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landingtree) wrote2024-03-18 02:14 pm
landingtree) wrote2024-03-18 02:14 pm
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Recent reading: Tehanu
In 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.