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Summary
Summary
"Hard times are coming, when we'll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We'll need writers who can remember freedom -- poets, visionaries -- realists of a larger reality. . . ."
Words Are My Matter collects talks, essays, introductions to beloved books, and book reviews by Ursula K. Le Guin, one of our fore- most public literary intellectuals. Words Are My Matter is essential reading. It is a manual for investigating the depth and breadth of con- temporary fiction -- and, through the lens of deep considerations of contemporary writing, a way of exploring the world we are all living in.
"We need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximise corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship." *
Le Guin is one of those authors and this is another of her moments. She has published more than sixty books ranging from fiction to nonfiction, children's books to poetry, and has received many lifetime achievement awards including the Library of Congress Living Legends award. This year her publications include three survey collections: The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas; The Unreal and the Real: The Selected Short Stories; and The Complete Orsinia: Malafrena, Stories and Songs (Library of America).
* From "Freedom" A speech in acceptance of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Le Guin (The Real and the Unreal), an honored and prodigious fiction writer, will delight her many fans with these 67 selections of her recent nonfiction. The wide-ranging collection includes essays, lectures, introductions, and reviews, all informed by Le Guin's erudition, offered without academic mystification, and written (or spoken) with an inviting grace. Herself a genre-defying writer most associated with science fiction and fantasy, Le Guin frequently challenges the restrictiveness of genre-based value judgments that relegate science fiction to a "literary ghetto." Le Guin's book speaks both to readers, in the succinct and lucid reviews and introductions, and to writers, as in "Making Up Stories," in which she urges writers to be readers, and "The Hope of Rabbits," her journal of a week at a writers' retreat. Le Guin's nominal topic is often a book, but her subjects are more complex, reaching deeply into the nexus of politics and language, women's issues, the effects of technology, and books as commerce. In a resonating essay, "What Women Know," Le Guin discusses the differences between stories told by men and women, remarking, "I think it's worth thinking about." That's this collection in a nutshell: everywhere something to think about. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Words are what matter. The sharing of words, the redoubtable Le Guin writes in this collection of (for the most part) previously published talks, essays, book introductions, and reviews. Together, they put the lie to her assertion that I seldom have as much pleasure in reading nonfiction as I do in a poem or a story. For these examples of her own nonfiction are, for her readers, an undivided pleasure. Part of that pleasure derives from the investment of energy they demand from the reader. What she says of science fiction is apposite in this regard: the good stuff, like all good fiction, is not for lazy minds. Le Guin's own energetic mind addresses a variety of subjects: genre, of course, especially science fiction, which she insists is literature; the commodification of books and the primacy in publishing of the bottom line, both of which she decries; the work of Margaret Atwood and José Saramago; and in one of the best pieces in the book the house in which she grew up. Finally, what she says of poetry Its primary job is simply to find the words that give it its right, true shape might well be said of all the shapely pieces in this generous, edifying, and invaluable collection.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2016 Booklist
Library Journal Review
This collection of writing about writing by multi-award-winning author Le Guin (A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, and The Farthest Shore, among others) includes talks, essays, introductions, and book reviews. The reviews alone-covering such authors as Doris Lessing, Yann -Martel, -David Mitchell, Salman Rushdie, and Jeanette Winterson-make this a volume worth savoring, but the novelist's essays concerning the future of literature are of special note. Le Guin's dismissal of neo-luddite handwringing over the shift from page to screen, tempered against her dispassionate dissection of that same technology's limitations and vulnerabilities, provide rational appraisal of the current state of publishing in general and suggest a meaningful path forward for all concerned. Le Guin's literary prestige and popular appeal mean that this title will find a large audience; its relatively narrow focus (three separate survey collections of the author's other short works have been or will be published this year) makes it a fast read. VERDICT Recommended for all libraries as well as fans of the author and literature about literature. [See "Editors' Fall Picks," LJ 9/1/16, p. 27.].-Jenny Brewer, Helen Hall Lib., League City, TX © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Foreword | p. i |
| Talks, Essays and Occasional Pieces | p. 1 |
| The Operating Instructions | p. 3 |
| What It Was Like | p. 7 |
| Genre: A Word Only a Frenchman Could Love | p. 9 |
| "Things Not Actually Present" | p. 16 |
| A Response, by Ansible, from Tau Ceti | p. 21 |
| The Beast in the Book | p. 26 |
| Inventing Languages | p. 35 |
| How to Read, a Poem: "Gray Goose and Gander" | p. 41 |
| On David Hensel's Submission to the Royal Academy of Art | p. 44 |
| On Serious Literature | p. 45 |
| Teasing Myself Out of Thought | p. 47 |
| Living in a Work of Art | p. 51 |
| Staying Awake | p. 66 |
| Great Natures Second Course | p. 75 |
| What Women Know | p. 81 |
| Disappearing Grandmothers | p. 88 |
| Learning to Write Science Fiction from Virginia Woolf | p. 95 |
| The Death of the Book | p. 97 |
| Le Guin's Hypothesis | p. 104 |
| Making Up Stories | p. 107 |
| Freedom | p. 113 |
| Book Introductions and Notes on Writers | p. 115 |
| A Very Good American Novel: H. L. Davis's Honey in the Horn | p. 116 |
| Philip K. Dick: The Man in the High Castle | p. 120 |
| Huxley's Bad Trip | p. 127 |
| Stanislaw Lem: Solaris | p. 133 |
| George MacDonald: The Princess and the Goblin | p. 137 |
| The Wild Winds of Possibility: Vonda McIntyre's Dreamsnake | p. 139 |
| Getting It Right: Charles L. McNichols's Crazy Weather | p. 143 |
| On Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago | p. 149 |
| Examples of Dignity: Thoughts on the Work of José Saramago | p. 151 |
| Arkady and Boris Strugatsky: Roadside Picnic | p. 165 |
| Jack Vance: The Languages of Pao | p. 169 |
| H. G. Wells: The First Men in the Moon | p. 173 |
| H. G. Wells: The Time Machine | p. 179 |
| Wells's Worlds | p. 184 |
| Book Reviews | p. 191 |
| Margaret Atwood: Moral Disorder | p. 192 |
| Margaret Atwood: The Year of the Flood | p. 195 |
| Margaret Atwood: Stone Mattress | p. 200 |
| J. G. Ballard: Kingdom Come | p. 203 |
| Roberto Bolaño: Monsieur Pain | p. 206 |
| T. C. Boyle: When the Killing's Done | p. 209 |
| Geraldine Brooks: People of the Book | p. 212 |
| Italo Calvino: The Complete Cosmicomics | p. 215 |
| Margaret Drabble: The Sea Lady | p. 219 |
| Carol Emshwiller: Ledoyt | p. 222 |
| Alan Garner: Boneland | p. 227 |
| Kent Haruf: Benediction | p. 230 |
| Kent Haruf: Our Souls at Night | p. 233 |
| Tove Jansson: The True Deceiver | p. 236 |
| Barbara Kingsolver: Flight Behavior | p. 239 |
| Chang-Rae Lee: On Such a Full Sea | p. 243 |
| Doris Lessing: The Cleft | p. 246 |
| Donna Leon: Suffer the Little Children | p. 249 |
| Yann Martel: The High Mountains of Portugal | p. 251 |
| China Miéville: Embassytown | p. 254 |
| China Miéville: Three Moments of an Explosion | p. 257 |
| David Mitchell: The Bone Clocks | p. 260 |
| Jan Morris: Hav | p. 264 |
| Julie Otsuka: The Buddha in the Attic | p. 268 |
| Salman Rushdie: The Enchantress of Florence | p. 272 |
| Salman Rushdie: Two Years, Eight Months, and Twenty-Eight Nights | p. 276 |
| José Saramago: Raised from the Ground | p. 281 |
| José Saramago: Skylight | p. 285 |
| Sylvia Townsend Warner: Dorset Stories | p. 288 |
| Jo Walton: Among Others | p. 291 |
| Jeanette Winterson: The Stone Gods | p. 294 |
| Stefan Zweig: The Post Office Girl | p. 297 |
| The Hope of Rabbits: A Journal of a Writer's Week | p. 301 |