<HTML><HEAD>
<META content="text/html; charset=Windows-1252" http-equiv=Content-Type></HEAD>
<BODY dir=ltr>
<DIV dir=ltr>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000">
<DIV>She had read E. M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops”?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Stuart</DIV>
<DIV
style='FONT-SIZE: small; TEXT-DECORATION: none; FONT-FAMILY: "Calibri"; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; COLOR: #000000; FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline'>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt tahoma">
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #f5f5f5">
<DIV style="font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=anne.byrne@nuigalway.ie>Byrne, Anne (Soc & Pol)</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Monday, January 29, 2018 8:03 PM</DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=mcheney@gmail.com>Matthew Cheney</A> ; <A
title=vwoolf@lists.service.ohio-state.edu>vwoolf@lists.service.ohio-state.edu</A>
</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Re: [Vwoolf] Le Guin and Woolf and
FaceTime</DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></DIV>
<DIV
style='FONT-SIZE: small; TEXT-DECORATION: none; FONT-FAMILY: "Calibri"; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; COLOR: #000000; FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline'>‘One
of these days d’you think you’ll be able to see things at the end of the
telephone?’ Peggy said, getting up.<BR><BR>The Years (1937)<BR><BR>How did she
know?<BR><BR>Anne
<HR tabIndex=-1 style="WIDTH: 98%; DISPLAY: inline-block">
<DIV id=divRplyFwdMsg dir=ltr><FONT style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt" color=#000000
face="Calibri, sans-serif"><B>From:</B> Vwoolf
<vwoolf-bounces+anne.byrne=nuigalway.ie@lists.osu.edu> on behalf of
Matthew Cheney <mcheney@gmail.com><BR><B>Sent:</B> 27 January 2018
17:18:04<BR><B>To:</B> vwoolf@lists.service.ohio-state.edu<BR><B>Subject:</B>
Re: [Vwoolf] Le Guin and Woolf</FONT>
<DIV> </DIV></DIV>
<STYLE>
<!--
body
{font-family:helvetica,arial;
font-size:13px}
-->
</STYLE>
<DIV style="WORD-WRAP: break-word">
<DIV>Hello Woolfians,</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>Here’s some more Le Guin on Woolf—
<DIV> </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> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-TOP: medium none; BORDER-RIGHT: medium none; BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: medium none; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 40px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV>
<P
style='FONT-SIZE: medium; FONT-FAMILY: "Guardian Text Egyptian Web",georgia,serif; COLOR: rgb(18,18,18); PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN: 0px 0px 1px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px'>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-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: georgia">Virginia
Woolf</SPAN><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: georgia">.</SPAN></P></DIV>
<DIV>
<P
style='FONT-SIZE: medium; FONT-FAMILY: "Guardian Text Egyptian Web",georgia,serif; COLOR: rgb(18,18,18); PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN: 0px 0px 1px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px'>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='FONT-SIZE: medium; FONT-FAMILY: "Guardian Text Egyptian Web",georgia,serif; COLOR: rgb(18,18,18); PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN: 0px 0px 1px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px'>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='FONT-SIZE: medium; FONT-FAMILY: "Guardian Text Egyptian Web",georgia,serif; COLOR: rgb(18,18,18); PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN: 0px 0px 1px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px'>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='FONT-SIZE: medium; FONT-FAMILY: "Guardian Text Egyptian Web",georgia,serif; COLOR: rgb(18,18,18); PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN: 0px 0px 1px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px'>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">https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/may/14/science-fiction-authors-choice</A></DIV>
<DIV> </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> </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">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> </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">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> </DIV>
<DIV>Matthew Cheney</DIV></DIV>
<P>
<HR>
_______________________________________________<BR>Vwoolf mailing
list<BR>Vwoolf@lists.osu.edu<BR>https://lists.osu.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwoolf<BR></DIV></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>