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Ursula K. Le Guin: The Last Interview and Other Conversations by Ursula K. Le Guin, David Streitfeld
cknickerbocker's review
funny
informative
inspiring
fast-paced
4.0
That tumblr post that's like "Ursula K Le Guin was right" "About what" "Almost everything"
reginacorvus4382c's review
challenging
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
toddgrotenhuis's review
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
tense
slow-paced
4.0
highlights here: https://blog.grotenhuis.info/2021/04/24/finished-reading-ursula.html
viljesvag's review
4.0
Neat collection of interviews from 1977 up to 2018 with one of my favourite authors, including the titular Last Interview. I liked Streitfeld's introduction and interview the best I think, but one or two of the others were almost a bit awkward. A great quick read if you're a fan of Le Guin!
anunande's review
David Streitfeld has written a lovely introduction (I took almost as many notes here as with the rest of the collection) and his interview with her (her very last) makes for a very narratively satisying bookend to it all
Having read only her first and last novels (A Wizard of Earthsea and Lavinia, both of which I loved), I know I'll be coming back to these interviews for better insights once I've actually read more of her work. But not being as familiar with her bibliography didn't really hinder my enjoyment understanding of these conversations which ranged from the writer's life, inspirations, and writing processes to the larger questions of the place of women in society, of gender conventions and social norms, of nature, the environment, conservation, and anthropology (both her parents were well-known anthropologists). Having seen the Worlds of Ursula Le Guin last year, I was able to build a vivid picture in my mind of an intelligent, funny, sensitive but also no-nonsense and outspoken writer, woman, and mother. Someone with a razor sharp wit, a strong will, but equal amounts of kindness and empathy and an almost vulnerable gentleness.
I wish I had found my way to her writing sooner, that I'd have been able to go to her events and meet her. Every foray into her mind and words inspires me and makes me more excited to dive deeper into her work.
Having read only her first and last novels (A Wizard of Earthsea and Lavinia, both of which I loved), I know I'll be coming back to these interviews for better insights once I've actually read more of her work. But not being as familiar with her bibliography didn't really hinder my enjoyment understanding of these conversations which ranged from the writer's life, inspirations, and writing processes to the larger questions of the place of women in society, of gender conventions and social norms, of nature, the environment, conservation, and anthropology (both her parents were well-known anthropologists). Having seen the Worlds of Ursula Le Guin last year, I was able to build a vivid picture in my mind of an intelligent, funny, sensitive but also no-nonsense and outspoken writer, woman, and mother. Someone with a razor sharp wit, a strong will, but equal amounts of kindness and empathy and an almost vulnerable gentleness.
I wish I had found my way to her writing sooner, that I'd have been able to go to her events and meet her. Every foray into her mind and words inspires me and makes me more excited to dive deeper into her work.
ahsimlibrarian's review
5.0
I keep reading essays by Le Guin and interviews with her as I enjoy spending time with this woman and her fine mind so much. What wonderful company she continues to be.
Some choice interview bits:
On what she wants her legacy to be:
"Irreverence toward undeserved authority, and passionate respect for the power of the word. Oh, and my books staying in print, too."
How she became a feminist in the early 1970s:
"It was a real mind shift. And I was a grown woman with kids. And mothers of children were not welcome among a lot of early feminists. I was living the bad dream. I was a mommy. You know there's always prejudice in a revolutionary movement. I wasn't even sure I was welcome. And I wasn't to some of those people. It took a lot of thinking for me to find what kind of feminist I could be and why I wanted to be a feminist." (xv)
"Isn't the real question this: Is the work worth doing? Am I, a human being, working for what I really need and want--or for what the State or the advertisers tell me I want. Do I choose? I think that's what anarchism comes down to. Do I let my choices be made for me, and so go along with the power game, or do I choose, and accept the responsibility for my choice? In other words, am I going to be a machine-part, or a human being?"
"To genrify is necessary. There are different genres. What is wrong is to rank them as higher or lower, to make a hierarchy based only on genre, not the quality of the writing. That is my whole argument and it goes no further. So don't try to extend it into this world."
From a written interview, not Le Guin's words:
"To put it simply, anarchy is based on the realistic observation that people left to themselves, without the intervention of the state, tend to cooperate and work out their differences. The process may be awkward, inefficient and punctuated by fights, but its end result is usually more satisfying to everyone than when things are done by command." (94-5)
Some choice interview bits:
On what she wants her legacy to be:
"Irreverence toward undeserved authority, and passionate respect for the power of the word. Oh, and my books staying in print, too."
How she became a feminist in the early 1970s:
"It was a real mind shift. And I was a grown woman with kids. And mothers of children were not welcome among a lot of early feminists. I was living the bad dream. I was a mommy. You know there's always prejudice in a revolutionary movement. I wasn't even sure I was welcome. And I wasn't to some of those people. It took a lot of thinking for me to find what kind of feminist I could be and why I wanted to be a feminist." (xv)
"Isn't the real question this: Is the work worth doing? Am I, a human being, working for what I really need and want--or for what the State or the advertisers tell me I want. Do I choose? I think that's what anarchism comes down to. Do I let my choices be made for me, and so go along with the power game, or do I choose, and accept the responsibility for my choice? In other words, am I going to be a machine-part, or a human being?"
"To genrify is necessary. There are different genres. What is wrong is to rank them as higher or lower, to make a hierarchy based only on genre, not the quality of the writing. That is my whole argument and it goes no further. So don't try to extend it into this world."
From a written interview, not Le Guin's words:
"To put it simply, anarchy is based on the realistic observation that people left to themselves, without the intervention of the state, tend to cooperate and work out their differences. The process may be awkward, inefficient and punctuated by fights, but its end result is usually more satisfying to everyone than when things are done by command." (94-5)
pivic's review
4.0
This book is a truly inspirational and nifty one in the series of The Last Interview. I knew next to nothing about Ursula Le Guin before reading this book, other than her being a respected sci-fi author.
I didn't know she was funny nor that she was an anarchist.
She was punk. She wrote fantasy and sci-fi before they hit the mainstream and made universes from her head. She was clearly very insightful:
She had integrity and spoke like a true intellectual.
Her words on writing are also very inspirational, direct or not:
All interviews are interesting: a couple are plain and not very well researched, but the very last one, conducted over several meetings from 2015 to 2018, by David Streitfeld, is wonderful.
She had no qualms about talking about the works of others:
She spoke lovingly and straight-forwardly about her husband, Charles.
In short, this collection of interviews is enticing, alluring, straighter than an arrow (all due to Le Guin's graces), and makes me want to read Le Guin's work straightaway.
I didn't know she was funny nor that she was an anarchist.
She maintained that distinction for more than forty years, talking publicly but not privately. It was enough. Some writers need experience to feed the imagination, but Le Guin’s experiences were all in her head. She prided herself in having as few external stimuli as possible. She told an interviewer from Poland in 1988 her ideal schedule:
5:30 a.m.—wake up and lie there and think.
6:15 a.m.—get up and eat breakfast (lots).
7:15 a.m.—get to work writing, writing, writing. Noon—lunch.
1:00-3:00 p.m.—reading, music.
3:00-5:00 p.m.—correspondence, maybe house cleaning.
5:00-8:00 p.m.—make dinner and eat it.
After 8:00 p.m.—I tend to be very stupid and we won’t talk about this.
Le Guin echoed in her 2014 National Book Foundation lifetime achievement acceptance speech: “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.”
She was punk. She wrote fantasy and sci-fi before they hit the mainstream and made universes from her head. She was clearly very insightful:
PETER JENSEN: You write science fiction. Do you have any particular vision of the future?
URSULA K. LE GUIN: The thing about science fiction is, it isn’t really about the future. It’s about the present. But the future gives us great freedom of imagination. It’s like a mirror. You can see the back of your own head.
She had integrity and spoke like a true intellectual.
ZELTZER: I notice there’s no anima in your books.
LE GUIN: Of course not—I’m a woman. But the animus writes my books. My animus, what inspires me, is definitely male. People talk about muses—well, my muse ain’t no girl in a filmy dress, that’s for sure. But of course this is all metaphor.
Her words on writing are also very inspirational, direct or not:
MCPHERSON: Once you’re into a major work, like a novel, that has to be written over an extended period of time, how do you maintain the creative flow and deal with the constant interruptions?
LE GUIN: Hemingway, l think it was, had a definite and useful word of advice here. When you stop in the middle of a story or a novel, he said, never stop at a stopping place; go past it a little or stop short of it. Stop even in the middle of a sentence. Tomorrow when you come back to it you can read back the last few paragraphs, or pages, until you come to the “oh yeah, this is what happened next” and you can hook back up into your unconscious flow. That starting and stopping is sometimes a very hairy business.
It’s one reason I adore Tolkien; he always tells you what the weather is, always. And you know pretty well where north is, and what kind of landscape you’re in and so on. I really enjoy that. That’s why I like Hardy. Again, you always know what the weather is.
All interviews are interesting: a couple are plain and not very well researched, but the very last one, conducted over several meetings from 2015 to 2018, by David Streitfeld, is wonderful.
STREITFELD: How does getting old look now?
LE GUIN: It’s not the metaphysical weariness of aging that bothers me. It’s that you get so goddamn physically tired you can’t pull yourself together. If you’ve ever been very ill, it’s like that. You just can’t rise to the occasion. It’s why I don’t do many public appearances anymore. I’m a ham. I love appearing in front of an audience. But I can’t.
STREITFELD: How do you feel about e-books these days? In 2008 you wrote for Harper’s Magazine about the alleged decline of reading. It now seems prophetic about the reliability and durability of physical books: “If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell it to you again when you’re fifty, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you’re reading a whole new book.”
LE GUIN: When I started writing about e-books and print books, a lot of people were shouting “The book is dead, the book is dead, it’s all going to be electronic.” I got tired of it. What I was trying to say is that now we have two ways of publishing, and we’re going to use them both. We had one, now we have two. How can that be bad? Creatures live longer if they can do things different ways. I think I’ve been fairly consistent on that. But the tone of my voice might have changed. I was going against a trendy notion. There’s this joke I heard. You know what Gutenberg’s second book was, after the Bible? It was a book about how the book was dead. Personally, though, I hate to read on a screen. I don’t have an e-reader.
STREITFELD: Some writers grumble to me about Amazon, but they’re reluctant to be public about it because they think it will hurt their careers. Others say they do not see an issue here at all.
LE GUIN: Amazon is extremely clever at making people love it, as if it were a nice uncle. I don’t expect to win, but I still need to say what I think. When I am afraid to say what I think is when I will really be defeated. The only way they can defeat me is by silencing me. I might as well go out kicking.
She had no qualms about talking about the works of others:
LE GUIN: What some consider a mystical breakthrough late in Phil’s life looks to me more like a breakdown. Still, this was a remarkable mind. But his works don’t wear as well as I hoped and thought they would.
STREITFELD: Oh no!
LE GUIN: I did an introduction to the Folio Society edition of The Man in the High Castle, and re-reading it I was struck by the clunkiness. Others that I liked a lot I now find hard going. I’m afraid to re-read Galactic Pot-Healer, my secret favorite. Clans of the Alphane Moon, which I was crazy about, now seems cruel. The way he handled women was pretty bad.
She spoke lovingly and straight-forwardly about her husband, Charles.
STREITFELD: I don’t see the books you and Charles were reading last night. Usually they’re on the tables here.
LE GUIN: He’s now reading the Oxford Book of English Verse to me. I’m reading Brontë’s Shirley to him. It’s a good book, much better than I realized. I wasn’t feeling so hot, so we had the reading upstairs, with a little whiskey. I’m still recovering from my birthday. It was very nice. It kind of went on for a week. My daughter came up from Los Angeles, and I got to see her. It’s a serious age, eighty-eight. If you turn the numbers on their side, it’s two infinities on top of each other.
In short, this collection of interviews is enticing, alluring, straighter than an arrow (all due to Le Guin's graces), and makes me want to read Le Guin's work straightaway.
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