Thoughts on The Dispossessed
Of the assorted layers of contented in The Dispossessed, the most obvious is the socio-political : capitalism vs. anarchistic-communism. The claim frequently made is that, evening though her heart is with the latter, she however treats the two structures impartially. The claim or presumption is to be found in the reviews of fantasy/science fabrication devotees, those with a especial interest in anarchism and, I suspect, besides those who plainly read it with an uncritical eye.
I don
Of the various layers of content in The Dispossessed, the most obvious is the socio-political: capitalism vs. anarchistic-communism. The claim often made is that, even though her heart is with the latter, she nonetheless treats the two structures impartially. The claim or presumption is to be found in the reviews of fantasy/science fiction devotees, those with a particular interest in anarchism and, I suspect, also those who simply read it with an uncritical eye.
I don’t see that at all. Not surprisingly, given where her sympathies lie, le Guin has created the best possible picture of anarchistic communism and the worst of capitalism. In creating a capitalist society which has at its apex overwhelming plenty, perched on a base of workers whose existence is miserable beyond belief – going to hospital typically means being eaten by rats if one is poor – le Guin has created a capitalist society which is not only a morally reprehensible model but a very stupid one. Capitalism has known for a long time that one keeps those making up the base of support happy by giving them enough. That principle pertains throughout our society and there is no reason I can see to explain why le Guin’s capitalist model is different from that.
Contrast the anarchistic-communist model she proffers. By placing it in a poor, harsh geography, she creates the perfect setting for that model to succeed. Although superficially she is seen to consider the difficulties with the structure – when harsh becomes drought-induced-impossible, how does one decide who lives and who dies in this society – it is obvious that the real difficulties with the model arise when one considers physical ease and economic plenty. I can’t begin to see how any anarchistic-communist model then works, let alone one which has specifically been constructed on the presumption of struggle, survival, utility, function, purpose. The model she presents borrows much from the experience of the kibbutz movement in Israel. As it has failed, so too it is impossible to imagine her ideal society surviving.
This is the only le Guin I’ve read. Are all her books so stilted and contrived in style? There is a point at which dispassion by the author is hard to distinguish from a boredom that is infectious. I stopped reading The Seducer to take on The Dispossessed and this has made me appreciate how well-written the former is.
It has been argued that the dull tedious style is necessary to portray the poverty and utilitarianism of her utopian society. Sorry, I can’t see that for one moment. The woman hates writing, it is – unhappily for both her and her readers – a necessary medium to communicate her ideas. If she had commissions Ray Bradbury to turn her ideas into words, he would have made something beautiful without betraying the style she wishes to impose. But, then, Ray Bradbury loves writing.
Look, for example, at this list:
p.110 Coats, dresses, gowns, robes, trousers, breeches, shirts, blouses, hats, shoes, stockings, scarves, shawls, vests, capes, umbrellas, clothes to wear while sleeping, while swimming, while playing games, while at an afternoon party, while at an evening party, while at a party in the country, while travelling, while at the theatre, while riding horses, gardning, receiving guests, boating, dining, hunting – all different, all in hundreds of different cuts, styles, colours, textures, materials. Perfumes, clocks, lamps, statues, cosmetics, candles, pictures, cameras, games, vases, sofas, kettles, puzzles, pillows, dolls, colanders, hassocks, jewels, carpets, toothpicks, calendars, a baby’s teething rattle of platinum with a handle of rock crystal, an electrical machine to sharpen pencils, a wristwatch with diamond numerals, figurines and souvenirs and kickshaws and mementoes and gewgars and bric a brac, everything either useless to begin with or ornamented so as to disguise its use; acrues of luxuries, acres of excrement.
Sorry, but my average weekly shopping list is a more interesting read. Compare this list from The Seducer:
p 63 I must be allowed to say a little bit about bicyles…because bikes occupy a very special place in people’s memories – just think of the palpable thrill that runs through the body at the memory of the drag when a dynamo is flipped in against a tyre. And even more than the bike itself, what one remembers are all the accessories and trimmings. In fact, I would go as far as to say that for many people the status seeking that has since manifested itself in having as many letters and digits as possible after the name of a car had its beginnings right here. I could mention at random the different types of handlebars, not least the so-called ‘speedway’ handlebars which were all the rage for some time and which, if I remember correctly, were even banned, in keeping with the Norwegian fondness for every possible sort of safeguard, and which boasted such features as luminous handgrips with little nubs that pressed into the palm of your hand, and gears – source of such stories as, for example, how Frankenstein pedalled up the steep slope of Badedamsbakken in ‘third’, sitting down – and a speedometer, an item which in Jonas’s day was long a rarity, owned only by boys like Wolfgang Michaelsen, not to mention a lamp of the type that had two little yellow lights on either side of the big one, like fog-lights, and last but not least, the obligatory bell, which the really cool guys replaced with a beauty of a horn. Then you had the wide variety of different saddles, foremost among them the banana seat, motorbike-style, which suddenly became the in thing, and the accompanying cross-country tyres and who could forget those mud-flaps emblazoned with an ‘N’, as if one were all set to cycle across Europe? Anything else? Oh, yes, the toll kit on the carrier with its carefully stowed contents, anticipating the suitcase-packing problem in that everything had to be slotted into exactly the right place or the lid wouldn’t close. This fastened with a little padlock, available in various colours, and came complete with minute keys; which in turn brings me on to the advent of the combination lock, with a cat’s eye on the knob, and the hunt for the most baffling combination, which was engraved on a little copy of the lock itself and which, for some, represented their first encounter with the recursive element in life. Lastly, I ought to mention all the badges for sticking onto the mudguagd, and the pennant, its rod vibrating so delightfully, and then, of course, the flags and foxtails that made you feel like the Shah of Persia as you rode around the blocks of flats. But one of the most interesting features in this connection was the trimming of the wheel-spokes, first with empty cigarette packs: Ascot, Speed, Jolly, Blue Master and, above all, Monte Carlo, the menthol Virginia cigarette that came in three varieties – yellow, red and black – adorned with little paintings which today seem quite exotic, like works of art from a bygone age, and later with triangles formed out of fuse-wire, which is to say copper wire of the sort insulated with different coloured plastics.
Now that is a list. A lovingly constructed list by a man whose delight it is to write.
Perhaps when going through the process of making up a language, it is perforce going to make for tedious presentation. Coming to The Dispossessed as one whose science fiction days have long passed and who has never had any sympathy for fantasy, this whole process generally irritates me, it seems such an effort for nothing. Why can’t the characters be called Barry and Kevin and Patsy? Why do they have to be Shevek and Pae? Why does the toilet have to be the shittery? Having begun the book with no patience for this, I eventually came around to the idea that her anarchistic society had to create its own language and culture.
Still, I’m not convinced by the linguistics side of the story but I’m too ignorant of the area to feel comfortably criticizing it. Is the way in which the language is established and developed credible? My gut feeling is not. Nicholas Tam, in a detailed review of the book to be found here
“…the linguistics in The Dispossessed adhere to a Whorfian model that is inconsistently applied. Pravic, the Esperanto-like language spoken on Anarres, was planned and designed to fit the needs of a communist utopia where property and class do not exist. Le Guin’s presentation of this is quite elegant: she “translates” the disparities between Pravic and Iotic (the language spoken in A-Io on Urras), along with the occasional code-switching, into English analogues—thereby avoiding the indulgent trap of science fiction and fantasy that Randall Munroe so helpfully illustrates:’
Nonetheless, he is not altogether happy with the linguistics of it. I can’t help but feel that if one is going to all that trouble to invent a language, one might as well be careful about it. Le Guin’s ‘utopia’ has no word or concept for ‘wife’ but sure enough the girl who drops in to deliver the baby is a midwife. That doesn’t seem consistent to me, but perhaps a linguist will take me to task.
Personally, I don’t understand why believability has to be achieved through the device of inventing language. Nor, if it comes to that, the concept dear to le Guin’s heart, numinousness. Good writing will create that effect any time over artificial devices, linguistic or otherwise. Again, Ray Bradbury achieves numinousness through nothing more than lovingly applied craft and a sensitive imagination. Since, however, The Dispossessed is polemic in nature, perhaps it is as it has to be.
I’m also unsure about the structure of the book. I’m generally distrusting of books that split a story into two or have two separate stories going at once. My immediate response is that they don’t stack up to a straight chronological narrative layout….but again, perhaps if there is a book that needs such a form this is it.
Compared with these big pictures aspects of the book – the linguistic, the politico-social – I felt more comfortable with her philosophical considerations at a micro or personal level. Scientists who have reviewed this book are very accepting of her main character, Shevek and his development. It not being my area I’m happy to take their word for it. I find him a very dull character, slow on the uptake. It takes him 40 years to understand things about his own society which seemed obvious and which his friends knew since they were teenagers. Is that supposed to be part of the point of the book? That he is brainwashed so convincingly by his society that this holds up his own personal development, even as a scientist, so that when he finally has his epiphany, the reader is left thinking, that could have been twenty years earlier if only he’d been open-minded.
Le Guin espouses all sorts of personal/interpersonal philosophy I live by. It did not altogether fit in with my understanding that in this period she wrote ‘for men’. Her argument in favour of absolute fidelity in the context of partnership, and her observation that life and even mere sex are meaningless without both fidelity and partnership, are pretty much what I’ve believed since, like her stepping-out-of-teenage experimentation-characters, I realised that sex was nothing. It is only the loving partnership that makes it something. Is that really something written for men? The male reviews I’ve looked at make no comment on this side of the book.
I was especially taken by a scene where Shevek, after some years of abject misery both personally and work-wise finds Takver. It takes them seconds to realise that they will be together for life. Sadly, they had met a long time earlier, but although she knew he was the one, he saw her, but did not see. Still, there is no point regretting what cannot be undone:
‘It was now clear to Shevek, and he would have thought it folly to think otherwise, that his wretched years in his city, had all been part of his present great happiness, because they had led up to it, prepared him for it. Everything that had happened to him was part of what was happening to him now.’
Lately, before I read this book, I’ve been explaining the last 33 years of my life that way. This is the time when I felt like writing for le Guin is not just hard work, when she is writing about love.
Thoughts on The DispossessedOf the respective layers of content in The Dispossessed, the most obvious is the socio-political : capitalism vs. anarchistic-communism. The claim frequently made is that, even though her heart is with the latter, she however treats the two structures impartially. The claim or given is to be found in the reviews of fantasy/science fabrication devotees, those with a particular interest in anarchism and, I suspect, besides those who plainly read it with an uncritical eye.I wear ’ t see that at all. not surprisingly, given where her sympathies lie, lupus erythematosus Guin has created the best possible movie of anarchistic communism and the worst of capitalism. In creating a capitalistic company which has at its apex overpowering batch, perched on a base of workers whose being is miserable beyond belief – going to hospital typically means being eaten by rats if one is poor – lupus erythematosus Guin has created a capitalistic society which is not only a morally condemnable model but a very dazed one. capitalism has known for a long fourth dimension that one keeps those making up the base of support happy by giving them enough. That rationale pertains throughout our company and there is no reason I can see to explain why lupus erythematosus Guin ’ s capitalist mannequin is different from that.Contrast the anarchistic-communist model she proffers. By placing it in a poor, harsh geography, she creates the perfective set up for that model to succeed. Although superficially she is seen to consider the difficulties with the structure – when harsh becomes drought-induced-impossible, how does one decide who lives and who dies in this club – it is obvious that the real difficulties with the model arise when one considers physical facilitate and economic batch. I can ’ metric ton begin to see how any anarchistic-communist exemplar then works, let alone one which has specifically been constructed on the presumption of fight, survival, utility, affair, function. The model she presents borrows much from the experience of the kibbutz motion in Israel. As it has failed, so besides it is impossible to imagine her ideal society surviving.This is the only lupus erythematosus Guin I ’ ve read. Are all her books so artificial and contrived in style ? There is a point at which dispassion by the writer is intemperate to distinguish from a boredom that is infectious. I stopped readingto take onand this has made me appreciate how well-written the erstwhile is.It has been argued that the dull long-winded manner is necessity to portray the poverty and utilitarianism of her utopian club. Sorry, I can ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate see that for one here and now. The woman hates writing, it is – unhappily for both her and her readers – a necessary medium to communicate her ideas. If she had commissions Ray Bradbury to turn her ideas into words, he would have made something beautiful without betraying the style she wishes to impose. But, then, Ray Bradbury loves writing.Look, for example, at this list : p.110 Coats, dresses, gowns, robes, trousers, breeches, shirts, blouses, hats, shoes, stockings, scarves, shawl, vests, capes, umbrellas, clothes to wear while sleeping, while swimming, while playing games, while at an good afternoon party, while at an evening party, while at a party in the country, while travelling, while at the theater, while riding horses, gardning, receiving guests, boating, dining, hunting – all different, all in hundreds of different cuts, styles, colours, textures, materials. Perfumes, clocks, lamps, statues, cosmetics, candles, pictures, cameras, games, vases, sofas, kettles, puzzles, pillows, dolls, colanders, hassocks, jewels, carpets, toothpicks, calendars, a baby ’ randomness teething rattle of platinum with a treat of rock quartz glass, an electric machine to sharpen pencils, a wristwatch with diamond numerals, figurines and souvenirs and kickshaws and mementoes and gewgars and bric a brac, everything either useless to begin with or ornamented so as to disguise its use ; acrues of luxuries, acres of excrement.Sorry, but my average hebdomadally shop list is a more interesting read. Compare this list fromp 63 I must be allowed to say a little sting about bicyles…because bikes occupy a very special place in people ’ mho memories – just think of the palpable shudder that runs through the body at the memory of the scuff when a dynamo is flipped in against a tire. And even more than the bicycle itself, what one remembers are all the accessories and trimmings. In fact, I would go arsenic far as to say that for many people the status seeking that has since manifested itself in having as many letters and digits as possible after the name of a car had its beginnings right here. I could mention at random the different types of handlebars, not least the alleged ‘ speedway ’ handlebars which were all the fury for some clock time and which, if I remember correctly, were even banned, in keeping with the norwegian affectionateness for every potential sort of precaution, and which boasted such features as aglow handgrips with fiddling nubs that pressed into the palm of your hand, and gears – beginning of such stories as, for exercise, how Frankenstein pedalled up the steep gradient of Badedamsbakken in ‘ third base ’, sitting down – and a speedometer, an item which in Jonas ’ s day was long a rarity, owned lone by boys like Wolfgang Michaelsen, not to mention a lamp of the type that had two small chicken lights on either side of the big one, like fog-lights, and end but not least, the obligatory bell, which the very cool guys replaced with a beauty of a horn. then you had the wide variety of different saddles, first among them the banana induct, motorbike-style, which suddenly became the in thing, and the accompanying cross-country tyres and who could forget those mud-flaps emblazoned with an ‘ N ’, as if one were all set to motorbike across Europe ? Anything else ? Oh, yes, the toll kit on the carrier with its cautiously stowed contents, anticipating the suitcase-packing problem in that everything had to be slotted into precisely the right station or the hat wouldn ’ triiodothyronine close. This fastened with a little padlock, available in respective colours, and came complete with minute keys ; which in turn brings me on to the advent of the combination lock, with a vomit ’ randomness eye on the knob, and the hunt for the most perplex combination, which was engraved on a fiddling copy of the lock itself and which, for some, represented their first base meet with the recursive element in life. last, I ought to mention all the badges for sticking onto the mudguagd, and the pennant, its rod vibrating indeed delightfully, and then, of course, the flags and foxtails that made you feel like the Shah of Persia as you rode around the blocks of flats. But one of the most concern features in this connection was the trim of the wheel-spokes, first with empty cigarette packs : Ascot, Speed, Jolly, Blue Master and, above all, Monte Carlo, the menthol Virginia cigarette that came in three varieties – yellow, red and black – adorned with little paintings which nowadays seem quite alien, like works of art from a bygone long time, and late with triangles formed out of fuse-wire, which is to say copper cable of the sort insulated with different coloured plastics.Nowis a list. A fondly constructed list by a man whose enchant it is to write.Perhaps when going through the process of making up a language, it is perforce going to make for boring presentation. Coming toas one whose skill fiction days have long passed and who has never had any sympathy for fantasy, this whole process by and large irritates me, it seems such an feat for nothing. Why can ’ t the characters be called Barry and Kevin and Patsy ? Why do they have to be Shevek and Pae ? Why does the toilet have to be the shittery ? Having begun the book with no solitaire for this, I finally came around to the theme that her anarchistic society had to create its own lyric and culture.Still, I ’ megabyte not convinced by the linguistics side of the story but I ’ molarity excessively ignorant of the sphere to feel comfortably criticizing it. Is the way in which the terminology is established and developed credible ? My intestine feeling is not. Nicholas Tam, in a detail follow-up of the record to be found here hypertext transfer protocol : //www.nicholastam.ca/2008/10/15/ … has this to say : “ …the linguistics in The Dispossessed cling to a Whorfian model that is inconsistently applied. Pravic, the Esperanto-like language spoken on Anarres, was planned and designed to fit the needs of a communist utopia where property and class do not exist. Le Guin ’ randomness presentation of this is quite elegant : she “ translates ” the disparities between Pravic and Iotic ( the language spoken in A-Io on Urras ), along with the episodic code-switching, into English analogues—thereby avoiding the indulgent trap of skill fabrication and fantasy that Randall Munroe so helpfully illustrates : ’ however, he is not altogether happy with the linguistics of it. I can ’ thymine help but feel that if one is going to all that trouble to invent a lyric, one might vitamin a good be careful about it. Le Guin ’ s ‘ utopia ’ has no give voice or concept for ‘ wife ’ but certain enough the girlfriend who drops in to deliver the child is a midwife. That doesn ’ thyroxine seem consistent to me, but possibly a linguist will take me to task.Personally, I don ’ triiodothyronine understand why credibility has to be achieved through the device of inventing speech. Nor, if it comes to that, the concept dearly to le Guin ’ second affection, numinousness. good write will create that consequence any fourth dimension over artificial devices, linguistic or differently. Again, Ray Bradbury achieves numinousness through nothing more than fondly applied craft and a sensitive imagination. Since, however, is polemic in nature, possibly it is as it has to be.I ’ thousand besides diffident about the structure of the book. I ’ megabyte broadly distrusting of books that split a report into two or have two separate stories going at once. My contiguous reaction is that they don ’ thymine stack astir to a straight chronological narrative layout….but again, possibly if there is a book that needs such a mannequin this is it.Compared with these big pictures aspects of the bible – the linguistic, the politico-social – I felt more comfortable with her philosophical considerations at a micro or personal level. Scientists who have reviewed this ledger are identical accepting of her main character, Shevek and his development. It not being my area I ’ thousand glad to take their word for it. I find him a identical boring quality, slow on the consumption. It takes him 40 years to understand things about his own club which seemed obvious and which his friends knew since they were teenagers. Is that supposed to be part of the point of the koran ? That he is brainwashed then convincingly by his society that this holds up his own personal development, even as a scientist, so that when he last has his epiphany, the lector is left think, that could have been twenty years sooner if only he ’ vitamin d been open-minded.Le Guin espouses all sorts of personal/interpersonal doctrine I live by. It did not wholly fit in with my understand that in this menstruation she wrote ‘ for men ’. Her controversy in prefer of absolute fidelity in the context of partnership, and her observation that life and even bare sex are meaningless without both fidelity and partnership, are pretty much what I ’ ve believed since, like her stepping-out-of-teenage experimentation-characters, I realised that sex was nothing. It is only the loving partnership that makes it something. Is that very something written for men ? The male reviews I ’ ve looked at stool no gloss on this side of the book.I was specially taken by a fit where Shevek, after some years of abject misery both personally and work-wise finds Takver. It takes them seconds to realise that they will be together for life. sadly, they had met a long time earlier, but although she knew he was the one, he saw her, but did not see. distillery, there is no charge regretting what can not be undo : ‘ It was now clear to Shevek, and he would have thought it folly to think otherwise, that his miserable years in his city, had all been part of his present great happiness, because they had led up to it, prepared him for it. Everything that had happened to him was separate of what was happening to him now. ’ Lately, before I read this book, I ’ ve been explaining the last 33 years of my life that way. This is the time when I felt like writing for lupus erythematosus Guin is not just hard work, when she is writing about love.
