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Ursula Le Guin

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im making this thread for all things Ursula Le Guin, in case anyone is interested in discussing her or her works.

she is actually growing more mature now, she is 84 and she is at the point at which she is reflecting on her life. if you ever plan to write to her to tell her you love her, now is as good a time as any.

i have been profoundly affected by her. when i was 9, my mother bought me the Earthsea Quartet bindup for my birthday. i dont think that any single other work of art has had as much of an effect in determining the direction of my life. reading those books made me fall in love with reading and literature in a way that i dont think i will ever be able to escape. it was the first "real" book i read, and after that, i just wanted to read and read, i never wanted to do anything else with my life.

i have also read a few of her other works and found them excellent, including The Left Hand of Darkness, The Word For World Is Forest, The Eye Of The Heron, and also the other Earthsea volumes Tales of Earthsea and The Other Wind. i know that is not the greater part of her works, and for a fan it isnt good that i havent read more! but i swear, i am a legitimate fan.

i think she is one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century (and beyond). there are many writers of the same approximate historical and geographic location who have achieved much more fame, but i think that because she is known as a genre writer, it has held her back from achieving more popular recognition. but in reality she is a far superior artist to these much more famous and more fashionable artists. like for example, although this may upset some people badly, i would not hesitate to say that she is a superior artist to Jack Kerouac or that other guy, what ever his name is, oh i just cant remember although i have read a few of his novels, Ernest Hemingway. she makes him look like Paulo Coelho (not that its difficult).

i think Ursula Le Guin is the most trustworthy person on earth. if i saw her in person i would tell her my "true name".

so any fans of Ursula Le Guin, write to her, or anyway, write on this thread.
 
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invisible said:
im making this thread for all things Ursula Le Guin, in case anyone is interested in discussing her or her works.

she is actually growing more mature now, she is 84 and she is at the point at which she is reflecting on her life. if you ever plan to write to her to tell her you love her, now is as good a time as any.

i have been profoundly affected by her. when i was 9, my mother bought me the Earthsea Quartet bindup for my birthday. i dont think that any single other work of art has had as much of an effect in determining the direction of my life. reading those books made me fall in love with reading and literature in a way that i dont think i will ever be able to escape. it was the first "real" book i read, and after that, i just wanted to read and read, i never wanted to do anything else with my life.

i have also read a few of her other works and found them excellent, including The Left Hand of Darkness, The Word For World Is Forest, The Eye Of The Heron, and also the other Earthsea volumes Tales of Earthsea and The Other Wind. i know that is not the greater part of her works, and for a fan it isnt good that i havent read more! but i swear, i am a legitimate fan.

i think she is one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century (and beyond). there are many writers of the same approximate historical and geographic location who have achieved much more fame, but i think that because she is known as a genre writer, it has held her back from achieving more popular recognition. but in reality she is a far superior artist to these much more famous and more fashionable artists. like for example, although this may upset some people badly, i would not hesitate to say that she is a superior artist to Jack Kerouac or that other guy, what ever his name is, oh i just cant remember although i have read a few of his novels, Ernest Hemingway. she makes him look like Paulo Coelho (not that its difficult).

i think Ursula Le Guin is the most trustworthy person on earth. if i saw her in person i would tell her my "true name".

so any fans of Ursula Le Guin, write to her, or anyway, write on this thread.
Click to expand...

I've actually been reading the Earthsea Quartet over spring break, and just finished The Tombs of Atuan! I loved it! I read the Left Hand of Darkness when I was in high school, and I feel like it really impacted the way I saw and interpreted gender at the time.
 
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jupiterswoon said:
I've actually been reading the Earthsea Quartet over spring break, and just finished The Tombs of Atuan! I loved it! I read the Left Hand of Darkness when I was in high school, and I feel like it really impacted the way I saw and interpreted gender at the time.
Click to expand...

cool! yeah i think it was a really interesting way of looking at gender, and also sexuality. i loved the Tombs of Atuan!! my favourite!!! thanks for your response :hug:
 
If someone wanted to start reading Ursula Le Guin, which one would you suggest they start with first?
 
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Framed said:
If someone wanted to start reading Ursula Le Guin, which one would you suggest they start with first?
Click to expand...

they should just read the Earthsea Quartet, i think it is probably her most famous work, its published in penguin and it has A Wizard of Earthsea, Tombs of Atuan, Farthest Shore and Tehanu in order. i havent read it for years, wish i had time to read it again now.
 
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@invisible can you direct me to a nice hard covered illustrated edition of the Earth Sea Trilogy? um... Quartet
 
Stu said:
@invisible can you direct me to a nice hard covered illustrated edition of the Earth Sea Trilogy? um... Quartet
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yes it was originally a trilogy wasnt it! but i admit i think the fourth book is magical! the way that it brings the characters together added something for me. and there are some memorable moments in there I think mostly to do with Tenar and her engagements with the different worlds and knowledges that she moves between. She is some character. the Therru character was also very interesting and of course, Ged.

ive only ever seen the paperback currently in print which is sparingly illustrated with the original maps. i actually spent great amounts of time in the past just looking for the artist produced illustrations that are on the cover by David Bergen in hi res because they are so compelling as fantasy art but i could never find them.

i have seen other illustrations too - the covers for the separate editions that were published in the late 60s and early 70s. actually i think i noticed at work that they are still in print. but i didnt look inside to see what kind of illustrations were in there. i think i also once saw some various woodcut illustrations, which seems like an ideal medium for the stories, just perfect, but i dont know whether they were artist designed independently of publications. actually i remember i posted one of those woodcuts depicting Ged and his otak friend as reminding me of you once, i forgot about that!!!!!

will definitely do more research to see what is available! thanks for the awesome mission!
 
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Tales of the Flat Earth by Tanith Lee are much better. Earthsea never interested me.
 
Sounds like you have a serious case of the author obsession there.

I have read The Dispossessed, once or twice, and it is probably the height of my familiarity with that author. I like political science fiction but I think that Sherri Tepper (spelling) who wrote Gate To Womans Country and Beauty is a better author in that respect. A lot of people who read The Dispossessed think its an unambivalent endorsement of anarchism but she subtitled the thing "An Ambiguous Utopia" herself, it is supposed to show how ethical but smart individuals operate in a variety of different contexts or cultures, socialistic/anarchistic but deteriorating into authoritarianism vs. capitalistic but deteriorating into revolution and terror.

The Earthsea quartet is one I've heard a lot of people talk about, I tried to read the first book after I read a glowing review in which the reviewer said that it dealt with depression and regret, it was interesting what I read of it but I found it a bit of a slog. I do think its probably a better series on the "young magician" front than Harry Potter.
 
i think what gives Earthsea its enduring literary value is its engagement with ideas of meaning that were in absolute crisis in the 20th century. so for example this is a fantasy world in which meaning is given to truly exist in language, but then you have these beings that are pure language, pure meaning, and they speak in a language of absolute truth, but they are going crazy and losing their language, their truth. the truth of gender is also eroding, and gender has always been divided according to hold on truth, but now that is all slowly slipping away. and then there are these various cultural groups, such as the subcultures of truth practice, who are engaged in these things in different ways, and the warrior cultures who worship the obliteration of meaning and truth, and what kind of meaning can be in that. so it is just a very interesting world and it deals with some complex theoretical matters that have been really important to the history of thought and especially in that historical period. and she was still composing them until recently, so you can go ahead and see how these problems are resolved in that world.
 
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i love an excellent postcolonial novel. Midnight's Children was one i read for school. and i read Voss when i was about 22. and who could forget the glittering modernist giant Heart of Darkness, such an unfashionable topic, and such a different composition in so many ways from The Wasteland. and now im getting thinking about Virgil and Homer.... Ursula Le Guin is just one of my favourite authors, maybe even most favourite. uncertain why exactly. she is a genius and a modernist and so inconsiderately ignored by her contemporaries. and such a gentle activist, and such an honest champion of human goodness. her work is like a warm blanket for my heart.
 
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