Earthsea

[altariel]

I went hunting for Earthsea fanfiction at the start of the year, after I reread the series (before reading the new ones). Found some today by daegaer here.



It's interesting that Tehanu is often seen as an attempt to re-engineer the earlier books, but I have a sneaking admiration for Le Guin in having the courage to revisit a set of books that made her name - and say where she got it wrong.

I also love the beauty that she finds in very small, intimate moments. There's a sentence in Tehanu that I just adore: "They made and ate their supper and cleared it away."

Comments

[ithilwen.livejournal.com]

The problem I had with Tehanu is that it's Ged (and to a lesser extent, Tenar) I'm interested in - not Therru. And so I found myself resenting it every time Therru made an appearance on the page; I wanted to shove her out of the way so we could get back to the important story, of Ged's adaptation to a 'lesser' (i.e. normal) life.

Re:

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I primarily got very engrossed in the Ged and Tenar romance. But the story of Ged's adaptation to no longer having his mage powers hit just as I was doing a lot of reading about female writers who write about shellshock, so that all connected up in my head.

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

I actually quite like Tehanu. I'd loved the Earthsea books for so long that I drove myself into a frenzy waiting for it, and was lucky enough to have someone going over to the USA just after it was published. I think it is an attempt to backwards engineer the series, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Much of the criticism I saw at the time on Usenet seemed to be based in anti-feminism. Le Guin has done this before - she has revisited her essay on gender and The Left Hand of Darkness to describe what kind of book she would have written if she'd been paying attention. However, I'm not convinced that Tehanu works as a piece of backwards-engineering. The bad men are quite simply too bad - I think it would have worked better if they had been more clearly "normal" men who acted as they did because they were the product of an intensely patriarchal and androcentric society, rather than being Bad Guys. This is more of less the same problem I have with her short story set in a kemmer-house on Gethen. She tries too hard, and the effort becoems so visible that it overwhelms the story (her short story about the Gethenien king who abdicates I found much more narratively attractive, and makes most of the same points in a far more subtle manner).

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Much of the criticism I saw at the time on Usenet seemed to be based in anti-feminism.

*nods in agreement* When I reread Tehanu at the start of the year, and went on my dedicated webhunt for fanfic and critique, that seemed to be the main kind of criticism I came across. I wonder if my irritation with it is part of my devotion to Tehanu!

I take your point about the bad men being too bad, and that coming at a cost for the story. I think that the son Spark is probably the most successful male character in the book (well, apart from Ged, I mean), in terms of showing how the society affects 'normal' men: he's not a bad lad, but...

Have you read the most recent books Tales From Earthsea and The Other Wind?

Thank you again for your piece - it was such a thrill to find some Earthsea fanfiction, and one that got me thinking hard again about some of my favourite books, as well as being so beautifully written.

Re:

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

I have the two recent books, but so far have been too nervous to read them. What I'd like is for to somehow be able to write the Archipelagan society as it is in Wizard of Earthsea with enough of a narrator-viewpoint for the reader to see that it's not all wonderful and perfect. I should just read them, right?


And thanks again for your comments on my fic. I'm very glad you found it worthwhile.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I think the two new books definitely give a much richer and more interesting account of Archipelagan society, and also historical perspective. Ah, I want to start giving reasons why now, but no spoilers, of course!

I'll just say that if you do decide to take the plunge with them, make sure you read the short stories in order - I did my usual trick with short story collections of shifting around the book, but they are meant to be read in sequence.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

You know, and I am almost embarrassed to admit this in a public forum (oh, what the hell, this is my LJ!), I never finished The Left Hand of Darkness. Started it, put it down, never got back to it. I don't doubt that I will at some point, I like Le Guin too much not to try again. Sometimes I'm just not receptive to books, no matter how I try - and then I can come back to them again much later, and they connect to something else that's going on in my head. (I'm also a very bad reader - I slip too quickly into skim-reading mode.)

So even though I've read and reread The Farthest Shore since childhood, I never connected the dots in it. When I reread the Earthsea books at the start of the year it suddenly connected up to a lot of other things, Pullman's books in particular, and made sense. I really can be extraordinarily dense at times.

(The Dispossessed I read and everything pinged all at once. I think that book is close to perfect.)

Have you ever read any of David Lodge's books? The parodies of academia (Small World, Changing Places)? In one of them, a group of English Lit academics play a dinner party game in which they have to admit to a Canonical Work that they have never read; one particular eminent person there admits to never having got through Hamlet. I feel a bit like that about The Left Hand of Darkness (well, and about a lot of other things too, I won't mention how little Shakespeare I've read... *g*).

small moments

[communicator.livejournal.com]

>>I also love the beauty that she finds in very small, intimate moments. There's a sentence in Tehanu that I just adore: "They made and ate their supper and cleared it away"<<

This is what I like most about Tehanu, and about Le Guin's later work in general. I don't have a copy with me, but the way of treating daily activity (such as housework) as a transcendent praxis. I have Le Guin's translation of the Tao Te Ching, and read it quite a lot. The TTC has a lot about humble participation in the stuff of consciousness. 'Mingle yourself with the dust of the world' - almost a description of housework, at least the way I do it.

I do believe it is real as well: the spritual validity of simply passing through the world, instead of straining after transcendence.

Re: small moments

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Was it you who posted a link to one of the lists to an article by Le Guin about avoiding using conflict in narrative? Reading 'Tehanu' reminded me of it.

Thanks for the heads-up about her version of Tao Te Ching, I didn't know she had done one.