Words Are My Matter - Ursula K Le Guin

 WORDS ARE MY MATTER - URSULA K LE GUIN

So impressed was I with Ursula K Le Guin after reading her The Word For World Is Forest that I thought I should investigate further. So, following the advice given by friend and top man Lawrence Burton from his hacienda in Texas, rather than reading another of Le Guin's novels, I picked up a collection of her essays entitled Words Are My Matter - Writings On Life And Books from of all places the Arnolfini arts centre in Bristol, where on entering the building a copy was there on prominent display as if waiting for me to arrive. It was serendipity, obviously, particularly as I've always had issues with the Arnolfini staff for being ignorant about aspects of art and culture that they disguise through snobbery. But that's a whole other story.

Words Are My Matter is a collection of essays, talks, book introductions and book reviews all from the pen of Ursula K Le Guin, all on the subject of literature and its meaning and purpose in our lives. From the start she writes 'The imagination is the single most useful tool mankind possesses, it beats the opposable thumb', and then goes on to explain exactly why. It's a no-brainer, really, but Le Guin takes it further by saying 'Imagination is not a means of making money. It has no place in the vocabulary of profit-making.' Before then adding 'In the market place, the word 'creativity' has come to mean the generation of ideas to make larger profits. This reduction has gone on so long that the word 'creative' can hardly be degraded further. I don't use it any more, yielding it to the capitalists and academics to abuse as they like. But they can't have 'imagination'.'

These words were written in 2002 and they tell us that Le Guin was very much ahead of the curve, particularly in regard to creativity. Nowadays, there's no end of people who call themselves 'creatives', 'content providers', and 'digital creators' - and frankly, it's embarrassing. The terms are meaningless because essentially it's just people on social media grifting. Let them go ahead. Let them 'create', let them entertain, let them grift but don't let them tell you it's 'imagination' because it's not, for as Le Guin explains: 'The imagination is an essential tool of the mind, a fundamental way of thinking, an indispensable means of becoming and remaining human'. 

The imagination is not for grifting.

In regard to Le Guin's book introductions, one of them is for Solaris by Stanislaw Lem, a book that just happens to be a favourite of mine and the film of it by Andrei Tarkovsky one that is easily in my Top Five. Her insights into Lem's book are both interesting and enlightening, particularly on the period it first appeared in an English translation in 1970. I didn't know, for example, that when Lem was made an honorary member of the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1973, many members of the association disapproved due to him being a citizen of a Communist nation. Never mind that Lem was actually a Pole, not a Russian. His honorary membership was withdrawn and in objection to this, Le Guin refused the Nebula Award voted for her by the members of the SFWA. It going instead to Isaac Asimov who, Le Guin tells us, was a vociferous Cold War Warrior.

Other introductions take in among others works by Philip K Dick, Huxley, Paternak, the Strugatsky brothers and HG Wells, all of which offers insights galore that could only come from a fellow writer.

And then there's the slew of book reviews, many of them being of works by authors I've not heard of before but by this time because you know where Le Guin is coming from, you trust her judgements. For example, when she says of one book that it's 'a classic, and should be cherished as such', you know she's not just saying it as a favour to the author and to promote sales. She's saying it because she means it.

'I like book reviewing,' Le Guin tells us. 'It's an interesting and demanding form. And one can say a good deal in a review that has to do with wider matters, literary and otherwise.'

I agree with this totally. It's the reason I'm writing these very lines. These very words. It's ended up as the very reason for this Art Of Exmouth blog. And in the same way that Le Guin sees imagination, a good book review is not for profit-making. It's not for providing content, and it's not a way of being 'a creative'. And it's certainly not for grifting.

John Serpico

The Word For World Is Forest - Ursula K Le Guin

THE WORD FOR WORLD IS FOREST -

URSULA K LE GUIN

The premise of Ursula K Le Guin's The Word For World Is Forest is that resistance to oppression can profoundly change those resisting, and for the worse. Written on the back of the Vietnam War that Le Guin organised and participated in non-violent demonstrations against, it's an example of how science fiction can be a medium and vehicle for ideas that when taken at face value seem to hold no relevancy to the real world but are in actual fact of profound relevance to the Big Picture. At the same time, throwing into question what exactly is 'the real world'.

Le Guin was an interesting writer, to say the least. It's been said, in fact, that she was one of the finest writers of our time. She had a certain style that was very fluid and very natural, that didn't pander to the reader or condescend. For example, in The Word For World Is Forest she quite casually drops in a line like 'it was clear to anybody who hadn't gone spla from geoshock' and expects the reader to know what it means. And the thing is that yes, you do know what it means because it's all part of the rhythm of her writing and you're tuned-in as if you're clicking your fingers and tapping your feet to music.

And then she'll write 'Davidson lit his first reefer of the day' and then give no more credence to it. Davidson is one of the main characters in the book, and out of the blue Le Guin suggests he might be smoking weed all day as casually as you might chew gum - but then doesn't mention it again until right at the end of the book when his stash is getting low. As if it's all a very natural thing for a person in a science fiction book to be doing and doesn't warrant any more attention.

There's a lot going on in The Word For World Is Forest. The Vietnam War, for a start. The hideous obliteration of all life by fire in a given area via Napalm-type bombs. The equivalent of a My-Lai massacre. 'Swarming' in the way the Viet Cong might do, emerging en masse from nest holes. The idea of destroying to 'save'. Massive power, wealth and technology against so-called primitiveness. Colonization and subjugation under the guise of freedom. It's all there and intentionally so. Le Guin, however, sets her Vietnam on another planet.

On Earth, wood has become almost non-existent and is subsequently more valuable than gold, so when a planet is discovered where its surface is almost entirely covered by forest, it's immediately colonized and plundered. The native inhabitants of the planet are monkey-like, green-furred people who hunt with bows and arrows and live in huts. Like Native Americans and Aborigines, these native inhabitants are adept at transcending world-time and entering dream-time, going back and forth between the two but holding no distinction between each. Though they are two distinct and separate worlds, to them, both world-time and dream-time are as real as each other.

They are a meek, humble and peaceful people who possess no real concept of violence until that is, the humans arrive and start enslaving them, brutalizing them and cutting down their world. They ultimately come to understand that their world is being killed and they either accept it or retaliate. From there on, the battle is joined.

The tragedy of the story that Le Guin communicates so well is that from being a gentle, pacifist people where any fights are settled through singing, it's only a small leap to the adoption of ruthless and unforgiving violence as a tactic and that once that leap has been made there is no turning back. The Pandora's Box has been opened.

It's the eternal paradox. Fools step in where angels fear to tread but once that step has been taken there is no longer anything to reason. The bridge between dream and reality has been crossed. The wall is down and what has been freed can no longer be put back. As the main protagonist of the native inhabitants explains: 'You cannot take things that exist in the world and try to drive them back into the dream, to hold them inside the dream with walls and pretenses. That is insanity. What is, is. There is no use pretending, now, that we do not know how to kill one another'.

Ursula K Le Guin's The Word For World Is Forest is an example of science fiction at its best.

John Serpico