KotiRyhmätKeskusteluLisääAjan henki
Etsi sivustolta
Tämä sivusto käyttää evästeitä palvelujen toimittamiseen, toiminnan parantamiseen, analytiikkaan ja (jos et ole kirjautunut sisään) mainostamiseen. Käyttämällä LibraryThingiä ilmaiset, että olet lukenut ja ymmärtänyt käyttöehdot ja yksityisyydensuojakäytännöt. Sivujen ja palveluiden käytön tulee olla näiden ehtojen ja käytäntöjen mukaista.

Tulokset Google Booksista

Pikkukuvaa napsauttamalla pääset Google Booksiin.

Ladataan...

Ursula K. Le Guin: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations

Tekijä: Ursula K. Le Guin

JäseniäKirja-arvostelujaSuosituimmuussijaKeskimääräinen arvioKeskustelut
782340,735 (4.14)-
When she began writing in the 1960s, Ursula K. Le Guin was as much of a literary outsider as one can be: a woman writing in a landscape dominated by men, a science fiction and fantasy author in an era that dismissed "genre" literature as unserious, and a westerner living far from fashionable East Coast publishing circles. The interviews collected here--spanning a remarkable forty years of productivity, and covering everything from her Berkeley childhood to Le Guin envisioning the end of capitalism--highlight that unique perspective, which conjured some of the most prescient and lasting books in modern literature.… (lisätietoja)
-
Ladataan...

Kirjaudu LibraryThingiin nähdäksesi, pidätkö tästä kirjasta vai et.

Ei tämänhetkisiä Keskustelu-viestiketjuja tästä kirjasta.

näyttää 2/2
An immensely pleasurable read!

The Gallaher interview is the one I didn't care for, AT ALL. This is a personal preference. There is no dialogue, only text. Can't really hear Le Guin's voice in there.

Definitely recomened! ( )
  QuirkyCat_13 | Jun 20, 2022 |
This book is a truly inspirational and nifty one in the series of The Last Interview. I knew next to nothing about Ursula Le Guin before reading this book, other than her being a respected sci-fi author.

I didn't know she was funny nor that she was an anarchist.

She maintained that distinction for more than forty years, talking publicly but not privately. It was enough. Some writers need experience to feed the imagination, but Le Guin’s experiences were all in her head. She prided herself in having as few external stimuli as possible. She told an interviewer from Poland in 1988 her ideal schedule:

5:30 a.m.—wake up and lie there and think.
6:15 a.m.—get up and eat breakfast (lots).
7:15 a.m.—get to work writing, writing, writing. Noon—lunch.
1:00-3:00 p.m.—reading, music.
3:00-5:00 p.m.—correspondence, maybe house cleaning.
5:00-8:00 p.m.—make dinner and eat it.
After 8:00 p.m.—I tend to be very stupid and we won’t talk about this.


Le Guin echoed in her 2014 National Book Foundation lifetime achievement acceptance speech: “We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable—but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.”


She was punk. She wrote fantasy and sci-fi before they hit the mainstream and made universes from her head. She was clearly very insightful:

PETER JENSEN: You write science fiction. Do you have any particular vision of the future?

URSULA K. LE GUIN: The thing about science fiction is, it isn’t really about the future. It’s about the present. But the future gives us great freedom of imagination. It’s like a mirror. You can see the back of your own head.


She had integrity and spoke like a true intellectual.

ZELTZER: I notice there’s no anima in your books.

LE GUIN: Of course not—I’m a woman. But the animus writes my books. My animus, what inspires me, is definitely male. People talk about muses—well, my muse ain’t no girl in a filmy dress, that’s for sure. But of course this is all metaphor.


Her words on writing are also very inspirational, direct or not:

MCPHERSON: Once you’re into a major work, like a novel, that has to be written over an extended period of time, how do you maintain the creative flow and deal with the constant interruptions?

LE GUIN: Hemingway, l think it was, had a definite and useful word of advice here. When you stop in the middle of a story or a novel, he said, never stop at a stopping place; go past it a little or stop short of it. Stop even in the middle of a sentence. Tomorrow when you come back to it you can read back the last few paragraphs, or pages, until you come to the “oh yeah, this is what happened next” and you can hook back up into your unconscious flow. That starting and stopping is sometimes a very hairy business.


It’s one reason I adore Tolkien; he always tells you what the weather is, always. And you know pretty well where north is, and what kind of landscape you’re in and so on. I really enjoy that. That’s why I like Hardy. Again, you always know what the weather is.


All interviews are interesting: a couple are plain and not very well researched, but the very last one, conducted over several meetings from 2015 to 2018, by David Streitfeld, is wonderful.

STREITFELD: How does getting old look now?

LE GUIN: It’s not the metaphysical weariness of aging that bothers me. It’s that you get so goddamn physically tired you can’t pull yourself together. If you’ve ever been very ill, it’s like that. You just can’t rise to the occasion. It’s why I don’t do many public appearances anymore. I’m a ham. I love appearing in front of an audience. But I can’t.


STREITFELD: How do you feel about e-books these days? In 2008 you wrote for Harper’s Magazine about the alleged decline of reading. It now seems prophetic about the reliability and durability of physical books: “If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell it to you again when you’re fifty, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you’re reading a whole new book.”

LE GUIN: When I started writing about e-books and print books, a lot of people were shouting “The book is dead, the book is dead, it’s all going to be electronic.” I got tired of it. What I was trying to say is that now we have two ways of publishing, and we’re going to use them both. We had one, now we have two. How can that be bad? Creatures live longer if they can do things different ways. I think I’ve been fairly consistent on that. But the tone of my voice might have changed. I was going against a trendy notion. There’s this joke I heard. You know what Gutenberg’s second book was, after the Bible? It was a book about how the book was dead. Personally, though, I hate to read on a screen. I don’t have an e-reader.


STREITFELD: Some writers grumble to me about Amazon, but they’re reluctant to be public about it because they think it will hurt their careers. Others say they do not see an issue here at all.

LE GUIN: Amazon is extremely clever at making people love it, as if it were a nice uncle. I don’t expect to win, but I still need to say what I think. When I am afraid to say what I think is when I will really be defeated. The only way they can defeat me is by silencing me. I might as well go out kicking.


She had no qualms about talking about the works of others:

LE GUIN: What some consider a mystical breakthrough late in Phil’s life looks to me more like a breakdown. Still, this was a remarkable mind. But his works don’t wear as well as I hoped and thought they would.

STREITFELD: Oh no!

LE GUIN: I did an introduction to the Folio Society edition of The Man in the High Castle, and re-reading it I was struck by the clunkiness. Others that I liked a lot I now find hard going. I’m afraid to re-read Galactic Pot-Healer, my secret favorite. Clans of the Alphane Moon, which I was crazy about, now seems cruel. The way he handled women was pretty bad.


She spoke lovingly and straight-forwardly about her husband, Charles.

STREITFELD: I don’t see the books you and Charles were reading last night. Usually they’re on the tables here.

LE GUIN: He’s now reading the Oxford Book of English Verse to me. I’m reading Brontë’s Shirley to him. It’s a good book, much better than I realized. I wasn’t feeling so hot, so we had the reading upstairs, with a little whiskey. I’m still recovering from my birthday. It was very nice. It kind of went on for a week. My daughter came up from Los Angeles, and I got to see her. It’s a serious age, eighty-eight. If you turn the numbers on their side, it’s two infinities on top of each other.


In short, this collection of interviews is enticing, alluring, straighter than an arrow (all due to Le Guin's graces), and makes me want to read Le Guin's work straightaway. ( )
  pivic | Mar 21, 2020 |
näyttää 2/2
ei arvosteluja | lisää arvostelu

Kuuluu näihin sarjoihin

Sinun täytyy kirjautua sisään voidaksesi muokata Yhteistä tietoa
Katso lisäohjeita Common Knowledge -sivuilta (englanniksi).
Teoksen kanoninen nimi
Tiedot englanninkielisestä Yhteisestä tiedosta. Muokkaa kotoistaaksesi se omalle kielellesi.
Alkuteoksen nimi
Teoksen muut nimet
Alkuperäinen julkaisuvuosi
Henkilöt/hahmot
Tiedot englanninkielisestä Yhteisestä tiedosta. Muokkaa kotoistaaksesi se omalle kielellesi.
Tärkeät paikat
Tärkeät tapahtumat
Kirjaan liittyvät elokuvat
Epigrafi (motto tai mietelause kirjan alussa)
Omistuskirjoitus
Ensimmäiset sanat
Sitaatit
Tiedot englanninkielisestä Yhteisestä tiedosta. Muokkaa kotoistaaksesi se omalle kielellesi.
There is something about one' body as it gets around 70 years old that induces—strongly—often imperatively—a shift from action to observation. Action at 70 tends to lead to a lot of saying ow, ow, ow. Observation, however, can be rewarding.
Viimeiset sanat
Erotteluhuomautus
Julkaisutoimittajat
Kirjan kehujat
Alkuteoksen kieli
Kanoninen DDC/MDS
Kanoninen LCC

Viittaukset tähän teokseen muissa lähteissä.

Englanninkielinen Wikipedia

-

When she began writing in the 1960s, Ursula K. Le Guin was as much of a literary outsider as one can be: a woman writing in a landscape dominated by men, a science fiction and fantasy author in an era that dismissed "genre" literature as unserious, and a westerner living far from fashionable East Coast publishing circles. The interviews collected here--spanning a remarkable forty years of productivity, and covering everything from her Berkeley childhood to Le Guin envisioning the end of capitalism--highlight that unique perspective, which conjured some of the most prescient and lasting books in modern literature.

Kirjastojen kuvailuja ei löytynyt.

Kirjan kuvailu
Yhteenveto haiku-muodossa

Current Discussions

-

Suosituimmat kansikuvat

Pikalinkit

Arvio (tähdet)

Keskiarvo: (4.14)
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3 1
3.5
4 4
4.5
5 2

Oletko sinä tämä henkilö?

Tule LibraryThing-kirjailijaksi.

 

Lisätietoja | Ota yhteyttä | LibraryThing.com | Yksityisyyden suoja / Käyttöehdot | Apua/FAQ | Blogi | Kauppa | APIs | TinyCat | Perintökirjastot | Varhaiset kirja-arvostelijat | Yleistieto | 203,197,971 kirjaa! | Yläpalkki: Aina näkyvissä