There are very few truly legendary sportscasters in the world. The late, great Keith Jackson was one of them.
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"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis
"Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are." ~ S. Gecko
Sad news, she's one of my favourites. An original and inspired voice.
Crumb, The Dispossessed and Left Hand of Darkness are essential reading, IMO. I've enjoyed other books in the Hainish Cycle too. I enjoyed the original Earthsea trilogy when I was a kid, and they stand up as an adult reader too.
Ah, for fuck's sake. She'd been my favourite living author. If I were in a more coherent frame of mind, I'd write a much longer tribute, but... well, I'll try to collect some observations about a few selected works. I don't know how comprehensible or well organised this will end up being, but hopefully it'll explain at least some of what made her so unique.
First of all, her novels are almost unique among science-fiction and fantasy novels in that violence rarely ever appears, and when it does, it rarely if ever solves anything. Her novels also rarely have outright villains. There are occasionally political forces that are depicted as malign influences - neither of Urras' dominant political entities is depicted particularly favourably, but the people living on Urras are mostly just trying to get by as best they can. Similarly, there are a few characters who act as antagonists in The Left Hand of Darkness, but in most cases, it's not out of malice; it's merely out of a genuine difference of opinion.
That seems almost quaint these days, but at the same time, I'd say it's an entirely necessary counterbalance to the cynicism of the modern age. An awful lot of modern science fiction is largely about why humanity sucks. Le Guin instead writes in the venerable tradition of Star Trek and other utopian science fiction: it's about how humanity can do better.
The Dispossessed is, quite honestly, the single greatest work of utopian science fiction I've ever read. The expected literary qualities are major contributing factors - characterisation, plotting, world-building, prose - but what puts it above all the others is, simply, its realism. It's a vision of how humanity can do much better, but it doesn't pretend that we can ever be perfect. Anarres is, overall, a vast improvement on modern human society, but the novel doesn't pretend that any society will ever be perfect. Violence, sexism, and various other social ills are, for all practical purposes, absent, but while the society purports to be anarchist, offering perfect freedom and equality for all who live there, as the novel progresses it becomes apparent that Anarres has nonetheless developed a de facto government that restricts dissenters' freedom in meaningful ways. And yet, when contrasted with the dominant political entities of Urras (which are not at all subtly veiled analogues of the United States and the Soviet Union) - and, of course, with our own world - it still is unquestionably a utopia.
Her other indispensable novel-length contribution to the genre, to my mind, is The Left Hand of Darkness, which, in addition to being a superb artistic creation on every conceivable level, also serves as a book-length attack on preconceived notions of gender. Society still hasn't caught up. Popular culture still has at best minimal awareness of the existence of non-binary gender identities. The society depicted in Left Hand consists entirely of non-binary gender identities. It's a superb conceit for a novel: the adults of the otherwise humanoid species in the novel's setting are androgynous for three weeks out of the month, and for the fourth (referred to as kemmer, which also gives them an extreme urge to copulate), they're either male or female - and each individual can be either one in any given month. Much of the novel is an examination of how radically different this (alongside the extreme austerity of its climate) makes their culture from any existing human culture, and as a result, it's one of the few novels I've read where the aliens actually do come across as genuinely alien. The novel also incorporates substantial influence from Taoism (Le Guin was one of the most notable Western Taoists, and even produced her own edition of the Tao te Ching, though she didn't consider it a translation).
She has probably dozens of other noteworthy works, and I must confess to having read to far too few of them. Earthsea is also justifiably considered a classic (though I'll cop to not having read this series in its entirety yet, either), but the other work I want to discuss is her short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", which is one of three science-fiction short stories I can think of off the top of my head that is absolutely perfect (the other two are "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury and "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut).
I'm going to provide a spoiler warning here, but if you haven't read it, it's on the Internet here (though unfortunately, with occasional typos), and you should really just go read it now. It won't take long; probably five minutes. Moreover, the twist of the story is by now so well known that it probably doesn't qualify as a spoiler any more than Rosebud in Citizen Kane does.
Anyhow, the idea behind the story is that the titular setting, Omelas, is seemingly perfect; everyone is happy, no one wants for anything, and there is essentially no conflict. But it carries with it a terrible secret: in order to maintain this state of affairs, it requires a child to be kept in horrifying misery. The title refers to the people who discover this and just... walk away.
The story doesn't examine what happens to them, or where they go. And the narrator directly admonishes the reader for believing it's impossible for a seemingly perfect society not to have a dark secret. Some of the most profound lines I've ever read in literature are found in this story to this effect:
Quote:
The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.
The story continues in this vein for some time before coming to the city's dark secret. I'd held off describing one of the finest features of Le Guin's work thus far, which is her prose. She is one of the finest writers of prose of the twentieth century, alongside Pynchon, Joyce, and perhaps De Lillo. Besides those three, I can't think of anyone else I've read whom I'd place in her calibre. There are certainly plenty of others, with Orwell the standout example, who were extremely skilled with prose, but Le Guin was one of the few authors who genuinely made prose sing - who, essentially, turned it into poetry. We see this above and throughout all her greatest works.
"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" doesn't answer all the questions it raises - arguably, it leaves most unanswered. Beyond the obvious ones - where are the people of the title going? What happens to them? - there are more philosophical ones: Are they admirable, or are they cowards? Does their act of departing the city relieve them of complicity in child abuse, or are they simply turning their eyes in a different fashion? It's possible that they are physically unable to help the child in some fashion, but the narration doesn't specify either way. The story has applicability to phenomena like the bystander effect and labour abuses, and this, of course, is one of its many beauties. And the story is also a direct attack on our cynicism, and this, too, is one of its many beauties. But I cannot hope to speak to them all.
While Earthsea is justifiably also considered a classic, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed are probably her most revolutionary book-length works, and are likely to be the cornerstone of her legacy. I must also confess that it's long been one of my dreams to see both adapted to the screen. I haven't abandoned that dream, but it's rather disappointing to know now that she won't live to see them.
There was probably no one else like her in literature. Her works were ground-breaking in far more ways than I could have hoped to capture in the above text; while other authors now follow in her footsteps, there are, frankly, far too few of them, and I doubt any of them will ever replicate her strengths exactly. An irreplaceable loss.
Cmurb: Sneaky in-between posters already mentioned most of the works I would've mentioned, but hopefully this has still been a useful response by providing further explication of why they're such essential reading. I think I personally will put The Word for World Is Forest on my reading list, as that seems to be another of her most acclaimed works.
Finally, it might also be worth providing a link to give her the final words - this interview with her from just last month proves she maintained as sharp a mind as ever right up to the end.
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith
Ms. Le Guin's writing was amazing and inspiring. I love in the EarthSea series how she writes sparingly, but with a few lines creates a fascinating world; I can see the ground beneath the cedar dappled in sunlight when she describes it, taste the cool air by the spring. It likely helped that I read them first at 12, ransacking my much older brother's sci-fi and fantasy paperbacks left behind when he headed off to college, but I re-read them several times as an adult and they held up very well. Memorable and strong characters with emotional depth, in powerful stories.
Her Sci-fi is also excellent. And she was a Portland OR resident; we have a book of poems she wrote to go along with photographs of Thurman Street in the early 1980's just as she saw a wave of gentrification/ development start in the area.
Thank you, Ms. Le Guin!
Ah, for fuck's sake. She'd been my favourite living author. If I were in a more coherent frame of mind, I'd write a lengthy tribute, but... + 1409 more words
Please forgive me for finding that amusing.
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Peering from the top of Mount Stupid
Ah, for fuck's sake. She'd been my favourite living author. If I were in a more coherent frame of mind, I'd write a lengthy tribute, but... + 1409 more words
Please forgive me for finding that amusing.
It's fine. My post turned out longer than I'd expected it to (and I amended the text you quoted to reflect that fact before discovering you'd already quoted it), but ordinarily, I don't consider 1409 words to be a particularly long piece of writing; it doesn't usually take me long to write that much (and even in my current state, that post couldn't have taken me more than an hour and three minutes, as indicated by the time stamps. Also, I suspect your word count includes my excerpt from "Omelas", though I didn't double-check this; that's probably at least 100 words). Regardless, covering everything I'd like to cover about her works, even at a cursory level, would probably have at least quadrupled the word count. I wouldn't have been surprised if, were I in a better frame of mind, I could write 10,000 words about her novels just from memory. (Of course, that would take me more than an hour.)
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith
I can't tell you how sad I am Ms. Le Guin passed. She was a great local, feminist and science fiction author. She did way more than you think, many of her youth novels are out of print. Her family was cultural anthropologists and she was a frequent shopper a the store I worked at in my 20s. Raise a toast to the best Portland and humanity can offer.
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Ishmaeline of Domesticity drinker of smurf tears
In its celebration of androgyny, glam also lined up with Ursula K. Le Guin’s visionary 1969 novel The Left Hand of Darkness, which takes place on an alien planet where transitions between genders are as routine as any other biological process—a concept that certainly resonates with Bowie’s aesthetic. “Androgynous sexuality and extraterrestrial origin seemed to have provided two different points of identification for Bowie fans,” notes Philip Auslander in Performing Glam Rock: Gender and Theatricality in Popular Music. “Whereas some were taken with his womanliness, others were struck by his spaciness.”
Oh, I just assumed we were talking about the guy whose name I cannot say because the last time I did he came here and then everyone was mad at me for being a job creator.
You know, the guy who enjoyed having flatulent ladies spoil baked goods.
Which, I know, you say, "That would be a poor basis for a system of government," but you can't prove that.
Welp. Clearly 2018 is clearly going to be no kinder to underappreciated artistic figures than the last two years were. R.I.P. to Mark E. Smith of The Fall, age 60. I myself on the underappreciated bit in his case, as I was mostly familiar with his work by reputation (he was a major influence on several other bands I loved, such as Pavement, but owing to The Fall's absolutely massive discography, I've probably heard less than five percent of their songs), but he was a pivotal figure in the rock underground à la Grant Hart, and what I'd heard of The Fall's music was wonderful. A major loss.
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith
Picture a bright blue ball
Just spinning, spinning free
Dizzy with eternity
Paint it with a skin of sky
Brush in some clouds and sea
Call it home for you and me
A peaceful place or so it looks from space
A closer look reveals the human race
Full of hope, full of grace, is the human face
But afraid, we may lay our home to waste
There's a fear down here we can't forget
Hasn't got a name just yet
Always awake, always around
Singing ashes to ashes all fall down
Ashes to ashes all fall down
Now watch as the ball revolves and the nighttime falls
And again the hunt begins and again the blood wind calls
By and by again, the morning sun will rise
But the darkness never goes from some men's eyes
It strolls the sidewalks and it rolls the streets
Staking turf, dividing up meat
Nightmare spook, piece of heat
It's you and me, you and me
Click, flash blade in ghetto night
Rudie's looking for a fight
Rat cat alley roll them bones
Need that cash to feed that jones
And the politician's throwing stones
Singing ashes to ashes all fall down
Ashes to ashes all fall down
Commissars and pin-striped bosses role the dice
Any way they fall guess who gets to pay the price
Money green or proletarian gray
Selling guns instead of food today
So the kids they dance, and shake their bones
And the politician's throwing stones
Singing ashes to ashes all fall down
Ashes to ashes all fall down
Heartless powers try to tell us what to think
If the spirit's sleeping, then the flesh is ink, yeah
History's page, it is thusly carved in stone
The future's here, we are it, we are on our own
On our own. On our own. On our own.
If the game is lost then we're all the same
No one left to place or take the blame
We will leave this place an empty stone
Or that spinning ball of blue we can call our home
So the kids they dance, they shake their bones
And the politicians, throwing stones
Singing ashes to ashes all fall down
Ashes to ashes, all fall down
Shipping powders back and forth
Singing "black goes south and white comes north"
And the whole world full of petty wars
Singing "I got mine and you got yours"
And the current fashions set the pace
Lose your step, fall out of grace
And the radical he rant and rage
Singing "someone got to turn the page"
And the rich man in his summer home,
Singing "Just leave well enough alone"
But his pants are down, his cover's blown
And the politicians throwing stones
So the kids they dance they shake their bones
Cause its all too clear we're on our own
Sing ashes to ashes, all fall down
Ashes to ashes, all fall down
Picture a bright blue ball just spinning, spinning free
It's dizzying, the possibilities
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith