/lit/ - Literature

holy shit it's real

fffffff

>>10577456
F

F

>Genre fiction

>>10577472
>Unlocking the Air

>>10577456
F

Before you cunts get cute remember that if NOTHING ELSE her stellar criticism and public statements about Gene Wolfe over the decades probably did more for his career than any publisher or advertiser or critic.

F
>tfw Gene Wolfe is next

RIP Le Guinea Pig.

Your books were not that great but I enjoyed The Left Hand of Darkness and especially City of Illusion.

Lathe of Heaven can fuck off though.

>>10577535
Lathe of Heaven was my second-favorite after City of Illusion. Third was Dispossessed and Left Hand was practically post-1975 Le Guin-tier boring.

I never liked Earthsea growing up. What's her greatest book?

is going to be sad.

I thought she was already dead.

RIP though

Wasn't it one of « Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ »'s favourite authors?

>>10577456
F

S

Fuck you /lit/

f

F
I'm thinking of Getting Left Hand of Darkness. is it good?

>>10577777
Kys

>>10577456
F

F

F

>>10577456
Holy fuck, I can't believe.

F

>>10577456
F

F

>>10577787
no u

Rest in peace. Which of her novels are worth reading?

mods pls sticky

a giant of the literary world and one the great prose stylists

>>10577784
Read it a couple of months ago feeling kinda guilty, this has happened with 3 authors already and thank god it didn't work with the Pyncher and it's really good, thinking of getting the rest of the trilogy. I'm not a usual sci-fi / fantasy reader (no prejudice, it's just that most of it seem unappealing to me), but her worldbuilding in particular was fantastic. I really wish there was more "anthropologic" sci-fi, accepting recs.
Also, RIP.

UKL's last blog post:

130. Poem Written in 1991
When the Soviet Union Was Disintegrating
by Ursula K. Le Guin
i
The reason why I’m learning Spanish
by reading Neruda one word at a time
looking most of them up in the dictionary
and the reason why I’m reading
Dickinson one poem at a time
and still not understanding
or liking much, and the reason
why I keep thinking about
what might be a story
and the reason why I’m sitting
here writing this, is that I’m trying
to make this thing.
I am shy to name it.
My father didn’t like words like “soul.”
He shaved with Occam’s razor.
Why make up stuff
when there’s enough already?
But I do fiction. I make up.
There is never enough stuff.
So I guess I can call it what I want to.
Anyhow it isn’t made yet.
I am trying one way and another
all words — So it’s made out of words, is it?
No. I think the best ones
must be made out of brave and kind acts,
and belong to people who look after things
with all their heart,
and include the ocean at twilight.
That’s the highest quality
of this thing I am making:
kindness, courage, twilight, and the ocean.
That kind is pure silk.
Mine’s only rayon. Words won’t wash.
It won’t wear long.
But then I haven’t long to wear it.
At my age I should have made it
long ago, it should be me,
clapping and singing at every tatter,
like Willy said. But the “mortal dress,”
man, that’s me. That’s not clothes.
That is me tattered.
That is me mortal.
This thing I am making is my clothing soul.
I’d like it to be immortal armor,
sure, but I haven’t got the makings.
I just have scraps of rayon.
I know I’ll end up naked
in the ground or on the wind.
So, why learn Spanish?
Because of the beauty of the words of poets,
and if I don’t know Spanish
I can’t read them. Because praise
may be the thing I’m making.
And when I’m unmade
I’d like it to be what’s left,
a wisp of cheap cloth,
a color in the earth,
a whisper on the wind.
Una palabra, un aliento.
(cont.)

Is she any good? I've never read any of her novels but she wrote the introduction to the book I'm reading now, an anthology of fantasy stories edited by Borges and others, and frankly it was awful. Some of the most self-complimentary, self-conscious, faux-profound, gaudy, "I am being very wise and literary right now" prose I've ever suffered through. Absolutely none of that "artlessness of art," just a total slog to get through. I could practically hear her panting

>>10577851
Earthsea

>>10577965
She's mostly read because of her political orientation desu senpai.

>>10577965
She isn't very good.

>>10577962
(cont.)

ii
So now I’ll turn right round
and unburden an embittered mind
that would rejoice to rejoice
in the second Revolution in Russia
but can’t, because it has got old
and wise and mean and womanly
and says: So. The men
having spent seventy years in the name of something
killing men, women, and children,
torturing, running slave camps,
telling lies and making profits,
have now decided
that that something wasn’t the right one,
so they’ll do something else the same way.
Seventy years for nothing.

And the dream that came before the betrayal,
the justice glimpsed before the murders,
the truth that shone before the lies,
all that is thrown away.
It didn’t matter anyway
because all that matters
is who has the sayso.

Once I sang freedom, freedom,
sweet as a mockingbird.
But I have learned Real Politics.
No freedom for our children
in the world of the sayso.
Only the listening.
The silence all around the sayso.
The never stopping listening.
So I will listen
to women and our children
and powerless men,
my people. And I will honor only
my people, the powerless.

>>10577979
Absolute and complete bullshit.
She wrote excellent fantasy.
Her Hainish cycle, which doesn't get much attention, is fucking awesome.

Why do they have to make it about this?

fuck

>>10578001
>tfw you will never be a Werelian psychic mastermind blasting Shing with your brain and making friends with your split implanted personality

>>10578006
Did you just find out she's a feminist?

>>10577965
I like her a /lot/.
I feel like a lot of people gloss over her qualities because they get triggered by her feminism.

>>10578014
just a good writer

only harry potter brainlets dis earthsea

>>10578015
>because they get triggered by her feminism.
Or because she wrote the same book over and over again ad nauseam.

>>10578010
>tfw you will never be an ambassador of the Ekumen and churten with your shipmates
>tfw you will never have a loving stable sedoretu as a native of O

>>10578028
>t. has never read UKL's impressive catalog

>>10578038
League of All Worlds > Ekumen

>>10578045
To be fair basically nobody has actually read anything she wrote past the first Earthsea book despite insistence otherwise.

>>10577456
F

>>10578054
I am actually a mega fan, and have read everything I could find, including rare out of print books.
So you're actually talking to the wrong person, anon.

>>10577456
Wait, so you're all doing the "press F to pay respects" meme?

I had no idea it was this popular anywhere that isn't /v/.

>>10578049
Whatever floats your boat.
I remain very curious about the Shing, and super bummed that she never wrote about them again.

>>10578079
She hated that she accidentally wrote a book with a clear antagonist so she deliberately memory-holed it along with telepathy in general, which made the majority of the Ekumen stuff just UN fanfiction.

>>10578097
WHATever.
You clearly haven't read any of her later Hainish books, fucking awesome with kinds of bizarre worlds.
Definitely my favorite was O, but I'm a very mellow person.
Did you even read The Telling?

>>10578116
>WHATever
>fucking awesome
>Definitely
>Did you even
Jesus contain your redditness.

>>10578116
I tried, man. I tried so hard. I kept going back to it but she was still just hiking to that mountain and commercialization was bad and yoga was good. There weren't any stakes. It was so boring.

>>10577472
>“There’s some innate arrogance here: I want to do it my way,” Ms. Le Guin said in an interview at her home here. “I don’t want to be reduced to being ‘the sci-fi writer.’ People are always trying to push me off the literary scene, and to hell with it.”
>She chuckled. “I won’t be pushed.”

>>10578126
There was weird unexplainable phenomena that you missed... shoulda stuck with it.
But I actually agree that she lost me for a while during the interminable mountain ascent.

>>10578125
Not a redditor, sweetiepie.
Just feeling emotional about Ursula's death and also running a fever.
So sue me.

they seem to be well fed, the ones who walk away from omelettes

>>10577965
I've only read the Dispossessed and that was quite a mixed bag but there's a lot to like about her style and indeed the skill with which the themes of the novel are handled

Very literary for a writer of genre fiction

It's true that she is mostly read for her politics, but worth keeping in mind that that isn't the only reason to read her, nor is it the most important reason to read her.

She went to glide on the Other Wind, where the dragons are ;_;

>>10578157
>a child locked in a closet, forced to eat all the eggs

>>10578209
desu

Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ

>>10578076
Hello newfriend

>>10578246
> he doesn't pay attention to our Reddit memes therefore he must be new

I guess this is why /lit/ hates genre fiction.

>>10578076
I've seen many boards doing it actually.

F

>>10577456

I JUST listened to the dispossessed audiobook last month.
10/10 book and reader

I was just thinking about re-reading The Dispossessed.

RIP

Anyone have a link to her Would You Please Fucking Stop? essay? It's not on her blog anymore.

>>10578175
>Very literary for a writer of genre fiction
This is kind of why I don't like her. I like genre fiction that just owns its pulpiness and doesn't aspire to be respected by academics and critics so much as it aspires to be good on its own terms. Le Guin always seemed very self-conscious and insecure about what New York circles would think of her writing. Compare her to PKD or Lovecraft, who just wrote what they thought was compelling and in turn basically invented their own styles

>>10577528
Shut your goddamn whore mouth.

On a different note,

Le Guin was a strange author. Earthsea was a fine fantasy series, nothing amazing but great compared to the modern YA being shit out today. The Left Hand of Darkness was highly respected for its exploration of gender and other topics but it lacked much in the way of insight, it was a novelty without depth. The Dispossessed was heavy handed to the extent that I consider it a pleb filter, if you think it's insightful you're probably dumb. The Lathe of Heaven was fun pulp, entertaining with its central premise but nothing beyond average with its prose and characters.

In sum she was a highly respected science fiction author without a masterpiece, great as an advocate of the genre but not contributing anything irreplaceable to it. She would have been a mid-tier writer if science fiction was more developed, but she was solid in an age where most authors were (and continue to be) shit. RIP, you never took my breath away but you were worth reading.

>>10578433
this one?
https://forum.malazanempire.com/topic/22354-would-you-please-stop/

>>10578457
Yup, thanks.

>>10577456
Reminder she publicly tore Miyazaki's son to pieces after he made the anime adaption.

http://www.ursulakleguin.com/GedoSenkiResponse.html

F baby girl

>>10577937
you will probably like the dispossessed more

>>10578443
Nigger what the fuck are you talking about, PKD constantly namedropped writers and musicians and went on semi-philosophical tangents on his books. I'm saying this as a fan btw
LeGuin's pretentiousness comes from the ever futile attempt to bridge "genre" and "literary" fiction while trying to be both or neither, the same problem with people like Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman.

>>10578576
Will check it out, thanks m8

>>10577511
Who the fuk is Gene Wolfe. I loved her books since the 90's.

>>10577456
Ha! Enjoy sucking cock in hell, dyke!

>>10577456

Like I give a shit about this liberal hippy. I'm glad that fucking Boomer is dead.

S

Earthsea. The Hainish Cycle (Left Hand of Darkness, etc.). The Lathe of Heaven. Orsinian Tales. Annals of the Western Shore. Lavinia. "Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight." The Wind's Twelve Quarters...

>>10578457
Oh, that's good.

>>10578474
as well she should, he tarnished his father's and his father's studio's names along with hers with that pile of garbage. A Wizard of Earthsea has a very simple plot and it shouldn't be hard to adapt but if it ever happens she won't be around to see it.

Is any of her recent stuff good?

>>10578765

No she went to shit after discovering feminists theory.

Thank god finally, she wrote at a middle-school level, just read The Dispossesed to see what I'm talking about. The only reason she had any acclaim at all was because she was the token 'genre fiction' that high brow critics could name drop in an effort to seem inclusive.

>>10578838
What if I like feminism?

>>10578931

t. Soyboy

>>10578857
Yeah.

>>10578944
real answer please

>>10578838
Nigger she grew up in fucking Berkeley, child of a musician and an humanities academic and lived there through the 50s and 60s. I can guarantee you she's been a feminist through her whole career.

>>10578838
imagine being such a brainlet that you cant even bare reading something that even slightly suggests women arent the semen stealing succubi your broken ego insists they are

>crying over the death of a red
Nah

>>10578977
Except she somehow didn't know how to write women until 1977.

She was always a feminist, no doubt, but her early works are more informed by anthropology and Golden Age fantasy and science fiction than by straight-out feminist theory.

>>10578981
I don't get it either, but before she got into feminist critical theory her books were great and afterwards they were trash. She probably experimented with making plots that weren't as conflict-centered or something, with the side effect of making them boring as sin.

>>10578987
Imagine being such a brainlet that politics color everything you do and enjoy.

>>10578987
I remember middle school

>>10577456
F

F

>>10579098

No, I don't waste my time reading genre fiction written by women authors. Grow up kid, no one cares about this hippie except for libshits.

>>10577456
I loved Lathe of Heaven. How they've never managed to do a good job adapting any of her works on film is beyond me.

If you may indulge me some edge and autism:
How do you actually feel bad about writers who die so old decades past their prime?

>>10577456
no idea who this is but since people keep mentioning wolfe is this the bitch who refused to read book of the new sun because the professional torturer who plays with severed heads for fun and work MAY have sort of "raped" someone in the story if your definition of rape is not giving enthusiastic consent every 2 seconds?

>>10579224
>>is this the bitch who refused to read book of the new sun
>'Ursula K. Le Guin is frequently quoted on the jackets of Wolfe's books as having said "Wolfe is our Melville."' - first google result
neck yourself pseud

>>10579238
oh ok its not her than. must be some other feminist

i dont both researching women. ill admit since shes and old feminist she could actually stand against everything modern feminists stand for but its not good either way really

>>10579252
quick question are you 15?

>>10579262
no

>>10579238
>Wolfe is our Melville

How many fat tittied bimbos, tight bodied little blondes and victoria secret amazon women did Ahab bang?

>>10579329
How many whales did Severian?

>>10579379
he probably fucked a giant mermaid, does that count?

>>10579387
When? I remember the giant mermaids but I don't remember Sev actually meeting one. I have not read Urth.

>>10579395
i havent read urth either i just assume he gets around to drilling her out at some point

i mean he has infinite realities and times to get something going

>>10579410
It would make less sense if he didn't, come to think of it.

Oh fuck, rip

Can't wait to witness all the news outlets forever branding her as some feminist writer for all eternity

Thanks for the good stories old lady

Lets try and summon Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ

F

>>10579425
The only true way to personal freedom is through a religious crusade and pure unadulterated capitalism

>>10579395
he meets them once or twice in botns. once she tries to come out of the water to get a look at his long, wide, and oiled sword but almost dies and has to go back

>>10577736
Is this what butterfly actually looks like? QT. Miss her opinions

>>10579460
if only her talents had been put into the redpill

>>10579425
Lesbians should be forced to marry christian men.

F :(

>>10577456
F

>>10577456
F

A Wizard of Earthsea got me into magic as a child.

>>10577456
Goodnight sweet prince.

>>10579252
you write like a dim 12 year old. I suggest not posting anymore.

>>10579252

All feminists are the same anon. They want complete control and nothing else will satisfy them until they completed their goal.

>>10579098
>>10579138
t.brainlets crying over a red

I've only read The Dispossessed but I really enjoyed it. Great world-building and it didn't feel too preachy.

>tfw you will never live in an anarchist society

>>10579772
>tfw you will never get randomly assigned to a work rota half the planet away from your family
>tfw you will never starve in a preventable famine
It was comfy though.

F

>>10577456
may she rest in peace.

>>10578141
>>10578125 anon is right in the estimation that you're a filthy redditfag that can't even admit it when caught and confronted with fedora in his hands

>>10577535
>Le Guinea Pig
I've never heard that nickname but I need that kind of cuteness now.

f

>>10577979
Her most known and acclaimed works date from before she inserted her political opinions, aka le feminism times. So, in fact, the opposite of >>10577979

Tatsuro Toyoda
Fast Eddie Clarke
Ursula K Le Guin

Good riddance. One less feminist in the world.

>>10579685
Brainlet.

>>10577456
F

>>10577681
"The Left Hand of Darkness" or "The Dispossessed".

>>10578448
>without a masterpiece
>he didn't read Buffalo Gals Won't You Come Out Tonight

>>10577456
F
she was a cute baby

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

>>10577681
I really hate how when she gets brought up people always go "read earthsea" to neophytes.

>>10577456
F
:( she was seriously my favorite author as a teenager.
Still is one of my favorites.

>>10578006
Same reason they make Martin Luther King primarily about civil rights when his latter career was about rights for everyone and focused on socialism.

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.” -Ursula Le Guin

>>10579785
the point was that even if you were assigned you didn't have to go, you were free to step out.

She didn't claim it was a perfect system either, in fact one of the key themes in the book is that Anarres has to be a permanent revolution and not ossify.

>>10577681
I really like her Changing Planes collection of short stories. Each one takes place on a different world and describes the society that lives there. You can find the short, Flyers of Gy online easily to give you a sense of her style.

>>10577736
>>10578235
>>10579425
Is Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ a tripfriend? Tell me about her, I am unfamiliar.

>>10578006

You didn't know she was a feminist shithead?

Fuck. Loved her books.
F.

>>10582129
Because they're fun, entry level books in her style of writing.

>>10582138
This tbqh. I became aware of her as a anarchist sci-fi writer first of all, but americans aren't ok with that word.

>>10577456
RIP in peace

>>10582287
the thing is she's not an anarchist in the sense of the violent anarkiddies who seem to dominate the scene these days.

she gave a forward to the Next revolution by Bookchin in recent years, I don't know if she has said anything about rojava and all that.

>>10578028
>>10578054
Fuck off retard

>>10582159
>She didn't claim it was a perfect system either
Yeah, I get that. Her goal was to show that it was an acceptable system, with a frankly ludicrous set of givens (anarchists have to literally live on the Moon), and that that should encourage us to change how we see the way we live, to see what we might give up to be free, not just of owning property but of being property.

But in the end they were all Urrasti property as they were the folks with the guns who would show up if the metal shipments stopped. And they still starved on the regular.

F
Shit, her last book came out only weeks ago. The title is even more poignant now.

Literally worse than J.K. Rowling

>>10582617
Oh fuck.

>>10582664
>literally ripped off by JK Rowling
Ftfy.

>>10582763
>Le Guin invented magic schools

>>10582779
The idea that you could even rip off something as general as "magic school" is ludicrous. It's the natural consequence of a modern person wondering what it might be like to grow up among magicians. Le Guin's magical academy shares very little with Rowling's.

F

>To the givers of this beautiful reward, my thanks, from the heart. My family, my agents, my editors, know that my being here is their doing as well as my own, and that the beautiful reward is theirs as much as mine. And I rejoice in accepting it for, and sharing it with, all the writers who’ve been excluded from literature for so long – my fellow authors of fantasy and science fiction, writers of the imagination, who for 50 years have watched the beautiful rewards go to the so-called realists.

>Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom – poets, visionaries – realists of a larger reality.

>Right now, we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximise corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.

>Yet I see sales departments given control over editorial. I see my own publishers, in a silly panic of ignorance and greed, charging public libraries for an e-book six or seven times more than they charge customers. We just saw a profiteer try to punish a publisher for disobedience, and writers threatened by corporate fatwa. And I see a lot of us, the producers, who write the books and make the books, accepting this – letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant, and tell us what to publish, what to write.

>Books aren’t just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.

>I’ve had a long career as a writer, and a good one, in good company. Here at the end of it, I don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want and should demand our fair share of the proceeds; but the name of our beautiful reward isn’t profit. Its name is freedom.

>>10583081
>sold down the river
Subtly done.

>>10582287
>le capitalism is bad meme
Okay sweetie

>>10583081
>waaaaa people are making money
Pathetic

>>10583125
>>10583130
>tfw /lit/ is trumpcore

>>10583150
What?

>>10583150
I wish, people here could do well with growing up out of being a red.

I only found out she died like 5 minutes ago on a random news site. Rest in Peace.

>>10582171
Some lesbian who posted here frequently for years.

The only thing worse than genre fiction writers are the people who buy their books.

>>10577456
Garbage. Couldn't care less

I loved the dispossessed, where do I go next?

>>10584511
Salt by Adam Roberts.

Or if you still want to hang out with Le Guin go for Lathe of Heaven if you liked the philosophical stuff, Left Hand of Darkness if you liked the anthropological stuff, or the first Hainish trilogy if you liked both.

>>10578583
>PKD constantly namedropped writers and musicians
Uh, no he didn't. In the VALIS trilogy, he wouldn't shut up about John Dowland or Brian Eno, etc. The bulk of his good, pre-2/3/74 work was him piping his own tune, and certainly not trying to appease "New York circles."

I totally agree with your assessment of LeGuin, Moore and Gaiman. They really became... the dispossessed.

>>10578116
god, you type like my ex.

>>10584537
thanks for the recs anon

>>10582159
The point was that you had to go, because your fellow anarchists would gang up on you if you didn't take the posting that the totally-not-a-state! suggested you do, and you had your own inculcated set of rules

>>10582598
I thought that the moon setting was sort of fair, given that anarchists (in the broadest and most ancient term that would also include Ayn Rand) would naturally be forced by archists or inclined by stubbornness to settle in remote and desolate places, and another planet is reasonable for the setting.

She absolutely nailed the tendency of people who call themselves anarchists to enforce rules and get extremely coercive with non-aggression principles. It would have been interesting had the starving passengers actually attacked the town, but that would have made a different novel.

F for all the brainwashed capitalist / free market slaves who cringe and wither at the merest mention of The Dispossessed.

F for all the insecure sexual virgins who blush and retch at the smallest inkling of diversity written in The Left Hand of Darkness.

F for all the drones whose hive-mentality forbids them from seeing the world outside of how it's described.

Le Guin wrote to help expose people to thoughts and motives that the mainstream would rarely entertain. Hers was a voice from the outside that uplifted all who heard, and we are all the poorer for the absence of that beautiful sound.

>>10584931
I'm a huge capitalist and I loved The Dispossessed because it was beautifully written and Shevek was crazy relatable. I'm an incredibly prudish, religiously conservative virgin but Left Hand was bad because it was boring, not because Gethenians have weird sex.

Seems like you're the one who has problems seeing the world outside how it's described.

>>10584931
lmao
genre fiction will not spend the test of time

>>10585183
Who'll want to hear a story about a dude sailing around fighting giants and banging witches three thousand years from now, anyway.

>>10585193
how dare you compare epic poetry to this hackneyed tripe

>>10585209
>implying the Odyssey is not genre fiction
>implying literary fiction will survive the test of time
>implying any of the /lit/ meme authors will be remembered one bare generation from now
Your words have no power, cur.

>>10585216
meet me outside RITE NAO
i'm going to bludgeon your face

>>10585221
One two one three three seven three four two five three call me nigga

>>10579460
She still posts though? And she's even older now.

>>10584931
we did it reddit

>>10584931
The Dispossesed is just bad writing. There's a cringy and amateurish sentence on almost every page and the plot is rote, uninspired, and didactic. Its not really that imaginative either, seems like something a teenage anarchist would come up with while daydreaming during class.

>>10577736
>>10579460
>>10585236

>tfw you miss Deep & Edgy and butterfly
>tfw you were here when /lit/ opened
>tfw you still haven't done anything with your life
>tfw you haven't even read Infinite Jest

At least I can save jizzabelles and shitpost in this /pol/ age of /lit/