Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism - A Wizard of Earthsea: Part 2

Episode Date: October 4, 2021

The 2nd part of our discussion of Ursula K. Le Guin's classic. We talk about gender roles, the power of describing things less,  and Le Guin's skill as a sailor. Follow the show @SwordsNSocPod or email us at [e-mail] patreon.com/swordsandsocialismEmail: [e-mail] The Show: @SwordsNSocPodAsha: @Herbo_AnarchistKetho: @MusicalPuma69

Can I say some of the kind of what do you call that like stone skipping around the islands and in castle? The whole new things kind of feels the first thing I thought of even though it's not really analogous at all the more I think about it. It's like the Hobbit where you have almost like these disconnected little vignettes. Well, it's a it's a it's a fetch quest, essentially. It's a travel story. I mean, like you're going to go to a place and learn a thing,

then you're going to go to a place and learn another thing. Yeah. And I really enjoyed that part of the story, but it meant that the more she traveled around, the more she got the option to say little things about other things that she would then go on to explore later on in the series. She's definitely very good at sprinkling in things that she's not going to talk about until later. Yes. Which I think is now we can bring up that second point about her storytelling is that she's

real good at telling you what the ending is and then still making you care the entire time. Even though you know it's going to happen. We talked about it already. At the beginning of the story, she says that Ged will go on to be the Archmage. Like she tells you that at the beginning. It's not like even an, I don't think it's even an in-universe thing of a character prophesying. It's the narrator.

Just telling you down there. Telling you that Ged will go on to be the Archmage and be one of the most powerful wizards ever exist and then and then the story happens and you still care That Ged's in danger even though consciously you know he can't lose because she's already told you he'd win he's Like he has plot armor from the beginning. Yeah. And yet I still care the whole time. And she actually kind of points that out is that the whole idea behind Ged was kind of this idea of like, oh, there are wizards like Merlin. Like they had to be in young ones right like So from the get-go she was like okay, so what if an incredibly powerful Merlin style ultramanic mage man Started out as a hot headed young boy

Yeah, with way too much power at his disposal and Know where nothing to do with it No, no not not enough knowledge to control it. Yes. Where did Merlin, how did Merlin become wise, essentially? Yeah. Good work. Exactly. Like, what was Merlin doing in his teens?

Yes. That's essentially what this is. And it's great. And yeah, also throughout here again, she sprinkles things that haven't happened yet. So she references the fact that he will eventually go retrieve the other half of the ring of Arithaq Bey from the tombs of Ahtu'an. She spoils the ending of the second.

She literally spoils the ending of the second book that she hasn't written yet. Because you know he wins, because she just told you he does. And so then in the second book that she hasn't written yet. Because you know he wins, because she just told you he does. And so then in the second book, if you're conscious of it, when he shows up, you're like, well, he wins. But then of course, a drama is how does he do it? Yeah. In that, both of them, really, the drama

doesn't come from if he's going to win. The drama comes from how does he manage to do so? And she says that he completes the dragon run and goes to the edge of the world to see the bones of Orn the greatest dragon. You know, like, that doesn't happen till the farthest shore. Like, that hasn't happened yet. But she already tells you he wins. So, like, well, actually, I don't remember if she actually

spoils the direct ending of the fire the shore. She is well the ending of that. Now I've spoiled that for myself. She that's actually once she holds back on. You know that he goes out to was called the Kelebor or whatever it is. She kind of is that wills it in her first story about the proto one, one of the proto one called the word of unbinding, I believe she can. She can't really see where you are ending. But in the written novels, that's like the one she holds out on you. Yeah, which I think is fantastic. Cause that one, that's actually my favorite of like the first three of the trilogy

Because I also have not read to Hanu yet I want to do yeah, we haven't read that when yet, but of the first three or see I to one and further sure for the shores my favorite personally Oh, actually that's a lie. I like I to one better, but I think the general critical consensus is that auto one is better Yeah, I think critics can talk consensus is that Ahthwani is better. The other critics can talk about who cares, but. Within my statement, I decided I was wrong in the middle of my own statement. I could have taken a lesson from the grid and just not said anything.

And that would have been better off. Back in track here, a little bit of a side to her like spoiling her own endings. Her biggest flaw in these early stories was the gender roles that women are just servants or evil. In the second book she tries to correct that a little bit by having the protagonist be a woman, but even she later says that it was a woman but still sort of portrayed from a male perspective in, I can't remember her name in the tombs, in the tombs ofatuon. And so that is really the biggest drawback in this series, the series,

at least up to Tahanu, is that women are just non-people by. I can't find the quote, but it's like one of those, it's like the French, like Cher- Shae Lafam or whatever where it's like wherever the If you follow trouble back to its source you'll find a woman There's like a float about like how like like wiser than a woman's magic like something like that More subtle in a woman's magic or just just something just something really like

It's like yeah women are shady huh yeah I'm like off like like it just feels like oh well it's always a woman isn't it right essentially it's essentially the quote I don't remember the direct quote but it's basically don't trust women yes uh it's very old tropes of like women are conniving they're underhanded they they're secretly evil, that like they're gonna use their beauty and their seductive power to, you know,

go full ev' on you and tempt you into the fall, right? Like that is pretty directly in this story. Oh, I think. The only, like one of the only women you interact with who's just straight up Good is Vetch's little sister who's 14. Yeah She is cool though She's badass. Yeah, also. I'm sorry. They also gives me a slight weird flashback to our

The episode I didn't record properly about his dark materials where like Vetch's little sister is good because she's like 14 she's not an adult yet oh oh god she's a child. She's a crossover. Um yes sorry for when that is a reference to a two part where we recorded about Pullman's his dark materials where I completely fucked up the recording and we lost the episode, but don't worry, we will redo it in the future. That will be coming eventually just. Yeah, that's just a little crossover I realized with like the one woman, the one female in this story, you meet who's unambiguously good is still not an adult yet. I found the quote by the way it's weak as a woman's magic, wicked as a woman's magic. Yeah that's pretty that's pretty on the nose there. That's pretty

impressive. Yeah but as we said to her credit she later says I did this because I thought that's what people wanted and I regret that I did it and in her later books made an effort to not be that way. And she was always a little bit less that way in like some of her science fiction, like especially towards the end, like after the left-handed darkness she got some backlash from some people and you already see it kind of warping a little bit with something like shoot. Why am I? I'm blanking on the name of the book about always coming home. That's it. In the early 80s, like she starts kind of transitioning out of it. But yeah, I feel like most of her early, most controversial stuff has to do with her, like,

not just in this or even in left hand, but also in the dispossessed. Some of her more controversial moments are all based around in her early work, her application of gender, which is something that she then wrestled with for the next 20 years of her career Yeah, because like right after she was done with that that's when Like the next wave of feminism started to take off Yeah, she was criticized a lot during second wave for these specific gender issues, and she didn't start to reconcile them until the mid 80s, and then really started to go hard in the mid 90s.

And again, this is something that I kind of went out on my way to watch, but the PBS documentary on her explores this a lot because it is a huge theme of like the last third of all of the writing she ever did was her trying to trying to come to terms with herself and what it meant to be a woman writer, especially in the field of science fiction and fantasy, which is such a male dominated space. Male authors dominate the fiction and stuff generally. I just dominate generally. But then on top of that, add in the fact that she's in doing sci-fi and fantasy,

which is historically a very like, you know, boys boy type like field, right? Yeah, and honestly honestly it makes sense Where Ursula started? Because that this is the way that she would have been in the 60s and the 70s She was starting as she herself said in line with what the other stuff Those being published at the time and it's like because she had received so many Rejection letters and that isn't to necessarily say that she was writing anything superpressive at the time.

And that's why it was getting rejected. She just tailored herself more towards the things that she knew would get accepted. And then trying to come in terms with that over the next 40 years of her career. Yeah, it's almost amazing to me that she was like essentially changing her story, comprom's it's almost amazing to me that she was like essentially changing her story, compromising it to some degree, to tailor it, to try and get it accepted by publishers. And

we still got stories that are still generally so fucking good. Yeah, and like, they're all aggressive, even for the time. They're only glaring like fit like obviously it's not just it's not that like the patriarchy is like oh just one small thing that she fucked up like the role of women in these stories is bad but the fact that there's really only one big thing for us to pull out like if you take pretty much any other sci-fi from the 60s, oh buddy, are we gonna be talking about some issues, not just gender roles? Yeah, it's like at some point we'll have to talk about Heinle and at some point on you.

Oh God, we have to talk about Heinlein. And I'm telling you right now, I'm not, I will not read, Star Trek, yeah, the Star Trek, Star Trek troopers, I'm not reading it. I am not going to buy it for a dollar from my local library. And I'm like, at least this keeps this off the shelves. If you want to do Starship Troopers, watch the movie because the director is making fun of it the entire time. Like that's

the thing is, you see the watch strange land, like even some, like Heinlein's less overtly has, has scenes in it where you're just like, okay. Highland only has one passable book and that is the moon is a harsh mistress. That's the only passable one. And so we're gonna talk about him sometime and we're gonna talk about issues.

We're eventually gonna talk about Orson Scott Card and we're gonna talk about some issues, Right. Like a lot, a lot. It's just a unique one because of how you predictory his world view is with the world view represented by his books. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. He's, he's like an anti-legwind. We're like, it's right to be opposite of himself in his book. Yeah. We're like, if you read his books, you're like, this is pretty dope. And then you read an interview with him and you're like, what the fuck are you on about? It's like, why do you want? Oh, God, you're on the day. Oh, you're on the day. Oh, oh, God. Yeah. Oh, she's stopped.

I just benched. Thank you so much. Well, like, or Scott Card would be great if you just never learned anything about him. Yes. Like, I've heard you hear wonderful things about like speaker for the dead. Or like, you know, what was the other, and it was an ender's game. Yeah, ender's game. Great.

And then you like read an interview with him, and you're like, I wish I hadn't done that. Yeah. Whereas like, Laguin, you read your books, and you're like, this is really interesting politics. What does she have to say? And then her interviews are amazing. She's wonderful. Her interviews are better sometimes.

Oh, great. She's less subtle in her interviews. Like, she's way less, like, as we said, Wizard of Earth, she has a lot of Taoist themes, Taoist overtures, in and around the world building. And And when you read the heinous cycle, especially obviously you get to certain books, you see a lot more for political views, like sort of directly represented. Then you read an interview with her, and she's like, you know, we should abolish capitalism

you book publishers. Fuck you. I print my book, bitch. And you're like, oh, okay. You see, it's very, it kind of reminds me, I put my book, bitch, and you're like, oh, okay. That's what I mean. It's, it's, it's very, it kind of reminds me, I feel like there's just this, this theme amongst a lot of authors from like the 50s and the 60s, at least who started in the 50s and 60s, where you have like, I think of like the letters that Tolkien wrote to the Nazis when they

tried writing into ask if there were any Jews in like... Or ask if he was Jewish. Yeah, and he was like, but he never, he never like just says, fuck you. But when you read the letter, you're like, this is the most beautifully aggressive letter I have ever read. Look, we'll talk about it a lot when we get to him

because I know I've read, I've read a lot of his letters. The man was nothing if not beautifully eloquent in things he did not like. Yeah. And I feel like Luke Whit is very similar like you put her in an interview scenario and she just very eloquently explains to you why you're wrong. Why this is right. why you're wrong. That look is wrong. Why everyone else writing fantasy books is wrong. Like who was it? Who was it? Like even even with people she likes, who was it she was talking about the author. She was referencing where she was like just accept the label. It's fine. Oh, Margaret. just accept the label. It's fine. Oh Margaret. Yeah, she's writing Margaret atwood because the two of them were good friends who wrote back and forth all the time and then they waiting for us to talk about like what? That one was really didn't want to accept her books for sci-fi or at least she didn't classify them as sci- classify. She never classified them her own books as sci-fi and

look when was like just take it it's fine it's it's a it's a future society where we're doing thought experiments it's sci-fi. This is good this is a good thing for you and for sci-fi. Yeah she was like it's good for sci-fi if you call your book sci-fi please do that. See, in the winter she's's a massive nerd. Like, oh, god, she's a huge. I mean, she was the daughter of like, like an anthropologist. I'm sorry. All the best authors at heart, especially a fantasy in sci-fi,

a massive fucking nerds. Like, we, it's, it's, it's just like a thing that we, you know, that everyone knows and talks about. But we can remember from time tolkins world building started because he wanted to invent languages for fun. Yeah. The man was doing conlang for fun. And then as he did conlang, he was like, huh, what kind of people would be speaking these languages? And what stories would they tell? Little did the world know that as soon as he thought that,

it was over, that it was all because that's where the world building started for him was him inventing languages because he was a linguist and he was a huge massive fucking nerd. And like and he was a huge, massive fucking nerd. And like, you even see that when it comes to movie making. I mean, obviously people have varied opinions on him. I'm personally a fan of the movies of Quentin Tarantino. Well, he makes those movies because he spent his entire childhood in a movie store watching every movie

he could get his hands on. Yes. He's a huge film nerd. And that's why I don't, that's why one thing I'm happy of in like I'd say in the 20 starting in the 2000s, we had a change. And it will it honestly happened sort of around the time the Lord of the Rings movies came out that being a nerd started to be a culturally acceptable thing to be. It wasn't like in 1980s, like if you're a nerd, some jock is gonna stuff you in a locker.

Like in the 21st century, our culture changed in such a way that being a nerd about something specific became a culture acceptable thing to be. Like you can generally, obviously there's exceptions and there's ins and outs but like there are more people today who are openly played D&D than at any point in the past. There's more people that more people that openly now play magic the gathering than like any point in the past.

There's more people that openly fought their knowledge of obscure sci-fi and fantasy books. knowledge of obscure sci-fi and fantasy books. Not now. Then like, ever written. No. Because, yeah, because like, it's become a socially acceptable thing to do. And I think we, to sort of wrap up this little tangent, I think we need to pay some respect to the early authors who are openly and unashamedly nerds. Yeah, I mean, in the last few documentary,

which again, I'm gonna recommend it so hard. It's a very good one. It's a PBS documentary. It's just the worlds of Ursula Lidwin. Like it's, look at it. PBS, the worlds of Ursula Lidwin. If you have your library card and it gives you access to hooplets on hooplet, right?

It, like, she goes into like a small explanation of how she you know when she was a kid like reading sci-fi fantasy was like super taboo you know it was something you didn't do because your parents saw it as like kind of like distasteful and like you read it out of like magazines. Yeah. And she talked about how she would do the old cliche of taking books that were like more complicated and sticking a comic book or something in the middle of it and reading that instead of the book on the end. Lily doing the yeah, like the the trope of like hiding a comic book inside of the side of the book. And it's it's like she was like that's the sort of things you had to do back then before Mostly before talking obviously. Yeah, cuz there she's she wasn't I mean she's younger than him

But like when she was reading books as a child then it like talking and published anything yet really Yeah, even when you're starting to publish things when she was starting to read Yeah, when she was starting to read and Yeah, when she was starting to read. And also, and his work didn't even become that popular. His work wasn't even that popular until like much later. And like, which don't worry, this is a tangent which we will get into again. I think at some point I personally want to do these assured episode on Tolkien wrote an essay early on

called On Fairy Stories, which is a whole defense of fantasy as a genre. And because at the beginning when he was writing every serious literary person dismissed fantasy as a thing for only for babies. And he wrote a whole, he have a whole speech. It was a talk, you know, because he was a lecture or whatever, about defending fantasy as a genre. And I think that's also sort of an animating thesis of our podcast is defending fantasy and sci-fi as genres and pointing out that there's a lot more in them

than just like, man, that dude killed it orc with his sword. Yeah. That's dope. Which is dope. And that just so everybody knows that was a perspective title for this podcast was on fairy stories. It was. Yeah,

we considered using that one. Yeah, but we wanted to be more inclusive, like sci-fi and stuff. So you don't want the token of state to sue me. Yeah, that there probably a little rabbit is now that there's no one like from the family at the helm.

Yeah, yeah, so I wish there were a bit more ravenous, but yeah. There's a quote here from the win in the afterward to this book that reminded me of that. But most of this marvelous flood of literature was written for adults, but modernist literary ideology shunted it all to children. And kids could and did swim in it happily as in their native element, at least until some teacher professor told them they had to come out and dry off and breed modernism ever after. It's hard modernism but second. She's always been very open about how dismissive she is of the idea of this sort of dichotomy

between literary and genre fiction and how much she despises that and thinks that there's no distinction whatsoever and that it's entirely made up and I tend to agree with her. But that's why I don't care what weird post war author, you some literary critic thinks is the greatest author of the 20th century. Yeah. The two best authors of the 21st century are clearly Tolkien and the Gwyn. I don't.

For very least, you could call them most influential. Yeah. Well, Tolkien's definitely the most influential. If you look at any, I don't care, just pick your pick your media that's popular today, you can find it somewhere going back to him. Anyway, this isn't about him. Yeah. Um, we can focus back in again, I think on this specific story we're talking about. Um, I'm going to realist

him. I'm going to do it. Um, so I'm gonna realisten. I'm gonna do it. So I love my tangents. That's fine. Do we have so many? It's fine. Again, we've to go on over the main her main criticism and that's that's fine. I think the only thing there's not much left here that I really want to cover, except that you really, she doesn't, as we've said before, she doesn't hide her philosophy in these stories.

You actually don't really have to look that hard for it. You just have to know what it is. You have to know that, you know, the Taoism is a thing, essentially. And then you can put a label to the stuff she's telling you in the story. And I think that partly what makes her outstanding is that the subversive element she chose don't really get replicated in a lot of other stories, even at the time or after, even today,

how many times can you find a hero whose whole job is is to not do stuff. Yeah. And like, and it's heroic for not doing it. How many times can you find a hero who's not, who doesn't want to kill anyone, who isn't trying to kill anyone, isn't even really trying to kill the thing

that's trying to kill him. He's trying to fix it, He's not trying to end it. And that is his big realization. That is Ged's big realization, sort of after a second time with Ogion, is that he can't really defeat the shadow. In the sort of the classic sense, he needs to confront it. He needs to overcome it, but he's not gonna go blast magic at it and kill it. He's not gonna go like do some big spell and banish it to the after world.

He thinks that's what he has to do, but it's not. He doesn't realize until like the boat ride with Vetch out into the edge of the world. When it's quiet. When all is silent, there is no sound at all. Is he allowed to speak the word and solve and end the story? The word that is his name because the shadow is him. And I just don't, I know we're going out about it, but I can't think of anything else

like that off the top of my head. I can't claim to be at least as far as fantasies concerned, the most well read, but it does strike me as something particularly unique. Libwin knew it too. In her afterward, she's like, yeah, this book was really original. I think I'm gonna sing with my friend.

Yeah, I wrote this, it's cool. She didn't even worry about it. Oh shoot. But either way, I'm surprised it took me so long to actually read this. And I'm going to say that now for someone who considers Liguin to be easily in their top authors ever category, the fact that I didn't read any of her until like last year is kind of absurd to me. Like all throughout college, I was like I think I mentioned this earlier at some point. I was a creative writing minor and they didn't offer it as a major or else I would have

took it. And like fundamentally, I had always been trying to write sci-fi and fantasy, but I didn't like writing like big, ooh, the world's gonna end, go save it here, Roman stories. I didn't like that. But that was like all I had read up to that point. So I couldn't like write any of it. It wasn't coming to me, but I wanted to do that. And it's just, it shocks me how long it took me to discover something like Earthsea, which is pretty much exactly that. Like this is a story with, it's a hard, it's a, it's a high fantasy story. It's a hard magic system. Hard magic system, world building galore,

but is not about some world altering end of times cataclysm, and that's not to say that it won't always be like that. From what I understand about the farther shore, it gets into that sort of thing. But the fact that this sort of thing is possible didn't even click to me until more recently when I found out about stuff like when I found out about Earth

Sieve and I found out there's a handful of others that do it too, but it's like not in this way and I'm just shocked it took me so long to find this because it's like I was like where was this in college when this is essentially exactly what I wanted to do? Yeah it's the power of all of the like a lot of the tropes of fantasy but like small scale and personal yeah this is a story, a personal struggle for a single wizard. This story might as well just be journey through the psyche of Ged. The story of Ged the wizard in which he learns how to not be a prideful little fuck. Because I feel like almost all of it you can call just like obviously the villain, just like obviously the villain, the main enemy presented in this story is just Ged. Yeah, he is, he is his own enemy. Like this is the man versus self.

Like directly. Like you literally get man versus self in fiction. In fantasy fiction as the core element of the story. And I'm just like, I need more of that. Yeah, because the shadow, the shadow as a separate entity is his shadow. So it's him. But that is almost an extrapolation of the fact that the enemy is, is himself and his pride. Yeah. The shadow only exists for that reason. And that the only one more or less, I mean, there's worries about what will happen if the Giddeth possesses him. Like more or less, the only person who's at risk is himself. Directly. Yeah. And the only person who can deal with it is him. The only person who can

understand it really is him. He deals with, he interacts with all these other wizards who are far more powerful than he is. And none of them can solve it for him because it's to him problem. It's literally a him problem. Like, which makes it harder when you realize that the people who die because of the shadow die because of him. It's like, and you're like, like even the people that die, like I'd say, Sjorg is the only one that like didn't really do anything

to deserve it. Well, yeah, like the Sjorg was a bad person. Well, yeah, but then you get Ote. Oh, his, his, his a low tech. He's a little pit. Oh, leg dies because of him It dies defending him having already saved his heart and having already saved his life at least once It's like yeah

Jinky and that happens because of him I Never even thought of it that way the fact that this is literally despite being a high fantasy story is literally just a man versus self. Like it's, I mean, you almost always get stories with aspects of man versus self. Like that like that even happens in in more of the rings. Like there's like there's aspects of that. That's I mean, that's that's like Frodo's thing. Yeah, like Frodo's thing. Even Error Gorn has like I don't really want to be King kind of thing. In the movie. Yeah, in the movie. Yeah, in the book he's like, yes, I am King. But you're right, it's not often the central conflict. Yeah, it is often an insulery conflict.

I think it's often, as I said before, that's often in the hero, you know, when you're doing your like hero's journey tick boxes, like your hero's journey bingo, it's when the hero like refuses the call to action. Yeah. Get doesn't refuse the call. He goes with the call. Get makes the call himself. Yeah, he's like, bro, I'm gonna go be a wizard, man.

Like, he's the one that starts all this, none of this would have happened if he was just happy hanging out and silenced with, with his master, with a, or if he just not been like man, Jasper, I mean Jasper's kind of an asshole. Yeah, which by the way, they do their little justice in there

that Jasper doesn't even ever get his rod. He doesn't actually become a wizard. I don't know if you know that up. When he talks about that, Jasper drops out at sorcerer. Yeah. He doesn't even get a rod. So fuck him. Yeah.

There's one last bit. I don't, oh sorry. Do you have any more sort of directly political or philosophical points you want to cover? And the last bit I want to do is I just want to gush a little bit about Le Guin's writing style. I had something that was in my head. It wasn't political, but hopefully I will remember it by the end because it was good. I promise. by the end is it was good. I promise. So I just want to gush a little bit personally about Ligwin's the way she writes stories. We mentioned a little bit earlier the fact that she is not verbose. She's not wordy in her in her writing. She she does not as criticisms of other famous authors might be, she doesn't spend a paragraph,

she doesn't spend three pages talking about what the trees looked like. Yeah. It's not important to her. Hey, Tolkien. Yeah. Okay. But like, what I love about her writing size, that she doesn't, it's not necessary for her. And even I said it sort of jokingly earlier, her work is much more about the, to me anyway,

the feeling you get from the story being told. It is not Ged stepped here and then he did this and then he went to the place like all those things are happening But that's not what it's about Like what's really going on there is his as we just talked about his internal psyche his battle the feelings and emotions The if I have to say it the vibe you're getting from everything going on. It's like it's not that oh get had to get in a ship and be a roar to get to

Oscar. We don't go into great detail about how he wrote it or where he sat. It's about how it feels for him to be on that boat and to be a rower and be surrounded by these men. It's not, get turned into an eagle or a hawk and sailed halfway across the world in a panic, right? We don't get any of the details about that really. Just a couple like he stopped here to get a drink What we know about that

Is how we felt doing it what it did to his mind what it did to his personality That's what the story is about and it feel like we're gonna Laguin's greatest strengths as the writer is writing in such a way that you feel things without needing to overly describe them with amazing language that is visual without being directly like hackily descriptive. I'm gonna pull a couple quotes that I found quickly. I wish I had like the physical book in front of me So it's specific ones I would have pulled up and I'm gonna get the ones I can well

There's a couple quotes especially from near the end when he first leaves got to go confront the shadow his shadow on the ocean Like he's sailing he eventually finds it on the water and he goes to face it and quote is just in utter silence, the shadow, wavering, turned and fled. And Ged gave chase. It's great. Yeah. I don't need to know what it looked like when it turned.

I don't need to know what color or what, you know what I mean. I don't need to know anything else. You know what's happening. She complains about modernist literature, but is heavily influenced by it. There's at the very end, I wish I could pull up sort of like the description at the end when they reach essentially the edge of the world. And they reach a place where the ocean is no longer ocean. And you're kind of getting it from Vetch's perspective temporarily. Yeah. Where it's like, and he looks down, and he sees that the ocean is the bottomless ocean,

but it isn't, there is, like there is sand, and the boat is stopped and the waves are dark, but he can see the sand and there's footprints, but it isn't sand and he knows it isn't sand, it is and it's very like you know it gets this very emotionally impactful without having to tell you everything. Yeah it's emotionally impactful being intentionally vague in that scene that's it's completely vague with what it looks like. Yeah she's telling you that they're sand, but there's no sand. There's ocean, but it's not ocean. And then the specific, and again, we mentioned how you get to the sense of the edge of the world and its utter silence.

The ocean stops, the wave stops, all sound is stopped. And the phrase, the actual phrase, from the fight, like, like right at the final confrontation with his shadow. She says, allowed and clearly breaking that old silence. Ged spoke the shadows name. And in the same moment, the shadow spoke without lips or tongue, saying the same word. Ged, the two voices were one voice. It's amazing, it's great. And that's it.

Does it matter what it looks like? No, that's all you need to know. I don't need to know how that happens. I don't need to know the mechanics of how this works. And then they sort of reach out to each other. And there's like a flash, and suddenly the ocean is ocean again. And like Vetch is drowning and he has to get back in the boat and then he has to say get from drowning and you sort of get back to like physical actions right. But there's no need for her to go into while you're seeing by each of them naming each other it it then sort of fixed the whole that was the tear

that get it, she doesn't need to explain it to you. You just know that that's what happened. And this happens even in all of her other books, even in her less fantasy and more sci-fi books like in the heinous cycle, things happen and she describes them emotionally, but vaguely. And I don't, maybe I'm not even explaining it well, per se, but like that's what I love about her the most is that she can pull powerful emotional reactions from you without having

to be overtly descriptive. She doesn't need to tell you how to feel about it. She just like makes you feel that way without, you know, without extraneous details. Something that really strikes me though, um, while I, I, like, I absolutely agree with everything you're saying here, as in terms of just the kind of intentional simplicity of the descriptions, I was kind of like, I guess this is more of a poo poo on the idea

of getting creative writing as an education, because I was just surprised how much was description without it being overwhelming. Like usually if you're reading a story and it has this, because this book is very sparse on dialogue. Yeah, there's actually there's not much dialogue in any of the earth's e-books. Yeah, well, obviously there's not that much dialogue in any of our books. Yeah, like, I mean, the dispossessed out of all the books that President

Red is the most chatty. Yeah, I mean, we're not not even to mention the second earth's e-book Yeah, I mean we're not not even to mention the second earthy book tombs of a to on largely takes place in a lab Earth where you're essentially not allowed to speak So it's like late. I mean, well, I technically can only not speak in the undertune But you know what I mean it's darkness and silence and you know when when you're you know getting taught when you're, you know, getting taught. Ooh, what you should do, what you shouldn't do. The, obviously, what they mean to say is, you know, you should follow some general guidelines

or even just kind of consider this, not necessarily you have to do any of this. But usually they'd be like, okay, try and make sure you have a general balance of description, exposition, and dialogue. And this book is, I think, a shining example of how that isn't necessarily the case. You can still have a fantastic book. And it can be just well done description. Can I read? I found one more passage I want to read. And it's from that final confrontation.

Because that's where I feel she gets the most like it's the most grandiose while still maintaining her sort of. And that's that's where it gets like super. S of Tarek too. So just everything starts falling apart. Yeah, well, it's not reality anymore. You've also reached, I think she doesn't directly say it, but I think you're supposed to infer. The fact that she's taking place on the fallow's, which is their version of Halloween, you know what I mean? It's like a short day where like dark is long, and I think it's also supposed to represent the thinning between the world of the dead and the world of the light, and you reach the end of the world, where you learn in later books out on the extreme edges of the world is where that sort of veil is the thinnest, is where the sort of the veil between the living world and the world that the dead is most transversible

where it's where you begin to lose the threat of what is real. There's one more little paragraph from that section I want to read because I don't I love it and I want other people to listen to it because I love it so much In all the terrible solitude of the winter sea Ged stood and saw the thing he feared At that Ged lifted the staff up high and the radiance of it brightened intolerably Burning was so white and great a light that it compelled and herald even that ancient darkness and create a light that it compelled and herald even that ancient darkness. In that light, all form of man

sloughed off the thing that came towards Ged. It drew together and shrank and blackened, crawling on four short talent legs upon the sand. Do I know what that thing looks like? No. It's just go. Four legs. But I know what that thing looks like? No. It's just go. Four. But I know what rings. But I know enough.

And I, she really gives me what they call, in film, they call the show, don't tell. Yeah. Vib and also the space of in writing, it's leaving it. Like it's like the best part of a horror movie isn't showing me the monster. It's letting me imagine the monster. Yeah. That's what I'm imagining. It is so good. You never really know. My imagination is always going to be better than showing it to me on film.

And that's her writing style and a nutshell. She's going to describe a thing to you, but after you read the you finished reading the book and for me anyway, I picture it so well that I think there was more description to it than there was. Like I can see it so clearly in my mind's eye. You know that like if I go back and look at the passage half of the things I'm thinking of aren't there, but she like put them there. Yeah, and that it's that's fantastic. She didn't have to tell me how it was. I remember the one thing I was gonna say that was kind of more of a joke than anything else I

I think I'd actually tweeted this at one point though, so it might not be that great, but I feel as though Well token is writing big, you know adventure fantasy He writes the story of Frodo going to Mount Doom to throw the ring. I feel like Ligwin would write the entire book, would be Frodo's return journey, where the entire conflict of the story

is him deciding whether or not to get on the boat and leave. And somehow make it really interesting. Her whole story would pick up with him returning to the shire and then his whole conflict with like his wound that won't heal and how he interacts with the other hobbits now that he's basically not a hobbit anymore. And that like his whole thing about does he does he stay or does he go? Yeah. It's just the impression I get it's like and yeah, there's a whole darn book out of that. Yeah, it's not

that it doesn't write enough to make enough books, which again, we'll get to eventually. Yeah, I just, we can gush about Laguinal Day. Her writing is fantastic. She's way authors that I just read endlessly is fantastic. She's way the authors that I just read endlessly growing up. She's actually like the major reason we started this podcast at all. When I kind of first conceived of it, I was considering it like just being a liquid podcast. I know we're just making all podcasting just you know, where we just like go through her books, like one book at a time, like, you know, sort of, I don't know if anyone else

listens to it, but there's a podcast out there that's doing this with Lord of the Rings. It's called the Prancing Pony podcast. It's one of my favorites, Ellen and Sean literally started with the Silmarillion. And the village is go through like a few pages at a time, read passages, discuss the symbolism, go into why he wrote it through. It's a a very in-depth, like, you know, line by line breakdown. I almost considered making this podcast just that, but for like, Laguin's books. And maybe we'll do that in the future. Maybe that'll just be a second project.

Well, the thing is, is she's got enough, at the very least, she's got enough short stories. This is just one of those short story collections. That is for the audio listeners of this non-visual medium. Yes. There's a very large book. I have her copy of the Unreal Unreal, which there are two separate volumes of.

This is just volume one. And like this volume of the Unreal Unreal is split into two halves, one which is, you know, I'm maybe actually, I might be wrong, I could have the combined version, but either way, this book has actually got some of her only realistic fiction in it as well. Yeah. Interesting. But, and this isn't even all of our short stories though. This isn't even like half of them because this has some of our most curated stuff like the ones who walk away from all the lost and stuff like that. But, and the rule of names, but it doesn't have the other, doesn't have the word of unbinding, it doesn't have. Like some of her early heinous stuff in here. She's got like three other short story collections.

And poetry. That too. Okay. I think we should wrap up here. There's a few, I found a few more quotes specifically that I think are sort of encapsulate sort of very themes. One of the themes, I think we didn't touch on a lot, but she definitely is definitely a theme of this story is obviously coming of age, which is a pretty common theme for like young adult, young adult literature. You could also read the story of him fighting his shadow, then eventually overcoming it as one of growing up into adulthood and coming

to terms with who you are as an adult person, as opposed to a child. There's definitely that sort of, you know, reading of it. You know, it's again essentially growing up is his fight with the shadow. There's that reading of it. I feel my own personal understanding of the Gwen's worldview makes me less willing a less capable of reading that into it directly just because I know that the Gwen is very strong about the the the vagueness of the line between adult and child in terms of intelligence and security. She did say though that like she found fantasy to be a particularly good genre for coming-of-age stories. I think the quote here is that she said that it was an essay in 1973. She said, coming of age is a process that took me many years.

I finish it so far as I ever will at about age 31. And so I feel rather deeply about it. So do most adolescents. It is their main occupation, in fact. And so, I don't think it's sort of the main focus of this story, but it is one that you could take from it. The other couple of quotes I wanted to pull here, if we're going back to sort of the Taoist themes

I should have brought these up earlier, but I didn't have the page up so suck it The couple quotes I'm pulling here is one The master one of the wizard masters at the school at Roke when Ged questions him about Changing the nature of a thing like to actually change something into something else as opposed to just doing an illusion is that but you must not change one thing a public one grain of sand until you know what good or evil will follow on that act the world is in balance in equilibrium it wizards power of changing and summoning can shake the balance of the world it is dangerous dangerous that power. It is most perilous. It must follow knowledge and serve need. Kalaita candle is to cast a shadow. There it is again. There it is again. I think it's probably where I got it from when I mentioned it earlier.

And then talking about coming to terms of things. So from Vetch's point of view at the that final confrontation, Ged had neither lost nor won, but naming the shadow of his death with his own name had made himself whole, a man who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life, therefore, is lived for one sake and never for the service of ruin or pain or hatred or the dark. Damn. That's what this book is about. Yeah. You have to master yourself and to know yourself and doing so if you know who you are and have that knowledge, you can then therefore

and have that knowledge, you can then therefore like be a positive actor in the world that take control of like, you know, who you are. Also, don't do anything you don't need to do. Yeah, this is ridiculous. I don't know if you wanted to end this on a serious note. My girlfriend just sent me a picture of a bit from an interview with the Gwinn about sailing in the Earth Sea. So she's asked, you do a lot of sailing.

Yeah, you do invent wonderful landscapes. The Earth Sea trilogy creates such a vivid picture of the sea. Have you done a lot of sailing?" And she says, all that sailing is complete fakery. It's amazing what you can fake. I've never sailed anything in my life except a 9-foot cat boat, and that was in the Berkeley basin about 3 feet of water. And we managed to sink it. The sail got wet and it went down while we were saying, near my god to the... We had to wait to shore and go back to the place we'd

rented it and tell them. They couldn't believe it. You did what? You know, it's interesting. They always tell people to write about what they know about, but you don't have to know about things. You just have to be able to imagine them really well. These sunken people. Oh, that's great. And actually does make me think of realize that when she talks about I'm not sure. I'm not sure. They sound good. That's great. And actually does make me think of realize that when she talks about all the sailing, she doesn't even like describe it that deeply.

No, she's just like people are rowing. Yeah, rowing. We got that. Also, there's a code in the sale. There's a sale here. He's putting wind and sale. That's good. That's how it works.

Oh, God. One. Oh god, she's so funny. She is. There is. As they, as they, as they, as they, in three feet of water. Three feet of water. We heard her siblings.

I'm sure. The quote, I think we can end it on a quote of hers which I think sort of summarized what we just said which is for fantasy is true of course. It isn't factual but it's true. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's good. Fantastic. Well I think that should be it for our first based on the time probably first two episodes on the wonderful author that deserves to Lake Aleguin. We revisit many many. We revisit many many times but we are going to ration ourselves so as to spread out episodes that we purely enjoy

yes from ones where we actually where we might have to like read a book We don't necessarily like that. We're gonna have to say like something negative. Oh, we're have to say negative things about so I For anyone that will become happen to become loyal listeners. I think you'll find that lagoon and Tolkien end up being sprinkled Throughout between other authors who we may or may not like as much, because those are the ones that we know we like and we could probably prouder on endlessly about as you could tell. So thank you very much for listening.

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