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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 1, 2014)
street roots Aug. 1, 2014 LE GUIN, fro m page 4 Kroeber, was a writer. . A friend of the Kroeber family, and a Native American who had lived most of his life out of contact with modem culture, Ishi, lived out the end of his life in civilization and presumably spent a lot of time with your family. What influence did his presence in your world have on you as a young girl and writer if any? U.K.L.: Ishi died in 1913; I was bom in 1929. Ishi was part of my father’s world, not mine. But two Native American friends of my father, Juan Dolores of the O’odham people and Robert Spott of the Yurok people, stayed with us in the country when I was a child. I was a lucky white kid with “Indian uncles.” I learned a lot from them. Particularly about good manners, dignity, loyalty and patience. And very, very dry jokes. • S.Z.: You have a curiosity about the social sciences as much as the biological sciences. What steered you toward writing as a young girl? What kept you moving forward through your career and what drives you to write today? U.K.L.: My fiction is about the relationships of people within a certain society or culture — which is what most novels are about. Science fiction, in my definition, naturally includes the social sciences like anthro(pology), psych(ology), sociology, and the whole ecological outlook, so it has widened the whole scope of fiction. I grew up in a family full of readers and writers and books, which helps a whole lot; but nobody steered me toward writing as a kid. I just always wrote and always wanted to write and always knew I’d go on doing it. I think an artistic vocation usually starts with a gift, plus a sense that your gift is an o b lig a tio n . Q p u tiit bluntly, y o u o w e it your MHBS* S.Z.: I have heard you speak about digital publishers, specifically Amazon.com. Tell me about thefa.ce of publishing: How it has changed, and how it affects writers? And you personally? f U.K.L.: Oh, golly. Do we have to go there? Now Amazon has bought the U.S. Post Office so that they can deliver what they choose to deliver to their enslaved customers even on Sundays. Well, hot zowie. I buy books from Powell’s and other independent booksellers who don’t control what the publishers publish and pay, and who don’t punish “disobedient” publishers and authors and readers by delaying delivery for weeks and months or refusing to sell their books at all. Publishing has changed in the last 20-plus years because international corporations bought out all the major publishers and began handling books as commodities, like potatoes or corn. Amazon is just the big super bully in the commodities m arket Well, you know what’s happened with potatoes and corn. Toxicity, obesity, tastelessness. Who cares, so long as it sells? How has all this affected me? It makes me sad and angry. How does it affect younger writers? Well, it gives them a ehoice: climb onto the corporate juggernaut, quickly produce whateververbal commodity is selling at the moment, and hope to grab a lot-a-profit real fast. Or, go on doing what writers do: write books, find an independent press or self-publish on line, hope for some readers, hope for some luck. S.Z.: Gender. You dissolved gender boundaries by creating a genderless society in Í1 1 5 xa 1 vzm “The Left Hand of Darkness” in 1969. Have gender roles evolved, in your experience? What are the benefits and advantages of being a woman? U.K.L.: Now those questions are just too big. I have to cut them down. In my lifetime, our society has gone from believing that there are two genders absolutely determined by features of the body, to understanding that gender is complex and is determined by many factors, physical, social, cultural and personal. A big, good change. A benefit of being a woman: You get to have kids, if you want to, and write books if you want to. S.Z.: Your writing spans many genres. You are known for your science fiction novels, but which style of writing, in your opinion, best exemplifies your work in its purest form? U.K.L.: In its purest form? Poetry. S.Z.: Yes, I guess that would be the case. And not in its purest form? Italy, and the whole Trojan War story, which is so fundamental to our literature. Things are always coming back to the Trojan War! And Aeneas is a survivor of that war, from the losing side. S.Z.: I can only imagine. I ’ve never written a novel. Who knows? Maybe I should start with a short story? U.K.L.: Probably, although they’re really different things. Storytelling takes all forms. Your writing is a form of storytelling and that may be your way of doing it. I couldn’t do what you do. There is a kind of arrogance to writing fiction: “I’m going to make the world my way.” U.K.L.: “Lavinia” is partly what they call a meta-text. Which is a text about a text. Lavinia is a character from Virgil’s epic, “The Aeneid.” She has no speaking part and is really, she’s kind of a major p art of his story because he and she are destined to be married. They really don’t have much choice. Destiny says these two have to marry and found the people who will be the Roman people. The love story in “The Aeneid” is Dido and Aeneas — that’s the famous one, That’s all in the pastwhen we come to Lavinia’s part. She is this little Italian princess. I just became fascinated: Who was Lavinia? What did she think about all of this? And it was just like she started telling me. (Laughter). It was an utterly amazing experience. I distrusted it at first, because Lavinia is another author’s character. She has her part to playin the Aeneid, and who am I to tell Virgil how to do it? - I love Virgil. I felt at home in his poem. I wasn’t invading or setting him straight I just thought, Well, he couldn’t do Lavinia justice, it wouldn’t have fitted into his story. But I can. So I got to play around with Bronze Age (from In the Red Zone, 1983) By Ursula K> Le Guin To walk in here is to stop pretending. S.Z.: You’ve created many worlds... U.K.L.: It’s a lot of fun. It is. I think that is one reason that people like science fiction and fantasy. It is a slightly new7world. You discover that things are a little different than you thought théÿ were. We all like that. U.K.L.: I really can’t answer. I’ve been S.Z.: What are your thoughts on the writing ever since I was five and publishing Supreme Court’s decision in the Hobby Lobby ever since I was 30 years old. I was base? publishing poetry before that. There’s so much. And I do so many kinds of things that U.K.L.: I want to see five members of the I really don’t want to say, “This is the U.S. Supreme Court ultimate,” because impeached. there isn’t one. Actually, I have Name any work and fantasies of several of I can say something " I n m y life tim e , our society them going to their about it. Like “Lavinia” which is my has gone from believing that Catholic Christian Judgment Seat and last published novel. I there are two genders their god judging did something in absolutely determ ined by them as they “Lavinia” that I had never done anywhere features of the body, to deserve, which would understanding that gender is involve t h e ir e n d in g else. It was very up w ay, w ay d ow n in different from, complex and Is determ ined anything I have ever Dante’s Hell. But we by m any factors, physical, done. can’t wait for th at I’m amazed by it. It social, c u ltu ra l and We need a change personal« A big, good was just like it came now. . to me. “What am I change/* doing? Oh look at S;Z.: Are there any that! It’s a novel.” limits to the science This sounds like I fiction or fantasy . am not in control of genres? I f so, what are what I do. Of Course, I am. they? S.Z.: You said that you’d done something in writing “Lavinia” that you had not done before. What was it that you did that was so impressive to you? To Walk In Here U.K.L.: Aré there any limits to the universe? Or the imagination? S.Z.: What would you say to fledgling writers who are trying to navigate the ever- changing writer’s market? U.K.L.: I knew you’d ask that. Times are hard, kids. The chief hope I have at this point is that the situation is changing all the time. Everybody is staggering around in the wake of the invention of the e-book etc,, trying to figure out what publishing actually is going to Consist of. The corporations aren’t going to get us out of this mess. Corporations are deeply stupid. But many writers are not. Writers, for instance, can stop thinking of writing as a way to get rich. Corporate capitalism at this stage of its death agony can only control, deform and stupidify everything it touches. We have t o 7 operate within capitalism, because at this point it’s all there is. But if our minds aren’t controlled by it, if we think like free people, writers will figure out how to do our job: To write, get our writing to our readers, and maybe make a living from i t So what I say to younger writers is: Hang in there! Remember, you’re the ones who get the last word. What’s real? Grey dust, a dead forest Entropy moves quickly to its end. 0 desolation! What’s real? says tile fireweed lightly casting its words upon the wind. To walk in here is to stop pretending that what we do matters all that much. Less in the long run than the fireweed, to the others. To ourselves'we matter terribly. That there will be summer ever is the responsibility of others more careful than ourselves. T h e y d o n o t lo o k u s in th e fa c e. The gulfs of air are-full of blowing rain between us and the crater, the small, cold rain of autumn.
