Words Are My Matter

July 4, 2016
Le Guin (The Real and the Unreal), an honored and prodigious fiction writer, will delight her many fans with these 67 selections of her recent nonfiction. The wide-ranging collection includes essays, lectures, introductions, and reviews, all informed by Le Guin’s erudition, offered without academic mystification, and written (or spoken) with an inviting grace. Herself a genre-defying writer most associated with science fiction and fantasy, Le Guin frequently challenges the restrictiveness of genre-based value judgments that relegate science fiction to a “literary ghetto.” Le Guin’s book speaks both to readers, in the succinct and lucid reviews and introductions, and to writers, as in “Making Up Stories,” in which she urges writers to be readers, and “The Hope of Rabbits,” her journal of a week at a writers’ retreat. Le Guin’s nominal topic is often a book, but her subjects are more complex, reaching deeply into the nexus of politics and language, women’s issues, the effects of technology, and books as commerce. In a resonating essay, “What Women Know,” Le Guin discusses the differences between stories told by men and women, remarking, “I think it’s worth thinking about.” That’s this collection in a nutshell: everywhere something to think about.

Collected nonfiction by the prolific, multiaward-winning writer.The author of novels (21), short stories (11 volumes), essays (four collections), children's books (12), poetry (six volumes), and translations (four volumes), Le Guin (Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story, 2015, etc.) also writes book reviews and occasional essays, delivers talks, and contributes introductions to other writers' works. These short pieces comprise a volume that, like many such miscellaneous collections, is uneven, but the few minor pieces are outweighed by several gems. Among the latter is an evocative memoir of the elegant, somewhat eccentric house in which the author grew up in California and where her family lived for 54 years, designed by the renowned architect Bernard Maybeck. The house was "remarkably beautiful, delightfully comfortable, and almost entirely practical." Not completely, however, since it lacked stairs to the basement, and those to the upper floors ended in steps so narrow, furniture movers "met their doom." Le Guin remembers the mellow, silken redwood of the interior, which imparted a special, pleasant fragrance. In another moving piece, the author recalls "what it was like to be twenty and pregnant in 1950," before Roe vs. Wade, risking being expelled from college and choosing to have an abortion rather than bring a child into a bleak future. Many pieces reflect her commitment to craft, her belief in the endurance of the book as physical object, and her objections to the "false categorical value judgment" that elevates "literature" above genre--which would include much of Le Guin's output of science fiction and children's books. "Literature is the extant body of written art," she writes. "All novels belong to it." One excellent piece, not previously published, rails against "the masculine orientation of discussion of books and authors in the press." In a review of Kent Haruf's Benediction, Le Guin remarks on a character's "humor so dry it's almost ether." That praise applies to Le Guin as well in a collection notable for its wit, unvarnished opinions, and passion. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 15, 2016

This collection of writing about writing by multi-award-winning author Le Guin (A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, and The Farthest Shore, among others) includes talks, essays, introductions, and book reviews. The reviews alone--covering such authors as Doris Lessing, Yann Martel, David Mitchell, Salman Rushdie, and Jeanette Winterson--make this a volume worth savoring, but the novelist's essays concerning the future of literature are of special note. Le Guin's dismissal of neo-luddite handwringing over the shift from page to screen, tempered against her dispassionate dissection of that same technology's limitations and vulnerabilities, provide rational appraisal of the current state of publishing in general and suggest a meaningful path forward for all concerned. Le Guin's literary prestige and popular appeal mean that this title will find a large audience; its relatively narrow focus (three separate survey collections of the author's other short works have been or will be published this year) makes it a fast read. VERDICT Recommended for all libraries as well as fans of the author and literature about literature. [See "Editors' Fall Picks," LJ 9/1/16, p. 27.].--Jenny Brewer, Helen Hall Lib., League City, TX

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 1, 2016
Words are what matter. The sharing of words, the redoubtable Le Guin writes in this collection of (for the most part) previously published talks, essays, book introductions, and reviews. Together, they put the lie to her assertion that I seldom have as much pleasure in reading nonfiction as I do in a poem or a story. For these examples of her own nonfiction are, for her readers, an undivided pleasure. Part of that pleasure derives from the investment of energy they demand from the reader. What she says of science fiction is apposite in this regard: the good stuff, like all good fiction, is not for lazy minds. Le Guin's own energetic mind addresses a variety of subjects: genre, of course, especially science fiction, which she insists is literature; the commodification of books and the primacy in publishing of the bottom line, both of which she decries; the work of Margaret Atwood and Jose Saramago; andin one of the best pieces in the bookthe house in which she grew up. Finally, what she says of poetry Its primary job is simply to find the words that give it its right, true shape might well be said of all the shapely pieces in this generous, edifying, and invaluable collection.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)