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RIP Ursula Le Guin

What is complete

The valley spirit never dies.
Call it the mystery, the woman.

The mystery,
the Door of the Woman,
is the root
of earth and heaven.

Forever this endures, forever.
And all its uses are easy.

Le Guin left us many great writings and some good speeches, too. My favorite of her books is her translation of Lao Tze.

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The otter is an original brush and ink work by Michelle Dujardin [etsy] I got it to illustrate a comment I was making about happiness and the tao, and now it hangs in my bathroom.

Interesting Spin » « Propaganda Feeding Company Identifies Propaganda Feeds

Comments

  1. Rob Grigjanis says

    The Left Hand of Darkness is my favourite of hers, and high on my list of best novels. And one of the few humans I admire.

  2. says

    Rob Grigjanis@#1:
    The Left Hand of Darkness and The Lathe of Heaven blew my mind as a teen-ager. In fact, I may pull down, tonight, add some fireball to a mug of hot cider, and get lost for a while.

  3. Rob Grigjanis says

    I used bolding instead of italics, and meant “And she is one of the few…”. I’m more discombobulated by this than I thought I was. When Samuel R Delany departs, that’s all my Greats of SF gone.

  5. kestrel says

    I said it on Pharyngula too…

    For a word to be spoken, there must be silence… both before, and after…

    :-( Really torn up. One of my favorite authors and a very cool human being.

  6. StevoR says

    Very sad news. I loved the Left Hand of Darkness’, the Wizard of Earthsea series, The Dispossessed and more of her works.

    Another of the SF greats has gone but her works and her words remain and will continue to inspire thought, pleasure and people for a very long time to come indeed.

    ***

    .. But, knowing only that I didn’t want to study war no more, I studied peace. I started by reading a whole mess of utopias and learning something about pacifism and Gandhi and nonviolent resistance. This led me to the nonviolent anarchist writers such as Peter Kropotkin and Paul Goodman. With them I felt a great, immediate affinity. They made sense to me in the way Lao Tzu did. They enabled me to think about war, peace, politics, how we govern one another and ourselves, the value of failure, and the strength of what is weak.

    So, when I realised that nobody had yet written an anarchist utopia, I finally began to see what my book might be. And I found that its principal character, whom I’d first glimpsed in the original misbegotten story, was alive and well—my guide to Anarres. – Ursula Le Guin

    , “Introduction” from Ursula K. Le Guin: The Hainish Novels & Stories, Volume One, retrieved 9/8/2017.

    “I know people, I know towns, farms,hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at unset in autumn falls on the side of a certain ploughland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of ones country; is it hate of one’s uncountry? Then its not a good thing. It is simply self-love? That’s a good thing, but one mustn’t make a virtue of it, or a profession . . . Insofar as I love life, I love the hills of the Domain of Estre, but that sort of love does not have a boundary-line of hate. And beyond that, I am ignorant, I hope.’ (Estraven – ed)
    Ignorant in the Handdara sense; to ignore the abstraction, to hold fast to the thing.
    – Ursula Le Guin

    Page 181, (ellipsis original), Ursula Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness, Futura, 1983 (first published 1969.)

    It is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception and compassion and hope.
    – Ursula Le Guin

    Source : https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/ursula_k_le_guin

  7. kestrel says

    Oh, I thought this interesting to those who did not know of it: The Left Hand of Darkness was actually turned down at first. She very kindly did not publish his name in the rejection letter he sent her: http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Reject.html Fortunately for the rest of the world who DID enjoy the book, she persevered.

  9. says

    Liked Le Guin. My mother made me read Left Hand of Darkness when she thought I was a self-hating gay. I’m still not sure it would’ve applied even if I was gay. Certainly a loss to SF&F.

  10. Owlmirror says

    Many years ago, she came to a local bookstore, and talked about and did a reading of her translation of the Tao Te Ching. I recall that she was very soft-spoken, so it was hard to hear her voice. She was accompanied by someone who played a singing bowl as she read.

    I’m sorry she’s gone.

  11. says

    Owlmirror@#10:
    Many years ago, she came to a local bookstore, and talked about and did a reading of her translation of the Tao Te Ching. I recall that she was very soft-spoken, so it was hard to hear her voice. She was accompanied by someone who played a singing bowl as she read.

    There is an audiobook of her reading it, with accompanying music. It’s OK but it’s not great – the accompanying music is a bit too loud in the mix, and distracts. I wanted to be able to listen to it while I pretend to be trying to sleep, but I just get annoyed by the sounds.

    She seemed to have the soft-spoken person’s trick of making you listen by making you have to listen to hear what they are saying. Or maybe it was just how she was.

    At her age, death can’t really be unexpected. But my world feels a little smaller, now.

  12. says

    Rob Grigjanis@#3:
    When Samuel R Delany departs, that’s all my Greats of SF gone.

    Nooooooooo! I won’t allow Delaney to go. Or Harlan Ellison. Harlan’s getting on in years but he’s still feisty, and still short.

  15. says

    Raucous Indignation@#14:
    Ellison is also still ill-tempered as I understand it.

    When the grim reaper comes for him, Ellison’s gonna give him an earful.

  16. says

    I picked up Le Guin’s translation of the Tao Te Ching per the advice of Marcus and Caine, and it was one of the best purchases I have made. Whenever work or life stresses me out, I flip to a random page and work to put it all into perspective. I read some of Le Guin’s works in high school, maybe it’s time to re-read them in memoriam. Thank you for the simple, yet elaborate, post.