Ursula Le Guin?
- Thread starter ChrisC
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redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
The second Earthsea book, The Tombs of Atun, is even better than the first.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
in its own way that spartan, sometimes detatched feeling prose is its own poetry. It leaves you haunted.
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
"The word for world is forest"
This is a novella I read recently. She wrote it during the height of the Vietnam War protests. A planet inhabited by a non violent race is colonised. They have to make a decision whether to take up violent resistance.
It a story about the effect of violence. As well as a criticism of colonisation.
This is a novella I read recently. She wrote it during the height of the Vietnam War protests. A planet inhabited by a non violent race is colonised. They have to make a decision whether to take up violent resistance.
It a story about the effect of violence. As well as a criticism of colonisation.
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
I've just finished reading The Dispossessed.
She wrote it in 1974 and it's still revalant now. Set in her alternative universe it's two planets. One like the earth of her time of the cold war. Two superpowes. One Capitalist and one authoritian communist ( Urras) The other nearby planet is anarchist ( Anarres). The anarchists made a deal and moved on mass to the other planet. Building an anarchist society despite the harsh climate.
Shevek the scientist on the anarchist planet and his friends find life in the anarchist planet has its problems. What I liked about the novel is that it's not just utopian. She goes into the "tyranny of structurelessness".
Shevek decides to go back to the old planet. The novel moves between chapters on Shevek on Urras and Anarres.
Shevek is like a stranger in a strange land on Urras. This is well done. He doesn't get money, buying and selling, inequality. He is perplexed at the "common sense" of a consumerist cspitalist society. He has gone to the Capitalist part of Anarres. One disappointment with the novel is that he does not go to Thu the communist part. He does have discussions with a scientist from Thu. Who (correctly) tells him he is naïve.
Anarres is a difficult planet to live on due to its climate. At one point a drought and famine stretch anarchism to its limits. It survives but leaves a society where people are made to feel they have to confirm. The prison in the head as Shevek says. The problem of building "socialism in one country". She doesn't refer directly to history on our real Earth but that is how I read it.
As Shevek notices the planet Urras has much better climate and resources to make Anarchism possible. Unlike Urras where they have to work hard just to produce enough to eat.
The novel goes into the how the individual relates to society. Is pursuing ones individual interests. Not sure how to put this. Ursula is somewhat restrained. Desires , obsessions seems to strong. But there is section where Shevek discusses an artist on Anarres whose work is not banned as such but criticized so much that the artist is sent to a mental hospital. ( As happened in the real world of Soviet USSR).
What Shevek and his friends call for is a "permanent revolution" on Anarres. That post the famine the Anarres bureaucracy has become ossified.
The bureaucracy was necessary to survive the bad times now it's endangering in the long term the revolutionary ideas that started Anarres.
So two arguments Shevek wanting to engage with Urras will endanger what they have built on Anarres and Shevek with his comrades who see the have to take the risk. Shades of Trotsky imo.
On Urras Shevek ends up getting involved with the Anarchists and Thu supporting socialists in opposing the Capitalists.
Another thing I liked about the novel is the relationships between men and women. On Anarres men and women are equal. Same sex relationships are accepted. Some great scenes on Urras where he gets totally out of his his depth in a patriarchal Capitalist society.
A fascinating read. And in the end optimistic.
She wrote it in 1974 and it's still revalant now. Set in her alternative universe it's two planets. One like the earth of her time of the cold war. Two superpowes. One Capitalist and one authoritian communist ( Urras) The other nearby planet is anarchist ( Anarres). The anarchists made a deal and moved on mass to the other planet. Building an anarchist society despite the harsh climate.
Shevek the scientist on the anarchist planet and his friends find life in the anarchist planet has its problems. What I liked about the novel is that it's not just utopian. She goes into the "tyranny of structurelessness".
Shevek decides to go back to the old planet. The novel moves between chapters on Shevek on Urras and Anarres.
Shevek is like a stranger in a strange land on Urras. This is well done. He doesn't get money, buying and selling, inequality. He is perplexed at the "common sense" of a consumerist cspitalist society. He has gone to the Capitalist part of Anarres. One disappointment with the novel is that he does not go to Thu the communist part. He does have discussions with a scientist from Thu. Who (correctly) tells him he is naïve.
Anarres is a difficult planet to live on due to its climate. At one point a drought and famine stretch anarchism to its limits. It survives but leaves a society where people are made to feel they have to confirm. The prison in the head as Shevek says. The problem of building "socialism in one country". She doesn't refer directly to history on our real Earth but that is how I read it.
As Shevek notices the planet Urras has much better climate and resources to make Anarchism possible. Unlike Urras where they have to work hard just to produce enough to eat.
The novel goes into the how the individual relates to society. Is pursuing ones individual interests. Not sure how to put this. Ursula is somewhat restrained. Desires , obsessions seems to strong. But there is section where Shevek discusses an artist on Anarres whose work is not banned as such but criticized so much that the artist is sent to a mental hospital. ( As happened in the real world of Soviet USSR).
What Shevek and his friends call for is a "permanent revolution" on Anarres. That post the famine the Anarres bureaucracy has become ossified.
The bureaucracy was necessary to survive the bad times now it's endangering in the long term the revolutionary ideas that started Anarres.
So two arguments Shevek wanting to engage with Urras will endanger what they have built on Anarres and Shevek with his comrades who see the have to take the risk. Shades of Trotsky imo.
On Urras Shevek ends up getting involved with the Anarchists and Thu supporting socialists in opposing the Capitalists.
Another thing I liked about the novel is the relationships between men and women. On Anarres men and women are equal. Same sex relationships are accepted. Some great scenes on Urras where he gets totally out of his his depth in a patriarchal Capitalist society.
A fascinating read. And in the end optimistic.
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