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4.55 AVERAGE
4.55 AVERAGE
Tiny, perfect - we should all aim to write like Le Guin and create stories that hold things of meaning so we can relate them to others.
I rarely find texts to be pretentious, but Le Guin’s voice really does skim pretentiousness in a way that was difficult to stomach. This doesn’t detract from its rigor in any way, it’s just a note of my experience. I’ve never read any of her other work. Does she ever talk about being a Kroeber?
yeah sure i'll put this on my goodreads. why not. anything to encourage people to read it; it's like five minutes long and it's a very thoughtful examination of narrative, specifically the way narrative is shaped by a patriarchal drive toward conflict, violence, and war as the centerpoints of human existence.
The novel is a fundamentally unheroic kind of story. Of course the Hero has frequently taken it over, that being his imperial nature and uncontrollable impulse, to take everything over and run it while making stern decrees and laws to control his uncontrollable impulse to kill it. So the Hero has decreed through his mouthpieces the Lawgivers, first, that the proper shape of the narrative is that of the arrow or spear, starting here and going straight there and THOK! hitting its mark (which drops dead); second, that the central concern of narrative, including the novel, is conflict; and third, that the story isn't any good if he isn't in it.
I differ with all of this. I would go so far as to say that the natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.
it's possible to read this essay in a gender essentialist way (the phallic spear! the phallic club!), but i don't think that's the major drive. le guin's point isn't War Is For Men Gathering Is For Women; her point is that placing all narratives, all human stories, in the language of war is a very narrow definition doing us more harm than good. i also just really like this as a craft thought as much as a human-philosophy thought; her novel Lavinia is a bit of a meandering one, without a rising-action-to-climax-to-falling-action type of plot structure, and it's a much more honest (and, to me, interesting) book for that. (i'm rereading this essay because lavinia had me thinking of it incessantly--something about the way le guin explores at the "woman's side" of the aeneid, a poem that is [among other things] very much about war and imperialism, feels like this essay made manifest. you could illustrate this essay, i think, with the image in that book of ascanius showing other men his father's shield, describing the battles it has seen and the battles it foretells, and lavinia crossing the courtyard as he does so, carrying her child on her shoulder the way aeneas carries that shield.)
anyway. le guin never missed
The novel is a fundamentally unheroic kind of story. Of course the Hero has frequently taken it over, that being his imperial nature and uncontrollable impulse, to take everything over and run it while making stern decrees and laws to control his uncontrollable impulse to kill it. So the Hero has decreed through his mouthpieces the Lawgivers, first, that the proper shape of the narrative is that of the arrow or spear, starting here and going straight there and THOK! hitting its mark (which drops dead); second, that the central concern of narrative, including the novel, is conflict; and third, that the story isn't any good if he isn't in it.
I differ with all of this. I would go so far as to say that the natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.
it's possible to read this essay in a gender essentialist way (the phallic spear! the phallic club!), but i don't think that's the major drive. le guin's point isn't War Is For Men Gathering Is For Women; her point is that placing all narratives, all human stories, in the language of war is a very narrow definition doing us more harm than good. i also just really like this as a craft thought as much as a human-philosophy thought; her novel Lavinia is a bit of a meandering one, without a rising-action-to-climax-to-falling-action type of plot structure, and it's a much more honest (and, to me, interesting) book for that. (i'm rereading this essay because lavinia had me thinking of it incessantly--something about the way le guin explores at the "woman's side" of the aeneid, a poem that is [among other things] very much about war and imperialism, feels like this essay made manifest. you could illustrate this essay, i think, with the image in that book of ascanius showing other men his father's shield, describing the battles it has seen and the battles it foretells, and lavinia crossing the courtyard as he does so, carrying her child on her shoulder the way aeneas carries that shield.)
anyway. le guin never missed
Re-read this essay and now with the Donna Haraway intro this morning as a bit of a prompt to get the gears turning in my brain. Still so rich and true feeling, I love the analogy of the container. Always appreciate the reminder that how we think about things matters, and that there are other ways of doing so. So great alongside Haraway’s intro and also the beautiful preface from Sarah Shin and Ben Vickers.
“A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.”
informative
inspiring
slow-paced
challenging
inspiring