This is a collection of essays, introductions from various editions of the author's novels, and talks given at workshops and conventions. They set out the author's philosophy on what makes good science fiction or fantasy - truth rather than commercial qualities. There is quite a lot of Jungian philosophy which sometimes veers close to pretentiousness. The most interesting parts for me are where she discusses her own method of writing, which was intuitive and from the subconscious. She usually began with a character in a scene - or maybe a couple of characters - and then had to write the story to work out what was happening.

Some of what she said about "trash" writing is probably correct, but she was quite proscriptive on what constitutes truth in fantasy. In this connection, the essay 'From Elfland to Poughkeepsie' stoops to an attack on the work of a particular author. I immediately recognised whose work was being pilloried from the character names in the quoted extract. A footnote at the end of the essay confirmed it was taken from that author's first novel. Le Guin posits a fictional novel in which only four words are changed in that extract, transforming it into a political novel set in Washington DC. She apologises to the author for picking her for this object lesson, saying something good had gone wrong for her to be able to do this, and decides it is the straightforward style.

Although I haven't read the book in question for many years I greatly enjoyed it, and I think its use is unfair, especially as the examples of 'good' fantasy it is compared to include E R Eddison (whose prose I found so impenetrable I gave up the idea of reading 'The Worm Ouroboros') and Kenneth Morris who isn't much better. (Considering I once read William Hope Hodgson's 'The Night Land', which is written in a kind of cod Elizabethan, I don't think I can be accused of giving up easily on a novel.) From my memory of the book attacked, I don't think much of it could be translated into a Washington political thriller: the story is set in an alternative medieval Wales, beset by political and religious strife and the persecution of a race who have magical abilities. If anything, if it were to be reassigned to another genre and the magic were somehow to be removed (which might not be possible anyway), it would be a historical novel. But I don't see anything wrong with lucid, straightforward prose that does not get in the way of the story - as the Eddison and Morris examples do.

Le Guin characterises this plain prose as 'Poughkeepsie' style (ironically, as someone from the UK, Poughkeepsie sounds to me like somewhere in Elfland). In her view, this is fake plainness (she takes care to distinguish it from Tolkien's who she admired) equivalent to journalism. She attributes it to a lack of serious intention: 'a failure to take the job seriously'. Presumably permission was given for the quote to be used, but with the author denied the right of comeback, the attack mounts up over several pages into overkill, causing me to lose respect for Le Guin as a person. It wasn't necessary to quote a particular author's work to make the points she wanted to make, and I'm sure the book's author takes her job just as seriously as Le Guin did.

She also attacks the extract for a line spoken by one of the characters who says 'I could have told you that at....' This she interprets as "I told you so" and says 'Nobody who says "I told you so" has ever been, or will ever be, a hero.' This isn't consistent, since elsewhere in the collection she talks about people not being heroes but doing heroic things, and having normal human flaws etc. The quote from the story is given no context anyway, but I don't see a problem with a protagonist, heroic at other times, having the odd impatient moment under stress. But, she tells us, Lords of Elfland are the only true lords and the sign of their lordship is their inward greatness and therefore they can't actually show human flaws. To me, that sounds more like a cardboard cutout than the portrayal of a real person with weaknesses and strengths.

Given my level of annoyance with this essay and the slight pretentiousness elsewhere, I can only rate the collection overall at 3 stars. ( )

A really quite enlightening read. ( )

(Original Review, 1981-04-01)

My understanding of close reading was what I described in another review gleaning from Empson, and I never intended to dismiss the idea of finding archetypes in literary characters. As far as that goes, I might put myself much closer to the other extreme and be tempted to say: every story contains archetypes because we have nothing else to tell stories about; even non-fiction stories are told primarily if not exclusively about real people who embody archetypes.

I’m now reading a collection of essays by Ursula K. Le Guin, “Language of the Night,” and she offers an interesting take on many of these issues from the writer’s point of view. She acknowledges the appearance of archetypes in her stories, but, with what she considers her best work, the story comes from within her and only after it is written does she recognize the archetype that inspired it:

“The writer who draws not upon the works and thoughts of others, but upon his own thoughts and his own deep being, will inevitably hit upon common material. The more original his work, the more imperiously recognizable it will be.”

Here she is on symbols and meaning in literature:

“In many college English courses the words “myth” and “symbol” are given a tremendous charge of significance. You just ain’t no good unless you can see a symbol hiding, like a scared gerbil, under every page. And in many creative writing courses the little beasts multiply, the place swarms with them. What does this Mean? What does this Symbolize? What is the Underlying Mythos? Kids come lurching out of such courses with a brain full of gerbils. And they sit down and write a lot of empty pomposity, under the impression that that’s how Melville did it.

Even when they begin to realize that art is not something for critics, but for other human beings, some of them retain the overintellectualizing bent. They still do not realize that a symbol is not a sign of something known, but an indicator of something not known and not expressible otherwise than symbolically. They mistake symbol (living meaning) for allegory (dead equivalence).”

SF (Speculative Fiction) was the realm where nerdish white boys went to dream of swords and D-cups. (Yes, that is very unfair. I must be slandering at least 1 1/2% of my fellow geeks.) Now it's no longer just boys & men but also girls & women who have discovered how much fun you can have in these genres. So give it some time and the whole community, from the bottom up, will change. Some dinosaurs won't - no: don't - like it and they will complain about the newcomers trying to take their swords and D-cups away. We already see that in the world of gaming and comics. One word of advice to the dinosaurs: comet. No, I think it is unlikely a cabal of females will come to your house and slit your throats with magic swords or strangle you with their bras*. You will just become more and more irrelevant. A group of moaning old-timers who are Fantasy & SF's equivalent of the Creation Museum. I don’t care about the gender of the writer; what I care about is the quality of what they write. If it’s crap, I’ll give them hell as I usually do [2018 EDIT: I’m still doing it… there has been no shortage in the last decades of absolutely brilliant women writing SF. There has, however, been a noticeable increase in the number of titles unambiguously written by women. This increase deserves examination. While there are still very good women writing science-fiction and fantasy, I do think that the number of poorly written books being published seems to be increasing. I think the market has expanded, and publishers are less likely to devote resources for editing. The recent surge of women writing means that women are disproportionately affected by that lack of editing. This is particularly true in Fantasy, as opposed to Science-Fiction, as Fantasy allows more discretion over the rules of the Universe (one can always resolve a plot issue through magic, “deus ex deus”, if you will). Science-Fiction requires a higher degree of internal consistency (“Deus-ex-machina” requires a machina, after all). Again, poorer editorship then has a disproportionate effect on the incoming women writers of Fantasy. To be clear, poor editorship effects both genders and both genres, but hits disproportionately against women writing in Fantasy].

NB: (*) Which might actually come as a disappointment to many a hardcore nerd: sorry (Nah. Not really).

NB: Both quotes from the essay “Myth and Archetype in Science Fiction”.

[2018 EDIT: I'm still slightly in shock. Ursula Le Guin was simply one of my favourite writers; a constant companion throughout my reading life. Everything she wrote is worth reading. However perhaps it's worth going beyond these same things that everyone recommends (excellent though they are) to work that people don't read enough or underrate. You could read the Hainish novels. “The Left Hand of Darkness” and “The Dispossessed” aren't the first of these. City of Illusions (1967) is perhaps the most Taoist of them all, and does provide a kind of underpinning for many of the others. For my money, the novella, “The Word for World is Forest” (1976), is also one of the best: a brilliant anti-colonial eco-political fable. Then there are her short stories. And don’t get me started on Earthsea…] ( )

Every person who is a writer, or who wants to be a writer, should not only read this book but should keep it on their desk - full of sentences underlined and notes in paragraphs. I submit this is an essential read. ( )

The essays by Le Guin in this book are mostly forty years old, but still well worth reading. Le Guin's thoughts and concerns about literature are thought-provoking, insightful and well thought out. ( )