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Entry tags:
Le Guin, short stories
The Wind's Twelve Quarters (5/5), The Birthday of the World (3+/5)
This fall I read a lot of Le Guin, again. It's a surprise to no one who reads Le Guin that the content of her books changed dramatically between the 80's and the 00's. And it probably shouldn't have been surprising to me that her style changed dramatically, too — I'd certainly noticed already that writing Tehanu pastiche is a far different exercise than writing Wizard of Earthsea pastiche — but I spent a lot< of time this fall deconstructing and studying her early writing (I really like her later writing too, but I don't love it with the soul-shattering love I have for her earlier writing), and it's so interesting to me to see the distinct progression in style while the core of the writing remains the same.
She says it herself in the introduction to "Semley's Necklace" in The Wind's Twelve Quarters (which D insists on calling The Wind's $3) — "The progress of my style has been away from open romanticism, slowly and steadily... It has been a progress. I am still a romantic, no doubt about that, and glad of it, but the candor and simplicity of 'Semley's Necklace' have gradually become something harder, stronger, and more complex."
The romanticism, I think, displays itself partially in detail, not necessarily of physical objects or scenes (although she does that too) but also of the way people feel, the way they look at the world; and the way those two things interact. And she is not shy at all, in the first Earthsea trilogy, of sometimes just coming out, as the omniscient narrator, and talking thematically (e.g., when Ged meets the Shadow, light and darkness coming together). And there's correspondingly less interest in what would interest her more later — the sociological/ethnography aspect of it. Oh, the first Earthsea trilogy still is written with a distinct ethnography bent to it — the different cultures and characters-shaped-by-culture in Earthsea are so finely drawn and described — but it's not the focus; and social justice, of course, isn't even on the horizon.
Anyway, I read The Wind's Twelve Quarters straight through, which I've never done before (there are a couple of stories I've never actually read, and a couple I haven't revisited for years). It's a really great anthology, I think my favorite Le Guin anthology. While her writing is less romantic in the ending than the beginning, even the closing stories in the book are still very graceful and lovely.
I also read Five Ways to Forgiveness, which is a… very different book. It's -- how did she put it -- harder, stronger, more complex. I remember I'd tried to read some of these stories before, without success. I think I probably was about 10-20 years behind Le Guin in thinking about social justice, for starters, and also I was just too young in general. The stories in Forgiveness are adult stories. I didn't have the emotional context to understand "The Matter of Seggri" until now, I think, or to grasp the horror of it (it's really kind of a horror story at heart) and what it means about us.
But both books are true, I think, in the way that great writing is true, in that it strikes to the heart of what it means to be human, how we live in this world. Different parts of the truth, but both truth nevertheless, and that is part of what makes Le Guin a great writer.
The other part, of course, is that her writing is more than half poetry. Her early work is a rounder (sorry, I don't know how else to put it), more beautiful poetry, while her later work is harder and more sharp-edged, but both are just really good. It's all wonderful to read aloud. (Which is a problem for me, in terms of pastiche, because when I write I don't really think about it orally!)
This fall I read a lot of Le Guin, again. It's a surprise to no one who reads Le Guin that the content of her books changed dramatically between the 80's and the 00's. And it probably shouldn't have been surprising to me that her style changed dramatically, too — I'd certainly noticed already that writing Tehanu pastiche is a far different exercise than writing Wizard of Earthsea pastiche — but I spent a lot< of time this fall deconstructing and studying her early writing (I really like her later writing too, but I don't love it with the soul-shattering love I have for her earlier writing), and it's so interesting to me to see the distinct progression in style while the core of the writing remains the same.
She says it herself in the introduction to "Semley's Necklace" in The Wind's Twelve Quarters (which D insists on calling The Wind's $3) — "The progress of my style has been away from open romanticism, slowly and steadily... It has been a progress. I am still a romantic, no doubt about that, and glad of it, but the candor and simplicity of 'Semley's Necklace' have gradually become something harder, stronger, and more complex."
The romanticism, I think, displays itself partially in detail, not necessarily of physical objects or scenes (although she does that too) but also of the way people feel, the way they look at the world; and the way those two things interact. And she is not shy at all, in the first Earthsea trilogy, of sometimes just coming out, as the omniscient narrator, and talking thematically (e.g., when Ged meets the Shadow, light and darkness coming together). And there's correspondingly less interest in what would interest her more later — the sociological/ethnography aspect of it. Oh, the first Earthsea trilogy still is written with a distinct ethnography bent to it — the different cultures and characters-shaped-by-culture in Earthsea are so finely drawn and described — but it's not the focus; and social justice, of course, isn't even on the horizon.
Anyway, I read The Wind's Twelve Quarters straight through, which I've never done before (there are a couple of stories I've never actually read, and a couple I haven't revisited for years). It's a really great anthology, I think my favorite Le Guin anthology. While her writing is less romantic in the ending than the beginning, even the closing stories in the book are still very graceful and lovely.
I also read Five Ways to Forgiveness, which is a… very different book. It's -- how did she put it -- harder, stronger, more complex. I remember I'd tried to read some of these stories before, without success. I think I probably was about 10-20 years behind Le Guin in thinking about social justice, for starters, and also I was just too young in general. The stories in Forgiveness are adult stories. I didn't have the emotional context to understand "The Matter of Seggri" until now, I think, or to grasp the horror of it (it's really kind of a horror story at heart) and what it means about us.
But both books are true, I think, in the way that great writing is true, in that it strikes to the heart of what it means to be human, how we live in this world. Different parts of the truth, but both truth nevertheless, and that is part of what makes Le Guin a great writer.
The other part, of course, is that her writing is more than half poetry. Her early work is a rounder (sorry, I don't know how else to put it), more beautiful poetry, while her later work is harder and more sharp-edged, but both are just really good. It's all wonderful to read aloud. (Which is a problem for me, in terms of pastiche, because when I write I don't really think about it orally!)
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I haven't thought much about the difference in style, but on reflection, I think earlier Le Guin short stories are much more experimental, both in subject matter and in style. It's like she tried out a lot of different things and then later settled down a bit and figured out what she was most interested in.
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Huh! I had sort of thought in my head that her later stories are more experimental -- but I see what you mean, there's certainly a much wider variety in her early work. (I guess what I meant by "experimental" is that I don't know anyone else who really writes in that sort of style, or maybe it's just that no one else does it as well as she does so I don't read it :) )
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I recently repurchased these after a misguided Le Guin purge a few years ago. I'm thinking they're both on the reading list for 2018.
I tend to think of the arc of Le Guin's writing in four stages: the 1960's (ish), when she wrote adventures a la Rocannon's World and was kinda clueless about feminism (20 year-old me found this very boring); 1970's classic Le Guin when she was most interested in ideas (The Dispossessed, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, A Wizard of Earthsea -- to my mind The Left Hand of Darkness neatly straddles the first and second stages); 1980s feminist Le Guin when she wrote her most explicitly feminist books such as Tehanu; and 1990s forward, when her feminism became a bit more complex and she really zeroed in on "imagine a world where...how would that affect social structures etc" -- though of course that was always huge in her writing. But I'm sure that's oversimplifying in a lot of ways.
But that's more about the content of her writing than the prose. I think I remember her 1980s writing perhaps being the most lyrical. I don't think that's exactly what she means by romantic, though?
I read Four Ways to Forgiveness (and Old Music and the Slave Women) ages ago and found it really good, but also harrowing. The rape scenes in those stories have never left me, so I've never re-read it. I always hesitate to recommend it for that reason, even though it was so good. Also, those stories made me ache for more stories about/set on Hain.
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I feel the urge coming on to reread more Le Guin...
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I tried reading the Rocannon's World novels this fall, and (not for the first time) bounced right off of them. It's funny because I find all the rest of her fiction compulsively readable. But not those!
The Compass Rose is definitely wildly experimental. I love that ant story. I feel like Wind's Twelve Quarters is rather more conventional (though even there she's starting to mess around and experiment), and it probably says something (maybe not so great) about my own conventionality that I love it the most. (I do love Compass Rose, though!)
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You would know better in terms of how the prose changed over the course of the Eearthsea books. I last read them in...2008? I no longer own all of the Earthsea books, but apparently a new illustrated version is coming out this year. I'm hoping to get that if it's not too big/expensive! (I've been collecting the illustrated Harry Potter books as they come out, and as lovely as they are, they're not terribly readable, because they're so big.)
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I've also been collecting the Harry Potter illustrated books, and hope someday to read them with my daughter, but that day has not yet come. (Though we are reading Prydain right now!)
The prose doesn't change too much over the first trilogy; there's a definite change between the third and fourth. Which makes sense; I think there was a much larger gap in publication time there. I think there may be a smaller prose change between the fourth and fifth-sixth, but I didn't look at that in depth. Maybe another Yuletide I will :)
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