/lit/ - Literature

seriously, after seeing all the books that frequently get talked about here... and this book not being one of them... really says a lot about the state of /lit/

I agree. The author in general. She was marvelous.

But they judge her harshly for her sex, for her genre writing and being leftist.
Rand has no talent, no heart and negligible intellect. But she's forced in a lot of "red state" schools, she gives capitalist confirmation bias, and writes about cold slabs of meat inheriting the world. Jack London did her themes better. Stirner did her themes better.

Now read Le Guin, daughter of an anthropologist and writer, avid bookworm, lover of Tolkien and many others. I've read too few of her cozy and thoughtful prose. I'm mad the libraries I went to didn't have her titles, I'm mad my mom didn't have at least one of her books. She probably saw a description of Left Hand of Darkness and recoiled.

I've read The Dispossessed, Lavinia, Orsinian Tales and I'm almost done with The Wave in the Mind, a collection of thoughts, talks and essays on reading and writing, and I highly recommend it to the aspiring writers here. Orsinian Tales is the lesser piece, but they're simple short tales with a soothing calmness and not bad at all.

Le Guin is great.
Earthea is very nice, but she really shines with her 'Hainish Cycle'.
I don't even like her politics, but idgaf.

>>12803903
Here we go

Butterfly I want to know what you would do if my testicles were right in front of you. Like just my balls. Would you care?

:3

>>12803903
thanks for chiming in, I was really wondering what work of hers was good to follow up The Dispossessed with. I quickly could tell when reading that it was one of the best books I had ever read, in the richness and the importance of her ideas being fleshed out. She seems like she's got quite a bit more to offer.

I couldn't get past the scene where the guy rapes the woman

I couldn't get past the scene where the guy rapes the woman

>>12803948
The Poacher?

>>12803948
he doesn't really rape her, he just jizzes on her. haha.

I actually thought it was really good. and not in any way for a banal reason. showing how someone who came from a completely not hypersexualized, not fetishistic society might react when coming to a society where everything is hypersexual, with tits being shoved in your face every 5 seconds - and is unaccustomed to intoxication, and then unintentionally gets really drunk. of course it's a little bit more than that too, but, still. it took guts to write that.

>>12803933
The Word For World Is Forest is set in the same universe, but features humans from Earth.
The novels in the 'Hainish Cycle' are all related by the setting, but can be read in any order.

>>12804001
>he just jizzes on her
that sounds nice

>>12804652
read it

here's some excerpts

>“Change is freedom, change is life. It's always easier not to think for oneself. Find a nice safe hierarchy and settle in. Don't make changes, don't risk disapproval, don't upset your syndics. It's always easiest to let yourself be governed.
There's a point, around age twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities. Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I'm going to go fulfil my proper function in the social organism. I'm going to go unbuild walls.

>>12804801

>>12804801
Thanks for reminding my why I don't read genre fiction.

>>12804856
excerpt really doesn't do it justice. i would say that the small parts that are like this and come right out trying to say something outright are less effective than the overall rest of the book

>>12804908
Why are you posting them, then? "Change is freedom, change is life." What am I supposed to do with that? "Yes, I too like 'freedom' and 'life.' These words are like a mantra that, when spoken, makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside like I'm pleasantly drunk." Are you a fucking teenager? Were you raised on fucking Harry Potter and John Green, or what?

>>12804962
Read it in context.

What do you read, big shot?

>>12803697
Lathe of heaven is good too

I've never heard of her. I've mostly stuck to books from before 1970, and I rarely if ever read science fiction or fantasy.

>>12805256
Read The Aeneid?

So what was you guys' favourite Earthsea novel?

>>12805338
It's been a while, since I was studying in school. Maybe I will check her out. I don't have anything against women writers (I have a great love Virginia Woolf and Murasaki Shikibu, for instance), but science fiction and fantasy tend to be not for me. I will check out "Lavinia," though.

>>12805353
it's probably less sci-fi strong as it is strong in terms of social theory

kurt vonnegut was similar. sci-fi was just the substrate for a meaning that goes much deeper. not just surface level stuff

>>12803933
I would go with The Lathe of Heaven next. It's up there with The Dispossessed as one of her best.

>>12803697
it's the last book i read and it was great. looking into reading her other stuff.

>>12805406
>Probably
>it
What do you mean?

>>12805449
I guess the dispossessed specifically, sorry. Can't speak for her other novels though I get the feeling that they also have strong ideological undercurrents

i'm not really infatuated with sci fi anymore than i am with the bread on a sandwich. i think the guts of a good book are the things it leaves you with deep down. this is all probably obvious though.

>>12803697
How political are her books? I don't mind reading a lefty book, or watching a lefty movie, as long as it's good. The problem with overly political books/movies are that they generally suck ass.

>>12806028
Quite political, but not to the detriment of her stories. And her leftism isn't the type that's shoved down our throats. She was an anarchist.

>>12803697
I preferred Left Hand but both were very good

>>12806043
anarchism isn't exactly leftism. there's a left and a right on the political compass, and also a top and a bottom - the top being fascist, the bottom being anarchist. libertarians are for less government but still considered *right*

>>12806088
Hers was a left-leaning anarchism.

>>12806097
still, that's pretty badass compared to the main modern base of whats understood to be leftism - dickless, spineless, and brainless. i mean, so is modern right-ism, except additionally, it's heartless, but, you know what i mean,,,

>>12804856
You don't read

>>12806109
Didn’t she also dislike whiteness as a racial identity? All of her characters are mixed or otherwise non-white if I remember correctly.

Regardless, I like that she writes sci-fi with a focus on characters rather than on technology autism like most other sci-fi works do.

>>12806139
Pretty sure the book I just read had lots of white skinned humans in it. I mean, there are also lots of alien races, so some don't really qualify as white as we understand it. I know she consciously wanted to subvert traditional conceptions of all sorts of things, so I could see that including race, though I haven't seen any of her books that seem to focus on that. There seems to be a book she wrote of an alien planet where black skinned aliens had enslaved white skinned aliens, but that's all I saw. I think it's less a direct political statement as it is meant to be a catalyst for thinking about things differently

oh 4chan, the things you think about

>>12806139
truly though, anon, race shouldn't be an *identity* any more than having brown or blue eyes is an *identity*. you can install linux on a dell just like you can raise someone of a different race into a different culture. one's ancestral heritage is another matter, and doesn't have that much to do with race, because many very different groups with different values make/made up europe, just as well as in asia, or africa

>>12806181
Obviously, and that ties into the themes of Le Guin’s works. She seems to have a rather flexible view on gender too, as seen in The Left Hand of Darkness. Although that being said, she still defines certain traits as “manly” or “womanly” there.

>>12803903
>daughter of an anthropologist
lol, "look everyone, her daddy was talented"
le guin's books are terrible, YA trash. rich, privileged girl masquerading as a socialist.
no wonder she is popular, she is a precursor to the downwardly mobile middleclass, desperately looking for social capital among fashionable ideology

>>12806384
>t. hasn't read any of her books
>t. can't think beyond politics, social classes

the sheer ignorance

>>12806109
Yeah, I agree. I wasn't criticizing her politics. A lot of my views overlap with hers. I just wanted the person who asked if her books are political to know that they are.

>>12806443
I'm not sure about her Earthsea books. They don't seem to be political, they seem to be more J.R.R. Tolkien fantasy inspired. But, I haven't read them

I wouldn't personally consider her a leftist in terms of what is typically colloquially referred to as a leftist, but, that shit is always changing these days anyways, and depends on the person looking. To someone on the extreme right, a centrist might appear like a leftist, and so on, and so forth. In my own personal gut feeling of when I negatively react to someone as a stereotypical "leftist" (technicalities be damned), I imagine a quite different image than Ursula Le Guin

>>12806028
Not overly so. Showing not telling preachy like.
Lavinia for one is just from Lavinia's perspective. If you see the politics in that...

>>12806088
Anarchism is far left, and on that other scale green

>>12806384
Giving the background of the girls upbringing and her outlook on life. The K. in her name is her maiden name, so he was important to her.
YA? I wish.

>>12806528
anarchism is absence of government. whether the people resort to collectivism or anarcho-capitalism from there is another matter, but pure anarchism is neither left nor right

>>12806566
Anarchism is lack of rulers.
Anarchist capitalism is a paradox

>>12806617
I agree, but, alas, I didn't create the political compass

>>12806566
Fine for the theory of it, but you cannot have capitalism without a state.
Not the thread to discuss the finer points

>>12806617
Not no rules, but the challenging of all unjustifiable hierarchies

I'm halfway through this book and I'm enjoying it greatly. I agree with you OP, it should be discussed more often, I know I will when I finish it.
>>12803948
>>12804001
that scene was fantastic, I was really on edge while reading it

>>12806754
Learn how to read
I said no rulers

>>12803697
it is one of the best sci fi novels easily. this is also a great one but a much lighter read. not as big a fan of left hand of darkness but it is still great, right now I am currently reading planet of exile.

Left hand of darkness is the better. This is just meh with so e "anarchist" planet in it.

>>12803697
I read this and the moon is a harsh mistress back to back. the parallels and differences were interesting.

>>12803697
Le guin fucked up the game a lot, they are still putting patchs months after releasing to correct stuff

When I read this 1.5 year ago it kicked off the long process of me slowly getting out of my /pol/tard mindset. Not “wtf I love leftism now”, but it helped me to start looking in a different direction politically, but it took a while. That’s why I’m really thankful that some anon recommended me this book on here
Today I can barely believe how retarded I was

>>12806953
What the fuck are you talking about? Have you suffered a recent head injury?

>tfw you will never walk away from Omelas

>>12806139
>All of her characters are mixed or otherwise non-white if I remember correctly
White? Most of her characters aren't even from Earth. But anyway, she was obviously heavily influenced by (old-school) anthropology. She was hardly going to write about what was for her the most mainstream ethnic group.

>>12806891
Apologies. I rushed that post.
Should have said anarchist capitalism was a misnomer.

>>12806925
I should read it. Though I DLed Always Coming Home. Has anyone seen the BBC production of Lathe of Heaven?

>>12806953
Are you trying to say she slaps?

>>12804856
>reading
>shitposting on /lit/
Pick one

Trash novelist, in french translation at least. Felt as didactic as Brecht to me, only childish. Literally never read a passable sci-fi book (or maybe Claude Ollier ?).

>>12806965
I can't believe this mediocre writer changed your views. Haven't you read anything before to tame your retardness?

>>12808367
Sometimes an “entry level” explanation is what it takes to set people right.

I actually have it on my shelf right now and tried to read it a month ago and couldn't get past the halfway point. The prose really bored me.

>>12808243
it is hilariously low budget but a near perfect adaptation for what it is. crazy how no larger studio picked it up after all these years.

Read Left Hand of Darkness
Hated it. Boring as fuck.
Reluctant to read any other of her books.

Why does this thread seem like one person having a conversation with himself

>>12806384
Interesting. Left Hand of Darkness struck me as being written by a wanna be anthropologist who was too lazy to go out and study a real culture or become a biologist instead.The gender-bender race made zero sense from an evolutionary perspective. It was just dumb.

>>12809604
seems like it can be a real hit or miss with science fiction. vonnegut had a few stinkers, too.

>>12803924
That's not the real butterfly retard

I've finished the left hand of darkness today, it was good, could be better if it was 100 pages less. It gives lord of the rings vibes at some point.

What should I pick up as next book from the same writer?
Is Rocannons World good?

>>12810055
Her best are Left hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, The Word for World is Forest

>>12808367

Can’ you read? I never said it immediately changed my mind, it got me interested into looking into other political view, which over some time changed my views.

>>12810131
Thanks, i was thinking Dispossessed as my next as well.

>>12808243
man, she was hot

>>12806925
Lathe of Heaven was great, though I wouldn't consider it one of my favorite science fiction works. Many of the later portions, particularly the unreality descriptions, felt rather weak- all the more when compared to the first half of the book.

>>12808367
The Left Hand of Darkness is included in Harold Bloom's Western Canon. She's hardly mediocre. I encourage you to read her works. Perhaps they will have a positive influence on you too.

>>12803697
>Better than The Fountainhead
lolno.

>>12803697
Just finished Left Hand of Darkness and loved it, Gethen reminded me of Swift and other’s old “Utopias”, Dispossessed next then?

>>12804801
I prefer horrifying unsafe hierarchies myself. "Thinking for yourself" is all too often an excuse to be lazy and act like a schizoid.

>>12805097
>I had almost successfully killed another genre fiction thread
>this faggot comes along and resurrects it
Goddamn you.

>She expressed a deep interest in Taoism and Buddhism, saying that Taoism gave her a "handle on how to look at life" during her adolescent years.
Holy- what a cringelord

>>12813117
yes, the tagline for the book used to be 'an ambiguous utopia'

>>12813599
Better than straight edge christfags desu, and nobody should be surprised at children/young adults doing cringe shit

>>12813599
the anti-eastern philosophy meme is the true cringe of cringes on /lit/

>>12813083
read it, then see what you think

>>12813581
>"Thinking for yourself" is all too often an excuse to be lazy and act like a schizoid.

seems to me like just going with the flow of what is expected of you by mainstream society is the actual lazy and schizoid choice. that you could literally even equate the idea of "thinking for yourself" with being schizoid is frightening to say the least

Bump

I laughed when I saw her daily routine

>>12818543
her blog site was a treasure trove

>>12818543
Hahah. I wish I could do a schedule like that.
After 8:00. 4chan time