She has found an interstice

Ursula K. Le Guin is a wise woman. No one who has read any of her fiction could come to any another conclusion.

No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters is a collection of Le Guin's blog writings. She has been blogging since 2010, having taken up the practice after being inspired by José Saramago's blog.

She reflects on aging, leisure, anger, writing, genre, feminism, social media, opera. She has interesting opinions to share. She tells tales of her cat.

Sometimes I notice that a teenager in the family group is present in body — smiling, polite, apparently attentive — but absent. I think, I hope she has found an interstice, made herself some spare time, wriggled into it, and is alone there, deep down there, thinking, feeling.

I recently ordered this book for someone as a gift; it was only afterwards that I was lucky enough to see a review copy. Because of the nature of the collection, I think it is much more conducive to print than to e-publication (somewhat ironically, given its blogly origins). It's the sort of book you flip through, let something catch your eye, settle in to mull over an essay or two. As something to read cover to cover, it's a little disjointed.

What most impresses me is the spirit of the book, which the title captures well. Don't waste time, be mindful, think things through, do something.

Some quotable highlights
"Lying It All Away" (October 2012):

I have watched my country accept, mostly quite complacently, along with a lower living standard for more and more people, a lower moral standard. A moral standard based on advertising. That hard-minded man Saul Bellow wrote that democracy is propaganda. It get harder to deny that when, for instance, during a campaign, not only aspirants to the presidency but the president himself hides or misrepresents known facts, lies deliberately and repeatedly. And only the opposition objects.

"The Inner Child and the Nude Politician" (October 2014):

Children are by nature, by necessity, irresponsible, and irresponsibility in them, as in puppies or kittens, is part of their charm. Carried into adulthood it becomes a dire practical and ethical failing. Uncontrolled spontaneity wastes itself. Ignorance isn't wisdom. Innocence is wisdom only of the spirit. We can and do all learn from children, all through our life; but "become as little children" is a spiritual counsel, not an intellectual, practical, or ethical one.

"Belief in Belief" (February 2014):

I don't believe in Darwin's theory of evolution. I accept it. It isn't a matter of faith, but of evidence.

The whole undertaking of science is to deal, as well as it can, with reality. The reality of actual things and events in time is subject to doubt, to hypothesis, to proof and disproof, to acceptance and rejection — not to belief or disbelief.

Belief has its proper and powerful existence in the domains of magic, religion, fear, and hope.

Think about what matters.

Nobel thoughts

The 2016 Nobel prize in literature will be announced Thursday, October 13.

New Republic gives a rundown of who's in the running, in full awareness that there are more factors at play than merely the quality of the work.

I've been rooting for Adam Zagajewski for several years. Because Polish poets rock. But his rank has been slipping, and another Eastern European after Alexievich is unlikely.

Adonis has been favoured by the odds for about a decade now. This choice would not surprise me. I'm not very familiar with his work; it doesn't really speak to me. Poetry's like that.

Haruki Murakami would be disappointing. Entertaining as his books can be, I think he lacks depth.

Margaret Atwood is deserving. I'm surprised she didn't win years ago, but as a Canadian she may have several more years to wait.

Ursula K. Le Guin would be awesome. It may be America's turn, but perhaps she's too genre.

Elena Ferrante would be an inspired choice, an opportunity for the committee to send a message about privacy rights, women's rights, or the intersection of truth and fiction. No odds listed just a few days ago, but now she does.

Currently leading Ladbrokes at 4/1: Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o — completely unknown to me, but he has the right geography to be a winner this year.

But the odds are changing daily. The Guardian covers some of the movement.

Il descend, réveillé, l'autre côté du rêve

It's a short flight, but I'm hoping to finish reading my book. Helena asks me about the flying turtles on the cover. My edition of The Lathe of Heaven, by Ursula K. Le Guin, has flying turtles on the cover. I can't say I even noticed them.

Oh, right, I say. They're not actually turtles, they're aliens. But they're a bit odd, as aliens go, cuz this guy just dreamed them up. He has these dreams that come true, only they don't exactly "come true," just he wakes up and everything in his dream has always been true, so nobody notices when things change. So he dreamt there were aliens on the Moon, but then it was suggested to him to dream that they weren't on the Moon anymore, so suddenly they're invading the Earth, but then he dreams that it was all a big misunderstanding. They're not really turtles, it's more like an armour, or a spacesuit so they can deal with the atmosphere. And they communicate through their left elbow. At which point I'm flapping my own left elbow up near my ear to demonstrate. And Helena says, "And you think I'm weird."

It's a terrific idea book, and I was guessing that it was from earlier in Le Guin's career, but that turns out to be not true. (It was published in 1971.) I was assuming earlier because it totally feels like it's from an earlier era — it's like Philip K. Dick and Robert Sheckley with a Twilight-Zone vibe. There's a naïve idealism at work, and an underlying Cold War threat of nuclear war. On further reflection though, I realize that The Lathe is a mature and even subtle novel (despite my clumsy rehash of it here) about the nature of (our) reality(s).

So George Orr is having these dreams, and he wants to stop having these dreams, so he's taking illegally obtained drugs to suppress his dream state and when he ODs, the police refer him to compulsory psychological treatment. But Dr Haber's more interested in controlling the dreams than in curing George of them, and George is pretty much at his mercy.

"You can't go on changing things, trying to run things."

"You speak as if that were some kind of general moral imperative." He looked at Orr with his genial, reflective smile, stroking his beard. "But in fact, isn't that man's very purpose on earth — to do things, change things, run things, make a better world?"

"No!"

"What is his purpose, then?"

"I don't know. Things don't have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What's the function of a galaxy? I don't know if our life has a purpose and I don't see that it matters. What does matter is that we're a part. Like a thread in a cloth of a grass-bade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass."

There was a slight pause, and when Haber answered his tone was no longer genial, reassuring, or encouraging. It was quite neutral and verged, just detectably, on contempt.

"You're of a peculiarly passive outlook for a man brought up in the Judeo-Christian-Rationalist West. A sort of natural Buddhist. Have you ever studied the Eastern mysticisms, George?" The last question, with its obvious answer, was an open sneer.

"No. I don't know anything about them. I do know that it's wrong to force the pattern of things. It won't do. It's been our mistake for a hundred years."

Le Guin has drawn some great characters that are in sharp contrast to one another — George the dreamer, Haber the rationalist, and Heather, lawyer and George's love interest in some realities, is mostly just human, to bear the consequences and bring the others into relief. George has terrific strength of character; he carries an immense weight and tremendous sadness.

Early on George wonders if there might be other dreamers out there who can effect realities as he does, but no one cares to entertain this question too seriously. Apart from this ability, George is a very average guy. Allegorically this novel's message, trite but true, might be that anybody can change reality if they dream it so, and that even the smallest change can have a large impact. The simplest suggestions may have complex interpretations. And you can never go back.

Beyond this, the novel propounds a Buddhist mentality, embracing stillness over change, and being a part rather than apart. The Lathe doesn't exactly end well, but it ends mostly right; that is, it ends.

Read this excellent excerpt.

Sunday reading: Ursula K. Le Guin

Two terrific pieces in Brain Pickings, originating with Ursula K. LeGuin's The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination:

• Ursula K. Le Guin on Being a Man
• Ursula K. Le Guin on Aging and What Beauty Really Means

Maria Popova has selected some brilliant passages, many of which are laugh-out-loud funny. (I read a passage to my other half, and not ten seconds later I'm nudging him again, Listen to this.)

"On Being a Man" actually addresses a few topics — gender and sex, aging and spectator sports:

And another thing. Ernest Hemingway would have died rather than get old. And he did. He shot himself. A short sentence. Anything rather than a long sentence, a life sentence. Death sentences are short and very, very manly. Life sentences aren't. They go on and on, all full of syntax and qualifying clauses and confusing references and getting old.

"On Aging and What Beauty Really Means" also covers cats and dogs, dance and space-time.

Cats know exactly where they begin and end. When they walk slowly out the door that you are holding open for them, and pause, leaving their tail just an inch or two inside the door, they know it. They know you have to keep holding the door open. That is why their tail is there. It is a cat's way of maintaining a relationship.

I expect I'll have downloaded Le Guin's book of essays before the hour is out... (not to mention digging out those as yet unread novels of hers).

Shifgrethor

Ursula K. Le Guin in The Left Hand of Darkness invents an alien world that has its own cultures, religions, mythologies, and languages. Her invented language includes some fairly nuanced concepts. The Karhidian language, for example, has several dozen terms for various type of snow. This may be out of a necessary response to the extreme environment, but this same environment, the flora and fauna, and how the land can be used, also shapes the culture philosophically.

Estraven is repeatedly described as a shadow when he comes to Genly's aid, serving as Genly's shadow (and therefore also his shifgrethor), as Genly has none of his own.

shif•gre•thor noun \ˈshif-grə-thȯr\
1: prestige, face, place, pride-relationship; all-important principle of social authority in Karhide and among other civilizations of Gethen, of which native Karhidians have an innate sense but outsiders lack
2: code of social decorum
3: standard of individual behavior
4: recognition of the level of the manifestation of this quality and the status accorded it

Usage Notes 1. One may discard, forego, waive shifgrethor. 2. One may risk, stake shifgrethor; highly valued and must be given due regard. 3. One's shifgrethor may be degraded, diminished, impugned, insulted. 4. To play shifgrethor is to engage in political games, usually at an individual level, often petty and malicious, always intricate, but sometimes also internationally; can be played on the level of ethics.

Usage Examples
1. I waive shifgrethor; I discard it.
2. We must forego shifgrethor, forbid all acts of vengeance, and unite together.
3. He could lower all his standards of shifgrethor.
4. The shifgrethor of Karhide will be diminished.

Etymology Karhidish, from Old Gethenian "shadow"; possible derivation by analogy "shift" + "grey thore", which is widespread and fastidiously husbanded for maximal usage, minimal erosion, and full integration and balance, therefore "a shift in the balance". Discussion When Getheren of Shath, in the hearth-tale of The Place Inside the Blizzard, takes back his name and his shadow, he is owning his actions, making peace with both his internal conscience and the external society. In so doing he re-establishes the responsibility and dignity of which shifgrethor is borne. As every Karhidian casts his own shadow, shifgrethor is an internal shadow, functioning as a conscience, moral compass, social guide. Karhidian shifgrethor stems from Getheren's original sin and exile and bears the rightness of acknowledgement, necessity, atonement. Honorable men come to be outlawed, yet their shadow does not shrink. They live without shadows (shifgrethor) in Orgoreyn.

Related Words conscience, dignity, etiquette, high-mindedness, honour, integrity, irreproachability, manners, nobility, protocol, respectability, righteousness, right-mindedness, scrupulousness, self-sufficiency, tactfulness, virtuousness
Near Antonyms debasement, disgrace, disreputableness, looseness, pervertedness, reprehensibleness, shamelessness, unscrupulousness, weakness, wretchedness

(This is a revised version of the "essay" I submitted for the relevant unit in the MOOC Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World. As the assignment limited me to 320 words, I have here added an introductory statement and expanded slightly on some points for the sake of clarity.)

The fitness of that city

Following the east bank of the great Rive Kunderer I came on my third morning in Orgoreyn to Mishnory, the largest city on that world.

In the weak sunlight between autumn showers it was a queer-looking city, all blank stonewalls with a few narrow windows set too high, wide streets that dwarfed the crowds, street-lamps perched on ridiculous tall posts, roofs pitched steep as praying hands, shed-roofs sticking out of housewalls eighteen feet above ground like big aimless bookshelves — an ill-proportioned, grotesque city, in the sunlight. It was not built for sunlight. It was built for winter. In winter, with those streets filled ten feet up with packed, hard-rolled snow, the steep roofs icicle-fringed, sleds parked under the shed-roofs, narrow window-slits shining yellow through driving sleet, you would see the fitness of that city, its economy, its beauty.

Big aimless bookshelves! The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin, is a remarkable novel and already I look forward to rereading it someday.

It is a beautifully written love story set amid a harsh environment against a backdrop of political intrigue. Which has to do with interplanetary contact. Also, there's a strong feminist message in the portrayal of a genderless society.

Aside: I think The Left Hand of Darkness bears a remarkable similarity to China Miéville's Embassytown, which is one of my favourite books, across all genres. The novels bring a studied anthropological perspective to alien contact, and the problem of communication across languages and cultures, which greatly appeals to my inner linguist. Both novels play with words, and the relationship between language and concepts.

Le Guin's Weaver — who weaves together the psychic energy of the foretellers — also reminded me of Miéville's Weaver in Perdido Street Station, though his is absolutely weirder and more poetical. It would not surprise me to learn that The Left Hand of Darkness was a tremendous influence on Miéville.

Le Guin builds her world on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, showing how language determines its speakers' worldview. This is particularly evident in the concept of shifgrethor, an untranslatable term for a kind of honour code or code of conduct, which governs the behaviour of the Karhidians and their resultant estimation of each other, while the Terran visitor fails to fully understand its mechanisms and implications. She also demonstrates how the Karhidian language reflects the environment on this planet the Terrans call Winter; borrowing from Whorf's examples, she presents a culture that has a multitude of terms for "snow."

The same concept is evident in the excerpt above — the style of architecture has evolved under the influence of the environment — and Le Guin extends it to all facets of life. The people have not developed flight, because there are no birds.

The sexual behaviour on this other world didn't make a particularly strong impression on me — to me this is not the main focus of the novel. Perhaps because I'm naturally openminded regarding people's sexual choices. Perhaps because since the novel was written our society really has changed and established some level of gender equality (at least in theory), and is coming to realize that biological sex need not determine social roles or even sexual roles. The novel is perhaps best known for its exploration of gender, which is fine, but I just want to go on record as saying that The Left Hand of Darkness is so much more than that.

[Oh! I just read Jo Walton's take, and it seems we agree.]

And really, the whole business of crossing the glacier, the blizzard, and no shadows — spectacular!

I read this novel as part of the coursework for a MOOC (Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World). I can't tell you what exactly I'm learning from this course (in the professor's view, every rocketship is a penis, and some feminists are angry) apart from some trivial facts, like that Le Guin is American (I'd always assumed she was British). But I have been enjoying the reading and the discussion.

I suppose Le Guin is significant on the SF landscape for being among the first to bring real anthropological theory into the text (which is one the things I most love about the genre), shifting the genre away from straight-up action-adventure. (Although, many writers had already done that, no? Maybe it's the feminist angle that's supposed to be so groundbreaking. Frankly, I don't understand the logic behind the curriculum and I'm disappointed that it's so American-centric. )

I'm so relieved this novel lived up to the hype, and surpassed my expectations. You can bet I'll be reading more Le Guin over the months to come.

See also:
Sarah LeFanu, The Guardian: The king is pregnant
Jo Walton: Gender and glaciers: Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness
The Paris Review: Ursula K. Le Guin, The Art of Fiction No. 221

And here's a list that may be (mostly) worth working through: 21 Books That Changed Science Fiction And Fantasy Forever.

The whole thing is nonsense

I've never read Ursula K. Le Guin. Not really. The Dispossessed was on the syllabus of a course I took in university, but we ended up skimming that unit, and the book. So: major gap in my SF education.

The Left Hand of Darkness has been on my radar for several years. I'm reading it now as part of MOOC (Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World); in fact, I enrolled in the MOOC precisely because I wanted to read this novel, else it would languish in my stack of unread books for a long time to come.

Le Guin's 1976 introduction to her novel is worth reading in its own right. In it she describes science fiction as something more than extrapolation; she considers it a thought-experiment, describing reality at a quantum level.

Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.

Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge); by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets); and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying.

[...]

Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There! That's the truth.

They may use all kinds of facts to support their tissue of lies. They may describe the Marshalsea Prison, which was a real place, or the battle of Borodino, which really was fought, or the process of cloning, which really takes place in laboratories, or the deterioration of a personality, which is described in real textbooks of psychology; and so on. This weight of verifiable place-event-phenomenon-behavior makes the reader forget that he is reading a pure invention, a history that never took place anywhere but in that unlocalisable region, the author's mind. In fact, while we read a noel, we are insane — bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voices, we watch the battle of Borodino with them, we may even become Napoleon. Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.

Is it any wonder that no truly respectable society has ever trusted its artists?

The entire essay is worth reading in its entirety, if you can track it down. LeGuin's tone is very matter of fact; her style reminds me very much of Doris Lessing's (which is a good thing). It bodes well for this classic of science fiction.

In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it.