Interview

Talking With
Ursula Le Guin

You’ll find her books sitting squarely in the middle of the science fiction section of your local bookstore. But Ursula Le Guin will not be so easily pigeonholed. Her writing spans and transcends science fiction, high fantasy, and magical realism, stretching into religion, poetry, and social commentary.

Telling stories and listening to stories is in Le Guin’s blood. A resident of Portland, Oregon, since 1958, she grew up in California, where her father was an anthropologist, photographer, and pioneer in Native American studies and, her mother was a writer of children’s books and the author of ISHI IN TWO WORLDS. “When I was a kid, I may have heard more oral storytelling than a lot of American kids do. Of course, that was a long time ago, way before television. We went into the country every summer, and lived in an old farmhouse. We didn’t even have a radio back then. At night we’d sit around the campfire and we’d talk, we’d sing, and we’d tell stories. Sometimes we would get an Indian story out of my father.”

Le Guin saw her first two novels, ROCANNAN’S WORLD and PLANET OF EXILE, published in 1966. These were followed in 1968 by CITY OF ILLUSION and by A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA, which launched her popular Earthsea trilogy. Her 1969 novel, THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS, earned her the Hugo, Nebula, and James Tiptree, Jr., Awards.

Reflecting on the various audio adaptations of her work, Le Guin said, “The recordings that [producer] Stefan Rudnicki is doing are really good. Harlan Ellison recorded A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA, which came out last year. He did a beautiful job. They’re very careful to check pronunciation with me. I had an appalling experience where there was a whole recording of THE TOMBS OF ATUAN in which the reader mispronounces Atuan.” Names are a key element in her books. In the Earthsea stories, to know a person’s true name is to have power over that person. And so, pronunciation is very important. Regarding Ged, the hero of A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA, “People have asked me is his name pronounced ‘ghed’ or ‘jed.’ My god, it’s ‘ghed!’ ‘Jed’ is some sort of mountain man.”

Sound is paramount in Le Guin’s storytelling. “When I write, I hear what I’m writing,” she told AudioFile. “I know that there are some writers that don’t, because if you try to read it out loud, it goes ‘clunk!’ There’s an aural quality to my writing; at least, there ought to be. If there isn’t, then something’s wrong with it. And that’s possibly partly from this early experience of storytelling. The idea of a story being a human voice is pretty deep in me. Of course, audio literature is a lovely means that we have of doing that.”

On numerous occasions, Le Guin has been placed before the microphone to read her works. Under the direction of Stefan Rudnicki, she narrated one of the stories from her recent collection TALES FROM EARTHSEA. “I would have narrated them all if they’d let me. I’m an awful ham,” she admitted, laughing. “I did record an abridged version of LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS. I enjoy studio work. I love working with sound technicians,” she added, with youthful pleasure in her voice. “They’re so cool.”—Steven Steinbock

FEB/MAR02

Photo © Marion Wood Kolish