Le Guin story reading
Feb. 26th, 2021 04:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
landingtreeFor the past few months I've been reading Ursula Le Guin short stories aloud to a Discord group -- and, after a while, I started making notes. I'll post these every so often, to remember what I thought of them later.
'Sur'
A group of South American women form an expedition to the pole before anyone else does, but feel no need to let posterity know. I hadn't read this before, and like it very much; it considers, among other things, what happens to expedition prep when early polar explorers have thought twice in their lives about housekeeping. Le Guin read lots of the actual -- or, as this story reminds me to say, recorded -- early polar explorers, stories of men journeying together through the intimacy of wilderness; gender permutations of ice journeys turn up also in The Left Hand of Darkness.
'The Author of the Acacia Seeds'
This was very satisfying to read, because a linguist who hadn't read it before was listening. “Why hadn't I?” she said. “It's great!” Le Guin is good at making non-human perspectives feel human; this story is about the art and linguistics of the non-human, beginning with ants.
'The Fountains'
First of the Orsinian Tales, which so far I've only myself read a handful of. A very short story, constructed around a single spare image; its symbolism regarding republics and kings mostly missed me.
'Direction of the Road'
Another clever 'What kind of being is speaking?' story, which I shouldn't spoil, because I'd forgotten how far into the story you get before the answer is provided.
'April in Paris'
A very early one: vivid, happy, funny, heteronormative.
'Things'
Oh dear. This is beautifully done, and what I had remembered about it was that its characters were working to escape the end of their world, that the work seemed futile, and wasn't: effort and care can get you far enough. A nice story to read around Christmas in a dark time, thought I.
I'd forgotten that my vivid memory of the positive part of the story comes mostly from the story's negative space: consists, in fact, of a slight relenting in its understated, terrible darkness. It was harrowing. I am sitting here in New Zealand in summer, out of lockdown, safely harrowable, and I'm very sorry I chose to read it to people in North America's midwinter.
'Unchosen Love'
Whereas I would have waited ages before reading this story because what I remembered about it was dark, if leaflemming (who has read more Le Guin for much longer than I have) hadn't very usefully sent me a list of stories he considered happiest when I said, “It turns out I don't know which ones are which, help.” On the world of O, the standard form of marriage involves four people; this is the story of an intense relationship between two men, one of them fiery and expansive from a fiery and expansive family, the other mild, at sea, not knowing how to ask for the things he wants, and alarmed by all the possibilities. This is the story of how their relationship walks along the edge of a precipice and steps down off the other side, safe.
'The Rule of Names'
The first Le Guin leaflemming read me? Probably not, because, Catwings. But the first of the short stories, and I love it. Even though the difference in what actually happens between this and 'Things' is less than you'd think, though the tone's a world away. Proto-Earthsea, source of its name-magic.
'Darkness Box'
Made no notes at the time, so not sure what my fresh thoughts were. Fable-ish and powerful. Oh, and I was reminded that I stole much more of this than I'd thought I had (a boy on a beach where the usual rules of consequence are suspended) for a story I wrote in my teens that I now suspect may have been terrible.
'Coming of Age in Karhide'
At Scintillation two years ago I had a wonderful time listening toredbird read this; it's one of the most immersive readings I've ever heard. I didn't sink into the story in the same way this time – perhaps it's that Le Guin's perspective on sex and gender is uncanny-valley for me now, perhaps it's just the luck of the reread-cycle: anything I like well enough to read again and again puts on many different colors.
'Winter's King'
This feels like all the substance of a novel done in twenty-four pages, full of elegant leaping. Leaping is one of Le Guin's great skills; here, in 'Things', in 'Unchosen Love', half the work is done by leavings-out. Before doing these readings I hadn't read any Le Guin for ages, and up till this point I've periodically thought, “Well, I like these stories, but do I really like them more than all the other stories I could be reading aloud?” Some of the stories I chose up to this point I liked less than I remembered, but this is the first I've liked dramatically more. Early Le Guin's feelings about kings look back in again from 'The Fountains,' bolstered by more years of craft.
It's also set on Gethen, first drafted before she'd realised that Gethenians were androgynous; which makes it, pleasantly, a story whose exploration of gender is entirely background. (I must reread The Left Hand of Darkness. In terms of when I first read them, its thoughts about gender had already been overtaken by the culture I grew up in; it didn't make me think anything new; whereas The Dispossessed made me wander around for a week feeling puzzled that ownership had ever struck me as normal).
'Semley's Necklace'
Read next, because it's another of the Ekumen stories which deals with what NFL travel does to time. A mythic tragedy whose players mostly don't know they're in a science fiction story. I quite like it.
'Report of the Shipwrecked Foreigner to the Kadanh of Derb'
I like this better than I remembered! A nod to Invisible Cities, carried along on its voice, fun to read aloud.
'Nine Lives'
A clone story, and I read it just after starting C.J. Cherryh's Cyteen: in terms of thinking about cloning and identity and socialisation, 'Nine Lives' read like a sapling next to an oak tree; but it was written two decades earlier. Maybe it's the same oak tree. That weird thing where the characters do the equivalent of having a deep philosophical conversation about the grand and hard to-grapple-with implications of escalators, what they'll do to the human psyche, whether they'll be used by mystics to go right on up to heaven, looked back on from a society that no longer thinks the concept of escalators is all that weird.
Unfortunately here the escalators in question are human. The friendship between protagonists Pugh and Martin is nice, a working squabble-filled intimacy which Pugh has to think about twice before naming it what it is, love; but the degree to which the clone is othered by them, is treated as an example, poked and prodded and called crazy for grieving, well, I hate it. And the worldbuilding-background famines, what happens offhand to the Irish due to lack of birth control and overpopulation, is jarring at this point; so's the old Le Guin thing of the neuter 'he'. (Also, perhaps more essentially, one of the people I was reading it to pointed out that the story is simply too long, because it was sold to Playboy, and had to fit their length requirement. Also that this is the story which Le Guin allowed to be published without her first name, concealing her gender, which she later regretted).
'Schrodinger's Cat'
A delightful surreal story. I don't know what to make of it, in fact, I make nothing of it, I just enjoy that it exists.
'Sur'
A group of South American women form an expedition to the pole before anyone else does, but feel no need to let posterity know. I hadn't read this before, and like it very much; it considers, among other things, what happens to expedition prep when early polar explorers have thought twice in their lives about housekeeping. Le Guin read lots of the actual -- or, as this story reminds me to say, recorded -- early polar explorers, stories of men journeying together through the intimacy of wilderness; gender permutations of ice journeys turn up also in The Left Hand of Darkness.
'The Author of the Acacia Seeds'
This was very satisfying to read, because a linguist who hadn't read it before was listening. “Why hadn't I?” she said. “It's great!” Le Guin is good at making non-human perspectives feel human; this story is about the art and linguistics of the non-human, beginning with ants.
'The Fountains'
First of the Orsinian Tales, which so far I've only myself read a handful of. A very short story, constructed around a single spare image; its symbolism regarding republics and kings mostly missed me.
'Direction of the Road'
Another clever 'What kind of being is speaking?' story, which I shouldn't spoil, because I'd forgotten how far into the story you get before the answer is provided.
'April in Paris'
A very early one: vivid, happy, funny, heteronormative.
'Things'
Oh dear. This is beautifully done, and what I had remembered about it was that its characters were working to escape the end of their world, that the work seemed futile, and wasn't: effort and care can get you far enough. A nice story to read around Christmas in a dark time, thought I.
I'd forgotten that my vivid memory of the positive part of the story comes mostly from the story's negative space: consists, in fact, of a slight relenting in its understated, terrible darkness. It was harrowing. I am sitting here in New Zealand in summer, out of lockdown, safely harrowable, and I'm very sorry I chose to read it to people in North America's midwinter.
'Unchosen Love'
Whereas I would have waited ages before reading this story because what I remembered about it was dark, if leaflemming (who has read more Le Guin for much longer than I have) hadn't very usefully sent me a list of stories he considered happiest when I said, “It turns out I don't know which ones are which, help.” On the world of O, the standard form of marriage involves four people; this is the story of an intense relationship between two men, one of them fiery and expansive from a fiery and expansive family, the other mild, at sea, not knowing how to ask for the things he wants, and alarmed by all the possibilities. This is the story of how their relationship walks along the edge of a precipice and steps down off the other side, safe.
'The Rule of Names'
The first Le Guin leaflemming read me? Probably not, because, Catwings. But the first of the short stories, and I love it. Even though the difference in what actually happens between this and 'Things' is less than you'd think, though the tone's a world away. Proto-Earthsea, source of its name-magic.
'Darkness Box'
Made no notes at the time, so not sure what my fresh thoughts were. Fable-ish and powerful. Oh, and I was reminded that I stole much more of this than I'd thought I had (a boy on a beach where the usual rules of consequence are suspended) for a story I wrote in my teens that I now suspect may have been terrible.
'Coming of Age in Karhide'
At Scintillation two years ago I had a wonderful time listening to
redbird read this; it's one of the most immersive readings I've ever heard. I didn't sink into the story in the same way this time – perhaps it's that Le Guin's perspective on sex and gender is uncanny-valley for me now, perhaps it's just the luck of the reread-cycle: anything I like well enough to read again and again puts on many different colors.'Winter's King'
This feels like all the substance of a novel done in twenty-four pages, full of elegant leaping. Leaping is one of Le Guin's great skills; here, in 'Things', in 'Unchosen Love', half the work is done by leavings-out. Before doing these readings I hadn't read any Le Guin for ages, and up till this point I've periodically thought, “Well, I like these stories, but do I really like them more than all the other stories I could be reading aloud?” Some of the stories I chose up to this point I liked less than I remembered, but this is the first I've liked dramatically more. Early Le Guin's feelings about kings look back in again from 'The Fountains,' bolstered by more years of craft.
It's also set on Gethen, first drafted before she'd realised that Gethenians were androgynous; which makes it, pleasantly, a story whose exploration of gender is entirely background. (I must reread The Left Hand of Darkness. In terms of when I first read them, its thoughts about gender had already been overtaken by the culture I grew up in; it didn't make me think anything new; whereas The Dispossessed made me wander around for a week feeling puzzled that ownership had ever struck me as normal).
'Semley's Necklace'
Read next, because it's another of the Ekumen stories which deals with what NFL travel does to time. A mythic tragedy whose players mostly don't know they're in a science fiction story. I quite like it.
'Report of the Shipwrecked Foreigner to the Kadanh of Derb'
I like this better than I remembered! A nod to Invisible Cities, carried along on its voice, fun to read aloud.
'Nine Lives'
A clone story, and I read it just after starting C.J. Cherryh's Cyteen: in terms of thinking about cloning and identity and socialisation, 'Nine Lives' read like a sapling next to an oak tree; but it was written two decades earlier. Maybe it's the same oak tree. That weird thing where the characters do the equivalent of having a deep philosophical conversation about the grand and hard to-grapple-with implications of escalators, what they'll do to the human psyche, whether they'll be used by mystics to go right on up to heaven, looked back on from a society that no longer thinks the concept of escalators is all that weird.
Unfortunately here the escalators in question are human. The friendship between protagonists Pugh and Martin is nice, a working squabble-filled intimacy which Pugh has to think about twice before naming it what it is, love; but the degree to which the clone is othered by them, is treated as an example, poked and prodded and called crazy for grieving, well, I hate it. And the worldbuilding-background famines, what happens offhand to the Irish due to lack of birth control and overpopulation, is jarring at this point; so's the old Le Guin thing of the neuter 'he'. (Also, perhaps more essentially, one of the people I was reading it to pointed out that the story is simply too long, because it was sold to Playboy, and had to fit their length requirement. Also that this is the story which Le Guin allowed to be published without her first name, concealing her gender, which she later regretted).
'Schrodinger's Cat'
A delightful surreal story. I don't know what to make of it, in fact, I make nothing of it, I just enjoy that it exists.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-26 04:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-26 09:19 am (UTC)I think the first Le Guin I read you might have been A Ride on the Red Mare's Back? -- or otherwise, probably Catwings, yeah.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-26 09:20 am (UTC)