I loved this book for its wisdom and its tenderness and for the spare, elegant richness of its language. Stories have been pouring out of Le Guin these last few years, as if the ripeness of her words must be shared. We are so grateful.

they were really imaginative. remember the "ansible" (it transmitted messages faster than the speed of light.) nice name, huh? but that's not why i'm writing. i'm writing about the K. in her name. that's for her maiden name. her father was Alfred Louis Kroeber, a famous anthropologist. but think of her name - Ursula Kroeber. what thought went into that! and how much nicer than the unpronounceable LeGuin. Gwinn? Gan? ugly, no matter how it's pronounced. keep your names, ladies!

First off, I love Le Guin, and will read this as soon as I'm finished my Bar Ads. And I love the name Ursula K. Le Guin. I've always assumed that her last name is pronounced Luh Gwin. It sounds positively aristocratic to me, especially with the old fashioned first name and the impressive initial. Maybe I'm just partial because I think she's a genius...

but LeGuin is french and Ursula is german or scandinavian. ok, if she changed it to Ursule i suppose, but even then, it doesn't compute. perhaps Alsace-Lorraine aristocratic. i'm going to find out what le guin means. neither babelfish nor google have it. it translates as THE Guin. maybe it's some freekin irishman who immigrated. like hennessey. P.S. i realize that these posts are not the greatest or most civilized - i just felt sorry that a writer as great as Ursula (nee) Kroeber didn't have more. and she looks pretty good for 79, don't you think? and can still write. good for her. bet the hubby's dead (i'll check wiki) - doesn't say. and he doesn't even have a clickable link. a Big Nothing (with an Ugly Name (but aristocratic, according to candypants)) and her picture doesn't look as good. sort of crippled like everything hurts. but it does give a summary of her work AFTER the science fiction stuff. i'll look at it and drop by tomorrow and see if any have left some little letters for her.

Although it is widely believed that Vergil didn't get the chance to give his epic a final polish before he died, many scholars (a large majority, even) hold that the _Aeneid_ ends with Turnus' death on purpose.

(from wiki)The animated feature film Tales from Earthsea (ゲド戦記, Gedo Senki?), based on characters and events from the 3rd and 4th Earthsea books, was produced by Studio Ghibli (スタジオジブリ, Studio Ghibli?) in 2005 under the direction of Gorō Miyazaki. Le Guin was generally disappointed with the film, if not as outrightly disapproving as she been of the Sci Fi Channel miniseries, as both adaptations added major characters and events which she felt were unfaithful to her work in terms of both content and spirit. Most of all, she was saddened that Goro's father Hayao Miyazaki missed his chance to direct an Earthsea film. (The elder Miyazaki had asked permission to create an Earthsea adaptation back in the early 1980s, but Le Guin, not knowing his work, or indeed anime in general, turned him down. After viewing My Neighbour Totoro, she then came to the idea that if anyone should be allowed to direct an Earthsea film, it should be Hayao Miyazaki.)

I don't think Le Guin is contradicting or scolding herself in her writing about Lavinia's relationship to her religion, compared to Tenar's. Lavinia is brought up in her own home, in a culture and household that values her contribution and her skills and talents. Tenar is kidnapped from her grieving mother, and forced into her role as priestess to death-gods. Even so, Tenar is pretty fond of the perks of her role until she's confronted with the possibility of a more ethical and free life by the example of Ged's behavior. It's one of the great themes of LeGuin's work that culture matters; that some cultures allow individuals to live lives that are connected, rich, and free, and others work very hard to slam a lid on individual choice, in the service of the needs of the rich and egotistical. It's right there in her afterward of Lavinia- LeGuin says that she would have found it much more difficult to immerse herself so deeply in a book about the Greek world at the time, since the men there viewed women as chattel.

To the extent that Le Guin has commented on her earlier Earthsea work, it's been to complicate the ethical picture of the worship of earthly powers. The wizards viewed that as wicked, but in her later works she sees the powers of the earth and of wizardry more as coequal aspects of the same thing, whose ethical nature is contingent on the human behavior involved.

About her last name, it's Breton. Here's the reference (search for "Bretagne" to find the quote"): http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/sciencefiction/story/0,,1144428,00.html

Thanks for that tidbit of info, I've never read it before. I'm a big Miyazaki fan, and used to be quite a LeGuin fan, back in the day when she was writing sci fi (Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, etc.).

I can only imagine how wonderful a collaboration that could have been -- what a shame she passed it up! Though it's true that Americans really had little awareness of Japanese anime until the 90s.

While I can't judge the book reviewed here, it seemed to me that the quality and intensity of her novels fell off, somewhere around Malaguena, or especially Always Coming Home (or whatever it was called -- the one with the made-up Indian chants on a CD). She just didn't have the same sure footing with non-sci-fi settings, and often came off as sort of intellectual and pretentious.

What effect age, or a kind of insulated academic existence, had on her is hard to evaluate. But I still love her early books.

(Yes, the TV adaptations are awful -- leadfooted and low-budget -- they do the books a great disservice.)