LeGuin, Ursula K. - Dancing at the Edge of the World

[oyceter]

Collection of LeGuin's essays and speeches and reviews over the late seventies and eighties, I think. The ones I found most interesting were (unsurprisingly) on gender and feminism and on reading. I am rather embarrassed, but I skipped over a lot of the travel ones or the ones with poetry or too much scholarship. I find that while I appreciate poetry, I do not always enjoy it. It's not a fast read for me (ironic, considering the general length) because I feel I have to concentrate on all of it, to figure it out. Too much lit class. Fiction I just devour.

I found some of the earlier ones in particular to subscribe to closely to some sort of gender essentialism, almost, in which the female somehow has some sort of mysterious, earthy connection to the unknown world, in direct contrast to the structured, logical world of the male. I did, however, like her post on gender and lack thereof ("Is Gender Necessary? Redux") in her The Left Hand of Darkness. The first one I pretty much disagreed with (although I haven't read the novel). Well, not most of it, but there was this one point in the essay in which she comments that using "he" as the default for the non-gendered alien beings was gender-neutral. I disagreed with that. Luckily, LeGuin also changed her mind -- the best part was reading the italicized comments, which were added later on, as a sort of commentary on beliefs she no longer believed in (ergo, the redux).

I was also particularly fond of "The Carrier Bag of Fiction." Is that where melymbrosia got the carrier bag theory of blogging? Or is there some original carrier bag theory that both are taking off on? I liked it because it talked about fiction not having to be about action, about fiction that could be about everyday things and such. There are many more thoughts I could be having, but my brain is on a bit of a hiatus right now.

You know, while I liked the original Earthsea trilogy, I was always resentful from the start that only guys could practice magic. Then I was even more resentful when the wise, male Ged gets to rescue Arha/Tenar from darkness... and despite Tenar's coolness as a character, Ged gets to go off and have more grand adventures because he's a mage, while Tenar stays behind and gets married. This is why I liked Tehanu so much, the overturning of the entire male hierarchy of Earthsea, etc.

Comments

Re: There was a nice recent webchat with Le Guin by the Guardian

[oyceter]

Oh yeah, I remember reading that a while back! I very much agreed with what she was saying about Earthsea.