I have said before that I love Ursula K. LeGuin’s nonfiction as much, and sometimes even more, than her fiction works. People who have known this remarkable woman in real life must have been incredibly lucky since I think I would have given up a (non-vital, admittedly) organ to have a long conversation with her.
The Language of the Night is a reprint of a collection of essays (well, essays, speeches, book introductions) originally published in 1979 and then reissued in 1989, with the third reprint now with a new introduction by Ken Liu. It’s a younger LeGuin, with all essays dating from the 1970s, but all with the trademark LeGuin’s wit and erudition and strong emphasis on ethics and humanity in her distinctively deliberate serious narrative voice. (And she’s not afraid to comment on some of her changed opinions between 1979 and 1989 in a few footnotes.)
The themes here are science fiction and its transition from a niche genre to more recognized one (but still somehow snobbily viewed by some as inferior to “literature”), women writers and feminism, Tolkien, gender, ethics and writing integrity. And it’s quite fascinating how the things current in the 1970s remain current today.
4 stars.
“And then comes the final test, the infallible touchstone of the seventh-rate: Ichor. You know ichor. It oozes out of several tentacles, and beslimes tessellated pavements, and bespatters bejeweled courtiers, and bores the bejesus out of everybody.”
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Thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.
books are life 