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<p>Thanks for this. It is very illuminating and shows how and why
Le Guin's fiction went beyond genre to become literature.</p>
<p>Jean<br>
</p>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 1/27/2018 9:18 AM, Matthew Cheney
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:fU7IezJSYicDOfU7JeBDyD">
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<div>Hello Woolfians,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
Here’s some more Le Guin on Woolf—
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Le Guin was one of the science fiction writers asked by <i>The
Guardian</i> to choose “their favourite author or novel in the
genre” and Le Guin chose Woolf, saying:</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<blockquote style="margin:0 0 0 40px;border:none;padding:0px">
<div>
<p style="margin:0px 0px
1rem;padding:0px;color:rgb(18,18,18);font-family:"Guardian
Text Egyptian
Web",Georgia,serif;font-size:medium;font-variant-ligatures:common-ligatures">You
can't write science fiction well if you haven't read it,
though not all who try to write it know this. But nor can
you write it well if you haven't read anything else. Genre
is a rich dialect, in which you can say certain things in a
particularly satisfying way, but if it gives up connection
with the general literary language it becomes a jargon,
meaningful only to an ingroup. Useful models may be found
quite outside the genre. I learned a lot from reading the
ever-subversive <span
style="font-family:Georgia;font-size:13px">Virginia Woolf</span><span
style="font-family:Georgia;font-size:13px">.</span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p style="margin:0px 0px
1rem;padding:0px;color:rgb(18,18,18);font-family:"Guardian
Text Egyptian
Web",Georgia,serif;font-size:medium;font-variant-ligatures:common-ligatures">I
was 17 when I read <em>Orlando</em>. It was half-revelation,
half-confusion to me at that age, but one thing was clear:
that she imagined a society vastly different from our own,
an exotic world, and brought it dramatically alive. I'm
thinking of the Elizabethan scenes, the winter when the
Thames froze over. Reading, I was there, saw the bonfires
blazing in the ice, felt the marvellous strangeness of that
moment 500 years ago – the authentic thrill of being taken <em>absolutely
elsewhere</em>.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p style="margin:0px 0px
1rem;padding:0px;color:rgb(18,18,18);font-family:"Guardian
Text Egyptian
Web",Georgia,serif;font-size:medium;font-variant-ligatures:common-ligatures">How
did she do it? By precise, specific descriptive details, not
heaped up and not explained: a vivid, telling imagery,
highly selected, encouraging the reader's imagination to
fill out the picture and see it luminous, complete.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p style="margin:0px 0px
1rem;padding:0px;color:rgb(18,18,18);font-family:"Guardian
Text Egyptian
Web",Georgia,serif;font-size:medium;font-variant-ligatures:common-ligatures">In <em>Flush</em>,
Woolf gets inside a dog's mind, that is, a non-human brain,
an alien mentality – very science-fictional if you look at
it that way. Again what I learned was the power of accurate,
vivid, highly selected detail. I imagine Woolf looking down
at the dog asleep beside the ratty armchair she wrote in and
thinking <em>what are your dreams?</em> and listening . . .
sniffing the wind . . . after the rabbit, out on the hills,
in the dog's timeless world.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p style="margin:0px 0px
1rem;padding:0px;color:rgb(18,18,18);font-family:"Guardian
Text Egyptian
Web",Georgia,serif;font-size:medium;font-variant-ligatures:common-ligatures">Useful
stuff, for those who like to see through eyes other than our
own.</p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div>source: <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/may/14/science-fiction-authors-choice"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/may/14/science-fiction-authors-choice</a></div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>(This was reprinted in her book <i>Words Are My Matter</i> as
“Learning to Write Science Fiction from Virginia Woolf”)</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Woolf was always central to Le Guin, back to the day when she
was about 14 and her mother gave her a copies of <i>A Room of
One’s Own</i> and <i>Three Guineas</i>. (She discusses this
briefly in this interview: <a
href="https://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/spring-2013-growing/song-herself"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/spring-2013-growing/song-herself</a>)
References to Woolf’s work pop up throughout her nonfiction
especially, but I see traces in her fiction, too.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>This topic is close to my heart, as it was probably via Le
Guin that I discovered Woolf myself when I first read, at a
much-too-young-to-understand-it age Le Guin’s essay “Science
Fiction and Mrs. Brown”, and then, to try to understand it
better, sought out “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown”. (For the
curious, I’ve written about that a bit <a
href="https://mumpsimus.blogspot.com/2018/01/ursula-le-guin-in-your-dreams-in-your.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">at my blog</a>.) I sent a completed
first draft of a dissertation to my committee on Woolf’s
birthday, a dissertation that is 1/3 about Woolf, and which
would not have been possible, in so many ways, without Le Guin.
Foremothers, grandmothers, greats.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Matthew Cheney</div>
<br>
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