this (fantasy) community for whom no-one else knows his real name. As it turns out, this should have been the first sign that something was amiss. Reading this story I am not surprised that Le Guin had rubbed shoulders at one point with Derrida. Her grasp of philosophy of language is unparalleled in what I have read so far within the SF genre.

The second set of stories immediately picks up this language-game thread, presenting a series of 'writings' by animals, as presented in a fictional academic publication "Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics." It's fascinating. I'm going to go read more now.

SIMULTANEITIES III: Semley's Necklace

This story evokes, for me, both Aldiss and Tolkien; it makes me wonder if the basis for SF is racism; if, at the same time, SF is inherently post-colonial. Le Guin, Aldiss, Tolkien, all from 'dominant' societies: none subaltern, except in the case of Le Guin (her gender).

So is this her advantage in the end; is this why she can get away with casting her obvious anthropological knowledge of different cultures, peoples, races in terms of different species? Characters within this story correct each other when 'derogatory' terms like 'troglodyte' are used, but does this get the author off the hook?

Helliconia is somehow present here, in how a gaze, looking from outside, uses ideas of scientific classification to present the life-forms being observed. I don't know enough SF lore to know which way the fertilisation goes.  But clearly both Aldiss and Le Guin were writing 'social'/anthropological science fiction.

The approach makes it automatically feel a lot more like fantasy than science fiction, though clearly there is a spectrum. The sections containing 'reports' on the species, on the progress of their civilisations and their technologies would seem to be the only 'scientific' part about these stories.

Telekinesis, telepathy, these are present in the life-forms, in how the Gdemiar and the Fiia peoples communicate, and these 'technologies' present a stronger cognitive challenge that constitutes for the reader the 'novum' of the story.

The protagonist is chasing down a piece of jewellery that is 'on loan': "All the Exotica are technically on loan, not our property, since these claims come up now and then. We seldom argue. Peace above all, until the War comes..."

And the tone is pacifist, as are the actions taken by various characters. The fantasy flows from strength to strength, though we can tell it is an 'early' Le Guin, an adumbration glints within. There is a post-colonial sensibility to the critical commentary produced in and through the actions and objects herein, and we would expect no less of any stage of Le Guin.

She is a genus unto herself, her technology post-colonial, advanced. She has no ax to grind, but her strength lies in projecting a moral economy through story, a sense of doing what is right in the face of challenge, threat, men.

SIMULTANEITIES II: Words Are My Matter

Words Are My Matter (WAMM) is a book about writing, with a wide variety of pieces included. At first it resembles one of those 'how to write' books, but it's not.  

WAMM is a story told in stories. That story WAMM tells is 'about' a life in writing, but also about a woman around whom many myths and stories have grown. 

Le Guin has a certain reputation to defend "[w]hen critics treat me -- even with praise -- as a methodical ax-grinder..." but I would say she has a didactic intention in all of her fiction.

Her essays and talks even more so. But thankfully, for the most part, I'm very sympathetic to Le Guin's politics, her takes, her stances. 

For example, in a long review of the novels of Saramago the latter's moral backbone forms the basis of her praise. She stops very early in her reading of Blindness because of a very real concern around the representations of violence that recur in that story. 

After reading a few other books, and here The Cave is singled out for praise, Saramago's ability to convey the appropriate message is confirmed, and she returns to Blindness. It subsequently receives only her highest praise.

This is in very direct contrast to her comment, on page 244 about "Cormac McCarthy, and others, [who use] essential elements of a serious genre irresponsibly, superficially." While this comment does not address violence directly, it is implicit, and telling the McCarthy is mentioned in this text.

Le Guin reviews an edited collection with sole focus on The Dispossessed, and objects to its portrayal of the latter as a political tract with an ax to grind. This prompts much soul-searching, a digging back into her past, the architectures of her thinking. We get a lot about her reading habits growing up.

It is a strength of the whole volume, and it is why this book is the starting point for my 'year of reading Le Guin.'  It's not just how she approaches Saramago.

The introductions to Wells are illuminating, as with the whole lot, and shine light upon the place of Wells early novels taken as a whole, as a turning point, as the starting point for what was to become science fiction.

Throughout, we have a defence of genre writing against those who would disown it: Wells downplaying, diminishing, the importance of The Time Machine in relation to the later, realistic, fiction, lest the latter be contaminated by the former's less serious intent, its infection as 'scientific romance.'

Or Margaret Atwood's insistence that she doesn't write science fiction, which Le Guin points out makes it a lot harder to apply the right critical tools and thus repay the justice deserved in return. Jeanette Winterson does the same thing. 

Le Guin presents her hesitations about other writers: those she adores, admires, likes. I adore Le Guin and apply her logic to the work at hand: what are my hesitations about Le Guin as I head into the bulk of her work?

That she might have an ax to grind, for sure, especially in The Dispossessed. But her writing overcomes any didacticism; and besides her politics tend to agree, even if (or perhaps because) they occasionally tend towards the libertarian/individualistic side of the anarchist spectrum/ethos she espouses.

All her books are undoubtedly political, satirical, serious in intent. This could become a negative, if I wasn't in fact in the market for her product, ready to agree, primed with my own sympathetic politics of non-conformism, more anarchism than anything as rigid or consistent as Marxism. 

She reviews Mieville in a way that makes me want to read him: everything by him, to become a follower. 

Le Guin evokes Suvin in places, giving her own synopsis of SF definition: "one of the things science fiction does, which is to extrapolate imaginatively from current trends and events to a near future that's half prediction, half satire." It's her own: there's no novum there, this from the woman who 'invented' the ansible.

Any other hesitations? Perhaps, I might think, maybe she's dated, part of a golden age past. But Le Guin's work ages better than just about any other writer I've tried to re-read from that time. Its literary quality, well-crafted imaginative exactness, and human capability all are timeless, and these pieces equally so.

In a final piece, a journal of a time spent at a writer's retreat, we get the story of a week in which Le Guin wrote a 40-page short story, a wonderful meditation on just how lovely the woman's approach to life could be. 

Perhaps we are seeing her only at her best moments. Or perhaps she was, unusually capable of maintaining her poise even when no-one was looking. 

I'm excited by this project, and have just received another title in the mail, one that I'll add to my list for this year's reading project. It's The Lathe of Heaven printed in a copy of Amazing Stories, sent to me as a Christmas present from my mother, all the way from Oklahoma. It's a blast from the past for me, straight from my grandmother's cupboard, where my aunt used to stash her books:

Next, I'm diving, this very evening, into The Wind's Twelve Quarters & the Compass Rose.

SIMULTANEITIES I: A Year of Reading Le Guin

Here is the running order and rationale for my year of reading Le Guin:

I will only read what I currently have in the house, in the following order, and without any real regard for chronology, comprehensiveness, and coherence:

1. Words Are My Matter (Small Beer)
2. The Wind's Twelve Quarters & The Compass Rose (Gollancz)
3. Earthsea: The First Four Books (Penguin)
4. The Left Hand of Darkness (Gollancz)
5. The Dispossessed (Gollancz)
6. The Complete Orsinia (Library of America)
7. Always Coming Home (Gollancz)

The above represents ~3000 pages of material, more than enough to keep me going for a few weeks at least. If I find that I have extra time at the end, or still want to read more, I'll acquire more titles (possibly covering poetry and non-fiction in more depth) and blog about them.

I have made the title for this set of blog posts deliberately much broader than just Le Guin, because I'd also like to expand the reading into geography (Massey), anthropology (Levi-Strauss), and post-colonial studies.

SIMULTANEITIES is a larger story about stories, genres, and decolonising the mind.

Initially, I want to use a 'complete' reading of Le Guin as a way of improving my own writing (academic, creative, and otherwise). It will inform my thinking generally, and will most likely appear in some form in future works beyond this blog.