Author Ursula K. Le Guin (Copyright © 2003 by Joyce Scrivner)
Appearing at the closing session on Saturday, the 79-year-old author wowed the capacity crowd at St. Brigid’s Centre for the Arts and Humanities with her readings and responses to questions from the Festival’s artistic director Sean Wilson, and audience members.
Le Guin’s impressive output includes 24 novels, 10 volumes each of poetry and short story collections, 15 children’s books, as well as literary criticisms and translations. She was a Pulitzer Prize nominee and winner of many prestigious honours, including multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards. Her most famous works are The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, and her fantasy classic The Earthsea Trilogy.
Ursula and husband Charles Le Guin had visited the National Gallery in Ottawa earlier in the day to see the Group of Seven paintings that they admired. They also saw something that she described as one of the most beautiful objects she had ever seen in her life—a set of caribou antlers with images of animals and people carved by an Inuit sculptor.
Le Guin commented how the two things reminded her of the importance of place, which she believed was prevalent in a lot of poetry. She read two poems: one about the Napa Valley in northern California where she grew up, and another praising the peacefulness of Harney County, Oregon, where she lives now.
She then read a passage from her recent work Lavinia, which is set in the eighth century BC and is written from the perspective of the wife of Aeneas. Le Guin was inspired to write the novel after reading the epic poem Aenid by Virgil in the original Latin. She later revealed that the book was easy to write because it seemed the character began talking to her.
“I was being dictated to. The person starts telling you her story. I was incredulous. This novel insisted on telling all of the story. It was a gift.”
Wilson mentioned that earlier in the week Adrienne Clarkson had discussed the topic “How do I Know I am Telling the Truth?” Clarkson said that fiction was sometimes a measure of truth. Le Guin said she had tried writing non-fiction and it hadn’t worked well and it wasn’t that truthful.
“My favourite form of truth is telling a story,” she said.
Wilson asked what got Le Guin interested in writing and how to get younger people interested in it. She said that she had grown up in a pre-television era and observed that television shows us stories rather than tells them. She mentioned a recent book that showed photos of children being read to, and how animated they looked; but that they looked different when watching television.
“When you read, your brain is being used differently, and is more active than passive. Something magical goes on with telling stories and reading them,”
Le Guin acknowledged that vast changes have taken place over the course of her lifetime.
“I am and I am not a political writer. I certainly am not a political thinker,” she admitted.
She said that certain civil liberties have improved but felt that we have jeopardized every species on Earth by aggressively pushing ahead with industrialization and capitalism. “We have grown beyond the number of people on Earth we can support. It is important social justice has improved, but sometimes I get scared.”
When asked what gives her hope and inspiration, Le Guin said, “I have grandchildren and I want them to have a world that is not [full of] chaos and misery.” She said she was not a religious person but that her inspiration is “this beautiful world we live in.” Her novel Always Coming Home describes the Napa Valley, a tiny part of the earth she loves. This book portrays people who treat the valley with respect, something that she felt is sadly lacking in current agribusiness practices in the area today.
An audience member commented that science fiction and fantasy are part of oral history and asked if reality has overtaken these genres. Le Guin agreed, saying, “We did not predict the computer and the atom bomb.” Some genres of science fiction are way behind and cannot keep up, she said, noting that the rapid pace of change makes it difficult to write about any stable way of life.
Le Guin expressed frustration with aspects of her career that she couldn’t control. She was plainly displeased with the anime film Tales from Earthsea that was supposedly based on The Earthsea Trilogy, saying it had nothing to do with her work. She said she would consider another film being made of her work but would approach it with caution.
She was also dismayed with some of her book covers, saying that authors often had no input into the covers. For example, early editions of The Earthsea Trilogy portrayed the black character Ged as a white man. Le Guin commented that while it was acceptable to write about a black character, some people would not accept one on a book cover. The audience cheered when she commented, “Hopefully that will change with the new [U.S.] president.”
She was critical of people who think that science fiction must have a hard scientific base. “Science fiction is a mirror of the present seen from a different angle,” she said. “People need novels. They don’t want to read about science. They want to read about what science does to us… Monkeys like to read about monkeys.”
Toward the end of the evening, Le Guin graciously accepted a wrapped gift from a young man who wanted to show his gratitude for her work. The audience applauded when he seemed to be close to tears and was finding it difficult to speak. Perhaps many of them were echoing his gratitude for the work of this beloved author.
Joyce MacPhee is an Ottawa writer and editor.
