Yet More Random Thoughts on Writers - Ursula K. Le Guin

Authors, Part 4
Ursula K. Le Guin
Though her writing has generally dwelt in the realms of science fiction and fantasy, Le Guin is one of best writers currently working in any genre. Indeed, her writing transcends the simplistic boundaries of genre and may simply be considered good literature. One reason for this is that she isn’t simply riffing on Tolkien or Clarke or Asimov, or any of the other famous authors of these genres. She isn’t reusing the stale ideas that permeate so many of the other ‘popular’ works of commercial fantasy and science fiction. Her stories are involving in part because she’s been wise enough to use her own ideas. Her solution sounds so simple and obvious, and yet it’s amazing how few writers in these genres actually bother to generate new ideas.

Another reason for the quality of her work is that she’s not simply concerned with telling good stories. Her works are thematically ambitious – often dealing with issues of gender, sexual identity, the nature of responsibility, and the power of language.

While Le Guin has written numerous novels and short stories, it is her work on the Earthsea series that I have always found to be the most affecting. Standing at five novels and one collection of short stories, and written over a period of more than thirty years, the series tells the story of Ged, a boy who becomes the archmage, or chief wizard, of the world of Earthsea; and of Tenar, a young girl rescued by Ged from a life of servitude and misuse, who grows to play a significant role in the final two books of the series.

The initial trilogy of books (consisting of A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, and The Farthest Shore) deals largely with Ged, and each novel focuses on a different phase of his life: his youth, his young adulthood, and his full maturity. All are excellent novels, and are notable not only for their stories and stylistic grace, but for the attention Le Guin pays to her themes of the power of language and the nature of responsibility. The Farthest Shore, the strongest of the initial trilogy, won the National Book Award.

The Farthest Shore was published in 1972, and, for eighteen years, that was the end of the series. Then, in 1990, Le Guin published Tehanu. The novel won the Nebula Award and was praised by many critics, but its ensuing reception by the general public has not been universally warm. One need only browse readers' reviews on the Amazon website to gauge the quality of this response. Many of the reviews are quite scathing, with some readers claiming that Le Guin wrote a horrifyingly bad book. Some call it a betrayal of the Earthsea series.

This reaction, while woefully misguided, can be understood with some context. While Le Guin’s earlier Earthsea novels were never mere juvenilia, they did hew fairly closely to the classic fantasy trope of the heroic quest. Tehanu broke with that pattern, and it was without question the most thematically mature book in the series to appear up to that time. It shifts its main focus from Ged to Tenar, and in so doing, Le Guin made it easier to deal with the book’s central issue of abuse – toward women, and toward children.

It is this shift in theme and perspective that seems to have irked readers the most. This is unfortunate, for while the issue of abuse may be more frankly adult in nature than the themes of her earlier works, Tehanu is hardly an overly graphic exposé of its ramifications. The original charms of Earthsea are still present.

Those charms continue to be present in the final volume. The Other Wind continues the story of Tenar, and while Ged does make an appearance, he remains something of a passive character here. If the novel is not quite as strong as its predecessors, it nevertheless retains a degree of narrative power that few other fantasy novels can hope to match.