Recent reading: Tehanu
Mar. 18th, 2024 02:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
landingtreeIn danger of becoming overwhelmed by my to-read pile - a state in which I'm constantly reading the first chapters of good books without much joy and then putting them down - I've once again sectioned off eighteen books and decided not to read anything else until I've finished these. This is the kind of exercise I seldom finish but find value in starting. I seem to adjust to the presence of books on my shelf as normal and uninteresting, so just changing the order the books are in gives me the same pleasant "New treasures!" feeling as opening a parcel. (Pakij!)
I am alternating sixths of Crime and Punishment with shorter books, beginning with Tehanu.
This is the first time I've reread any of the second three books of Earthsea. I plan to go on to both the others (which is already an amendment to my eighteen books rule!) because I'm currently listening to the Shelved By Genre podcast, which has got up to this book in their Earthsea-reading.
I remember as a teenager reading these books for the first time, thinking 'What would an Earthsea book look like that wasn't about mages?' This memory now confuses me; I don't know what I then read in Tehanu, because this book now seems to me like Le Guin asking and answering the same question. In some ways it's a book about lacking power. It's not that the first three Earthsea books don't complicate their happy endings, their grand quests; but they are involved with a hope of finally achieving balance, achieving piece, making things right. Tehanu starts with 'But what do we do with things that can't be right, not ever?' It starts with a child whose burns no magic can cure, whose burns were inflicted by cruel men, in the patriarchy that Le Guin put into Earthsea when she reached for some of fantasy's default settings.
I was interested to see she'd written this book after Always Coming Home. That's another book I've never reread, but I recall it being an attempt to feel out the shape of a society almost wholly beyond the ills of our present world, in which patriarchy is remembered in a scary fable told to children. Tehanu is not that story. Tehanu is starting squarely inside patriarchy, with characters feeling their way tentatively toward what might follow it. Some of its thoughts on gender and gendered power seem very limited to me for that reason. At the same time, I like the way it leaves the series turning toward an unanswered question. It's interesting that this was ever billed as The Last Book of Earthsea, given the degree to which it seems to be setting up sequels; I have very few memories of the sequels and am keen to reread them, but in the meantime I rather like to imagine the open sea beyond this book, the sequel-less-ness we might have gotten.
The book feels strangely choppy to me, different chapters taking place in such different modes such that I find myself remembering it as a bundle of different pieces; it's also Le Guin at the height of her powers, writing with efficiency and elegance, such that I find myself remembering it as a whole world. It depends on the minute.
In her Tor post about the book Jo Walton describes Tehanu calling the dragon at the end as ‘too easy an answer, as well as being a nice trick if you can do it’ which expresses how I felt. My memory of this scene had been quite different, putting the mystery right at the center: I thought Tehanu became a dragon, or the child Therru called a dragon named Tehanu who wasn't quite like the dragons we'd seen before. I don't want to over-simplify Le Guin's complex thoughts about power - whether having the word that can call the dragon is distinct from having one's own power of magery; the way that in the presence of the dragon the whole cluster of evil men have no power after all, are never seen, are nothing but bones: there's something in that. But on a practical level I do have that feeling, 'nice trick if you can do it,' a response I also have in certain Bujold books when problems can be cancelled out simply by knowing a nice member of the nobility. Speaking of which: the king turns up in Tehanu. He's a good king, and Tenar thinks at one point that he's going to be able to solve 'all the problems a king can solve' (paraphrase). The dragon is being positioned separately to that. Dragons are transcendence, personal and interpersonal; they can solve problems the best king can't. Yet what we see a dragon do is kill people.
Another practical detail about this ending - we know Tehanu is different from the other humans. Kalessin would take her with them if asked, as they couldn't or wouldn't take the others. It makes her a strangely metaphorical figure given that we also know her human origins, or think we do. (I don't remember what later books do with this, so please don't remind me yet!)
Tehanu is a painful book. Tenar feels so much fear and self-doubt. The society and men of Gont besiege her literally and metaphorically. She fears assault, and is right to. She tells herself off for haranguing Ged in a way that makes me think the word 'harangue' has been directed at her before. After every crisis, she tells herself off for having not thought of some better response to it. We also see Tenar undoing, or trying to undo, some of the ways she herself has believed that the witch-women of the local towns are small and mean people.
The wizard Aspen who shows up here is horrific and one-note, he's a sexist monologue on legs. He seems useful to the book in two ways beyond being a fleshless bone-man, a figure of evil: we see otherwise friendly, powerful men treat him like a missing step that can't be fixed, folding him into their confidence - yes, even a sexist monologue on legs. And also the chapter called The Master pairs him with Tenar's son, a far more characterful fool; that seems to me to be letting the evil wizard rise naturally out of the rest of the book, rise out of the rest of Earthsea. The social force and failure of understanding wielded by Tenar's son is ultimately the same as, or closely wedded to, the vile misogyny of Aspen, whose curse steals Tenar's language and dignity and then rails at her for lacking them. These people are both The Master.
Where I disagree with Jo Walton's Tor post is where she says the book is weaker for needing evil wizards, men, the world of action, in order to give the book plot. On the one hand, this is only a problem if you think plot is the book's spine. I think there's an argument to be made for and against that. The fact that I'm writing about the plot here and not the characters, the landscape, the details of domestic life which are painted so well, does seem to speak in its favor. But the other thing is that Le Guin did write what-else-is-possible books, and this strikes me as a working-out-from-inside-patriarchy book. Even the last two pages haven't gotten to whatever's next yet. In those two pages there's a whole bundle of images about change: the vampiric grandfather has been killed so that his grandson might live; the young peach tree has died, but the old peach tree is still bearing fruit with stones that can be planted; the old books are left behind, but there are new things to learn, and the books might be retrieved at need.
I am alternating sixths of Crime and Punishment with shorter books, beginning with Tehanu.
This is the first time I've reread any of the second three books of Earthsea. I plan to go on to both the others (which is already an amendment to my eighteen books rule!) because I'm currently listening to the Shelved By Genre podcast, which has got up to this book in their Earthsea-reading.
I remember as a teenager reading these books for the first time, thinking 'What would an Earthsea book look like that wasn't about mages?' This memory now confuses me; I don't know what I then read in Tehanu, because this book now seems to me like Le Guin asking and answering the same question. In some ways it's a book about lacking power. It's not that the first three Earthsea books don't complicate their happy endings, their grand quests; but they are involved with a hope of finally achieving balance, achieving piece, making things right. Tehanu starts with 'But what do we do with things that can't be right, not ever?' It starts with a child whose burns no magic can cure, whose burns were inflicted by cruel men, in the patriarchy that Le Guin put into Earthsea when she reached for some of fantasy's default settings.
I was interested to see she'd written this book after Always Coming Home. That's another book I've never reread, but I recall it being an attempt to feel out the shape of a society almost wholly beyond the ills of our present world, in which patriarchy is remembered in a scary fable told to children. Tehanu is not that story. Tehanu is starting squarely inside patriarchy, with characters feeling their way tentatively toward what might follow it. Some of its thoughts on gender and gendered power seem very limited to me for that reason. At the same time, I like the way it leaves the series turning toward an unanswered question. It's interesting that this was ever billed as The Last Book of Earthsea, given the degree to which it seems to be setting up sequels; I have very few memories of the sequels and am keen to reread them, but in the meantime I rather like to imagine the open sea beyond this book, the sequel-less-ness we might have gotten.
The book feels strangely choppy to me, different chapters taking place in such different modes such that I find myself remembering it as a bundle of different pieces; it's also Le Guin at the height of her powers, writing with efficiency and elegance, such that I find myself remembering it as a whole world. It depends on the minute.
In her Tor post about the book Jo Walton describes Tehanu calling the dragon at the end as ‘too easy an answer, as well as being a nice trick if you can do it’ which expresses how I felt. My memory of this scene had been quite different, putting the mystery right at the center: I thought Tehanu became a dragon, or the child Therru called a dragon named Tehanu who wasn't quite like the dragons we'd seen before. I don't want to over-simplify Le Guin's complex thoughts about power - whether having the word that can call the dragon is distinct from having one's own power of magery; the way that in the presence of the dragon the whole cluster of evil men have no power after all, are never seen, are nothing but bones: there's something in that. But on a practical level I do have that feeling, 'nice trick if you can do it,' a response I also have in certain Bujold books when problems can be cancelled out simply by knowing a nice member of the nobility. Speaking of which: the king turns up in Tehanu. He's a good king, and Tenar thinks at one point that he's going to be able to solve 'all the problems a king can solve' (paraphrase). The dragon is being positioned separately to that. Dragons are transcendence, personal and interpersonal; they can solve problems the best king can't. Yet what we see a dragon do is kill people.
Another practical detail about this ending - we know Tehanu is different from the other humans. Kalessin would take her with them if asked, as they couldn't or wouldn't take the others. It makes her a strangely metaphorical figure given that we also know her human origins, or think we do. (I don't remember what later books do with this, so please don't remind me yet!)
Tehanu is a painful book. Tenar feels so much fear and self-doubt. The society and men of Gont besiege her literally and metaphorically. She fears assault, and is right to. She tells herself off for haranguing Ged in a way that makes me think the word 'harangue' has been directed at her before. After every crisis, she tells herself off for having not thought of some better response to it. We also see Tenar undoing, or trying to undo, some of the ways she herself has believed that the witch-women of the local towns are small and mean people.
The wizard Aspen who shows up here is horrific and one-note, he's a sexist monologue on legs. He seems useful to the book in two ways beyond being a fleshless bone-man, a figure of evil: we see otherwise friendly, powerful men treat him like a missing step that can't be fixed, folding him into their confidence - yes, even a sexist monologue on legs. And also the chapter called The Master pairs him with Tenar's son, a far more characterful fool; that seems to me to be letting the evil wizard rise naturally out of the rest of the book, rise out of the rest of Earthsea. The social force and failure of understanding wielded by Tenar's son is ultimately the same as, or closely wedded to, the vile misogyny of Aspen, whose curse steals Tenar's language and dignity and then rails at her for lacking them. These people are both The Master.
Where I disagree with Jo Walton's Tor post is where she says the book is weaker for needing evil wizards, men, the world of action, in order to give the book plot. On the one hand, this is only a problem if you think plot is the book's spine. I think there's an argument to be made for and against that. The fact that I'm writing about the plot here and not the characters, the landscape, the details of domestic life which are painted so well, does seem to speak in its favor. But the other thing is that Le Guin did write what-else-is-possible books, and this strikes me as a working-out-from-inside-patriarchy book. Even the last two pages haven't gotten to whatever's next yet. In those two pages there's a whole bundle of images about change: the vampiric grandfather has been killed so that his grandson might live; the young peach tree has died, but the old peach tree is still bearing fruit with stones that can be planted; the old books are left behind, but there are new things to learn, and the books might be retrieved at need.
Entirely full of spoilers
Date: 2024-03-18 03:12 am (UTC)Also deliver a broken person to his home & save two people, if we're staying within the frame of this book... within the scope of the series to date, we also know that dragons generally are Tolkienesque, to the extent of being fire-breathing hoarders who are inherently dangerous to speak with. My question about the dragons in the final three books has always been how transcendent they get to be when they're also standard fantasy dragons. "No one can explain a dragon", which UKLG says in one or another of her intros, has always struck me as 1) usefully true, at the level of symbolism she's shooting for and in many ways achieves, but also 2) a cop-out, because in some ways her dragons are shackled to mutually exclusive settings.
As to calling a dragon being a useful trick if you can do it -- isn't that equally applicable as a criticism to all of magery? Ged spends three books doing tricks that are nice if you can do them. In this book he and Tenar mostly experience what it's like when tricks that aren't nice are done to them, and then it eventuates that Therru has her own form of power. I grant that this is narratively convenient, but it doesn't seem like cheating, any more than it did for the apparently powerless village boy Ged (not Ged at that point) to usefully trick the pirates who attack the village in book one.
To me he's the pure expression of something we usually see only diluted -- or maybe, he's what you get when the bully down the road becomes the lord of the manor. That is, I don't see him as one-note so much as a representation of what certain psychologies do when you remove restraint. (The brief moment where we see him through Therru's eyes, as "a forked and writing darkness", is one of my favourite sentences in all Le Guin.)
Also! I would like to know what the other books in your pile of 18 are! It's a very good plan. (As is reordering book shelves. Mine have been frozen for too long).
Re: Entirely full of spoilers
Date: 2024-03-18 03:51 am (UTC)isn't that equally applicable as a criticism to all of magery? Ged spends three books doing tricks that are nice if you can do them
I think it is applicable as a criticism to all of magery, which is why - given that the book is otherwise removing magery except from the villain - I feel uncertain about it as a solution. Because it seems presented as a solution that is different to magery. Not cheating when it comes to worldbuilding but cheating, maybe, when it comes to talking about what power is, and how powers differ. But my feelings on this book are unsettled so I am far from wedded to that.
(I thought I was speaking vaguely when I said 'removing magery except from the villain' and there'd be a few minor examples of it. Now I'm not sure. Even the Master Windkey, who we meet and who retains his power, does not use magic, because the weather is perfect already on the day of the king's sailing. This only just struck me. Edited to add: we see witches do magic, but as far as I recall, it's presented as ambiguous whether it works or not. We see the mark of curing set over Therru and then she pulls through; we don't see a hawk called or a wind changed, we don't see a wound knitting back together.)
I agree with what you say about Aspen, and I think about the dragons being split between different dragon-types too, though I'll have to think about that.
I may list the other books on my shelf later, or I may not, since I think making them a list, or hearing what others think about the list, will make me less likely to read them! One of the things I like is that some of them I have high hopes for and heard strong recommendations of, and some are sheerly random and I've never heard what anybody thinks of them ever.
Now I must hurry to return somebody's coat and then get to film society!
Re: Entirely full of spoilers
Date: 2024-03-18 01:00 pm (UTC)Re: Entirely full of spoilers
Date: 2024-03-20 01:18 am (UTC)Re: Entirely full of spoilers
Date: 2024-03-19 01:09 am (UTC)I still have no intuitive sympathy for the "this ending weakens what the rest of the book is doing" response -- I can see it intellectually, but it's like someone seeing red where I see white. To me, it's been heavily foreshadowed (Therru is an uncanny child of whom a great wizard has said "They will fear her", and a future woman of Gont in a book where we've been told that's somehow the key phrase to finding the next archmage), so in that sense it's absolutely in keeping with what the book's doing. And I don't really get the idea that it's a betrayal of anything in the book for power to come to the aid of weakness in the face of Aspen's power. Sometimes I do find it overly pat -- one of UKLG's "I must do plot resolution now and here's a dragon I left lying around earlier" moments. Sometimes I find it highly satisfying.
The thing I've never liked is Kalesin turning out to be Segoy. It makes the world smaller. More on this if we end up talking about The Other Wind, maybe.
When I first read your reply above I was also standing in the film soc queue, intermittently discussing the feral intensity of the film soc queue with three delightful elderly ladies who had raced me for first place in line... so I missed the answer to my question about the books on your shelf. Sorry! I look forward to hearing more of them, as and when.
(And also, not to break totally from the thread topic, I'm still smiling to myself at odd moments as I remember bits of that film. Most absurd and most delightful; and as the film soc notes say, so innocent. Almost the last moment someone could make a film about Nazis being merely sinister buffoons).
Re: Entirely full of spoilers
Date: 2024-03-20 01:11 am (UTC)For the rest - I think other replies cover my feelings!
It was a good film wasn't it! (Night Train to Munich). I keep thinking: golf clubs! How long will they be telling that story?
no subject
Date: 2024-03-18 06:35 pm (UTC)This is what I found so frustrating about the ending, and about the later Earthsea books in general. In earlier books having the power to call a dragon to solve a problem would have made sense, thematically and emotionally. But Tehanu is about unsolvable problems and how to live in an unjust society; it's specifically about NOT being able to solve problems with magic. And then at the end, the problem of child abuse, violence against women and children, and misogyny baked into the structure of society is solved with a dragon.
I also love large parts of the book, but it is the only book I have ever read that I would have liked better if it hadn't had dragons.
no subject
Date: 2024-03-18 08:47 pm (UTC)I think you're loading the dice with this statement -- if this is what the book's about, then yes, the ending betrays the premise. But you could equally say that the book is about living in a world with massively unequal power distribution, and the experience of having had power and living without it, as both Tenar and Ged are doing. It doesn't follow from that that the imbalance will always swing the same way, any more than it follows from the existence of child abuse that an abuse survivor can never acquire any form of social power. I'm avoiding spoilers for the remaining two books because Landingtree is still rereading them, but what was done to Therru isn't negated by what she's able to do herself.
I have my own frustrations with the later Earthsea books -- to be discussed in later threads maybe! -- and I do see that there are tensions in Tehanu. It's my favourite of the series though... I'd be very sad not to have the stories in Tales, but if it had in fact been the last book of Earthsea I'd have found it a satisfying ending.
no subject
Date: 2024-03-19 02:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-03-19 03:06 am (UTC)I don't think that's so. Ogion's dying vision is of Ged healing the wound in the world. Every positive use of power in the series to date is brought into the frame by that vision -- I mean it would be there anyway. It's at best complicated and at worst problematic to think of the abuse Therru suffers as only an effect of the world being broken at the time, though that's how the villagers think of it, if I'm remembering right -- "this wouldn't have happened in the better days". The extent to which Roke has been presiding over a form of fear-driven patriarchal feudalism is more explicitly dealt with in "The Finder" and "Dragonfly". But in some sense, this is a world where magic can be used to uphold a benign natural balance, and that idea is what Ged spent his power for. It's not that the world is inherently just. It's that it has an inherent capacity for good order, which men have been variously perverting for a long time now.
All of which is an attempt at saying, I think "magic is only bad in this book until suddenly it's not" is an over-simplification.
no subject
Date: 2024-03-20 01:26 am (UTC)I disagree with this. Not because I think Le Guin is saying that power never did anything good, but I don't think it's being brought into the frame here. It's been in the frame for three books; here it isn't. I think this, one, because Ogion is seeing what's coming next as much as what's been; when he says 'wait' he's talking about waiting for Ged, but also for the change that's begun in the world yet not finished. And two, because of how power is shown to be used in the book, and how power is talked about between Tenar and Ged. I think at this point it really is me seeing red when you see white, because when I try to justify this, I mostly find myself waving at the book going, 'My argument for this is... the book!' Also it probably does not help that I slept eight hours in the previous two nights combined.
no subject
Date: 2024-03-18 09:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-03-20 01:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-03-20 02:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-03-18 09:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-03-20 01:34 am (UTC)I think it makes a difference for me how I feel about Tehanu being positioned as unique in the plot; whereas everyone is the dragon. (Or could be, or could have been).
no subject
Date: 2024-03-23 05:02 pm (UTC)(I don't think it's a satisfying resolution of the plot, in a book that -- as