![]() ![]() ![]() The only truth I can understand or express is, logically defined, a lie. In a fierce introduction to “The Left Hand of Darkness,” Le Guin charmingly remarks, “A novelist’s business is lying.” She adumbrates: The protagonist, Shevek, in “The Dispossessed,” is far more interesting than anyone in the earlier book, and yet he and his story manifest something of the ambivalence of Le Guin’s subtitle: “An Ambiguous Utopia.” In one of her letters, Ursula remarked that writing “ The Dispossessed” was liberating for her, and she seemed to prefer it to “The Left Hand of Darkness.” Rereading both, I find myself torn between the two. ![]() Though I have written about “ The Left Hand of Darkness” before, in 1987 and again in 2000, I have forgotten what I said and do not want to consult it now, but, rather, make a fresh start on this marvellous romance. I hope, in tribute to her, that I live to edit her poems for the Library of America, thinking that she might have wanted me to do that. I replied after an interval, during which I was very ill, on January 23, 2018, not yet knowing that Ursula had died the day before. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |