Ursula K. Le Guin has passed, and it is now time for an admission from me: \u00a0I had never read any of her works. \u00a0This made the news of her passing only a little bit shocking for me; not being one who followed her or her works, I had somewhat assumed that she had passed years ago.<\/p>\n
Not reading any Le Guin was\u00a0not an oversight on my part. \u00a0I had attempted to read\u00a0A Wizard of Earthsea<\/em> when I was 14 or 15 or so. \u00a0My parents had a copy, and I absconded with it to one of the various little nests I had made around our half-farm. \u00a0I certainly remember trying to read it by candlelight on summer evenings in the old tin shed I had cleaned out and organized (and perhaps had even found the book therein). \u00a0I don’t think the book was a legal copy – I seem to remember it was actually stripped, but with a hard, plastic, press-on cover (I believe with a little lenticular diamond pattern to it) to protect the first page. \u00a0But that was not something I knew at the time; it was not until many years later that I learned what the various paperbacks missing their covers actually were.<\/p>\n So, there I sat, and attempted to read the book. \u00a0The map in front promised a grand adventure. \u00a0The book exuded ocean – from the title to the map to the back cover (tan-gray with a little boat in the corner, and I believe curly gusts of wind depicted) told me that there was sailing.<\/p>\n I never made it past the first chapter. \u00a0I don’t even recall making it past the first page.<\/p>\n Perhaps it was the writing. \u00a0Looking at the book now, I can see that the easy, flowing style of the book would not be something that my teen-aged self would be drawn in by.<\/p>\n Perhaps it was the map. \u00a0So many islands, so much water. \u00a0It was unlike any map I had seen; how could I keep that all in my head? \u00a0The geography was too difficult.<\/p>\n Perhaps it was the main character. \u00a0I wanted to read a book about a wizard, not some boy from a northern island. \u00a0Who was this boy? \u00a0What was the relation to the title? Was the titular wizard the antagonist? \u00a0I couldn’t tell, but to teen-aged\u00a0rabbit-farmer me, reading a book about a teen-aged goat-farmer was not something I felt any interest in. \u00a0 And so the main character could not draw me in.<\/p>\n All\u00a0of these are excuses; they are not the real reason I never read the book. \u00a0They were barriers, yes. \u00a0They prevented me from being drawn into the world. \u00a0But the real barrier was this: \u00a0this was not my book. \u00a0I had not been granted permission to read it.<\/p>\n It was a book I had found and\u00a0it was (I assumed at the time, and still assume\u00a0to day)\u00a0\u00a0my mother’s. \u00a0It had been\u00a0packed away. \u00a0It had not been given to me to read. \u00a0And so I could not enter the world.<\/p>\n This is not to say that I could not\u00a0read things without permission, but doing so always required something that would overpower the guilt I would feel doing so. \u00a0 I do recall reading Dave Berg’s\u00a0The Lighter Side of…<\/em> in\u00a0my father’s copies of MAD<\/em> magazine; it was something that could draw me in. \u00a0The rest of the magazine was\u00a0verboten<\/em> in my mind (well,\u00a0Spy vs. Spy<\/em> could draw me in), and so I did not read it. \u00a0Any time I looked over the various satirical components of the magazine, I could feel pangs of guilt; the thought that I should not be doing this because I had not been given permission. \u00a0That was enough;\u00a0The Lighter Side of…<\/em> could draw me in and I could enjoy it in spite of the guilt, but the rest of the magazine could not. \u00a0This was also true of Earthsea; it did not have the drawing power to pull me though the thoughts that I should not be reading it because I had not been given permission. \u00a0And so, after a few futile attempts at reading it, it went unread, back into the box in the tin shed, possibly condemned to mildew and flames. \u00a0Or possibly\u00a0not – I would not be surprised to find it still extant at my parents’ house.<\/p>\n Years passed. \u00a0Friends came and went, and talked about Ursula K. Le Guin and\u00a0The Left Hand of Darkness<\/em> and\u00a0A Wizard of Earthsea<\/em> and many other works. \u00a0But still I could not bring myself to read any books. \u00a0The earlier experience had paralyzed me, had soured me on works by Le Guin. \u00a0I could not shake the feeling that I should not be reading them, all traceable back to those first attempts. \u00a0This world was never given to me<\/em>, I would think. \u00a0Any further attempts at entrance were as forbidden in my mind as the first.<\/p>\n Oddly enough, coffee falls into this same category. \u00a0I was never given permission to drink coffee, and so I never did. \u00a0As I got older, I felt this more and more as a social ostracization. \u00a0Eventually, when I was 40, I went to my wife and asked her permission to drink coffee (and to teach me how), just so that I could stop feeling disconnected from society. \u00a0I can now drink a cup of coffee, but have not yet stopped feeling self-conscious about it.<\/p>\n And then came the news that Ursula K. Le Guin had passed away. \u00a0Friends were commenting on the sadness. \u00a0But I had nothing to say, nothing to add to the conversation. \u00a0This is not my world<\/em>, I still thought. \u00a0But, like the coffee, I was beginning to feel an outcast for having not read anything by Le Guin. \u00a0And so I opened up my Kindle and purchased\u00a0A\u00a0Wizard of Earthsea<\/em>. \u00a0My own copy. \u00a0Something I had permission to read.<\/p>\n What follows might contain spoilers about the book. \u00a0No, what follows certainly contains spoilers about the book. \u00a0But if you are reading this, chances are that you have already read the book. \u00a0But still, the spoiler warning begins here.<\/p>\n There was still a little bit of self-consciousness and hesitation about reading the book. \u00a0It was the remnants of past guilt. \u00a0But it was\u00a0now something that I could break through and read the book.<\/p>\n At first, I was not even sure that this was the same book I had tried to read all those years ago. \u00a0Certainly the cover was different; covers change over the years. \u00a0But an internet image search shows that this is the book. \u00a0What I thought was curl-i-ques of wind on the back cover was in fact waves. \u00a0And I am fairly certain that the book was in fact\u00a0A Wizard of Earthsea<\/em> and not one of the other books in the cycle, for this is the one that has a boat on the back cover.<\/p>\n As far as my impressions of the book itself, I am perhaps a harder grader than others as I have now read it for the first time in my early forties. \u00a0In short, it is a quality book, but not one that makes a huge impact on my life now. \u00a0I have never really been a fan of\u00a0bildungsroman\u00a0<\/em>works;\u00a0it grates me to\u00a0watch other people make mistakes. \u00a0I would rather have the stories of the people who \u00a0know what they are doing so I can emulate them. \u00a0(Yoda captured my attention and imagination much more than Luke Skywalker, for example.) \u00a0Yes, older and wiser people make mistakes as well, but they typically can recognize their mistakes and recover from them. \u00a0Still, \u00a0I much preferred the way Ged was handled than Harry Potter – a perpetually angry and whiny protagonist is not someone I can readily identify with. \u00a0Ged did not learn his lesson in time to prevent a mistake, but he learned from the mistake and took the advice of his elders to heart.<\/p>\n The language of the book, I felt, was good. \u00a0The imagery was great and the sentences flowed one into the other well. \u00a0There were a few places where the syntax made it difficult for me to follow the action (but not in any way to the level that Robin McKinley’s syntax will lose me!), and a couple of places where I lost interest in the middle of the page – too much imagery can be problematic in different ways from too little. \u00a0It is a style not my favorite (I really enjoy J. K. Rowling’s and Patrick Rothfuss’s writing styles), but it was not a bad one.<\/p>\n The main plot point, however, was one that I felt was fairly weak. \u00a0Perhaps it is the fact that I am older and have seen this before: \u00a0in the Star Trek<\/em>\u00a0episode “The Enemy Within,” in\u00a0Dr.\u00a0Jekyll\u00a0and Mr Hyde<\/em>, in Dark Link from\u00a0The Legend of Zelda<\/em> video games, in Luke’s journey into the cave in\u00a0Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, <\/em>and in many other places I cannot recall at the moment. \u00a0I picked up on what the shadow was much sooner than Ged did (when it first spoke Ged’s name was when I determined what it was), and so I was not surprised by the end of the book. \u00a0By reading it this late in life, it was reduced to cliche. \u00a0I’ve seen this before.<\/p>\n There was, however, one minor part of the story that I felt was surprising and important. \u00a0In fact, it felt a little out of place in a story like this. \u00a0It is, to me, unusual for a coming-of-age character to know his own limitations; that is usually the entire point of such stories. \u00a0These stories all tell me that “you will be an adult when you know not to attempt what you cannot do and can accept that in yourself.” And so I was quite surprised to see that Ged calmly and wisely came up with the solution to determine the Master Doorkeeper’s name. \u00a0That was the part of the book that impressed me the most. \u00a0Asking for help is perhaps the most difficult thing for a hero to do, and is a lesson that some heros (such as Harry Potter) must learn over and over and over again.<\/p>\n And such are my impressions from reading the book. \u00a0Perhaps, if I feel like I can enter this world again, I will read the others in the cycle. \u00a0Or perhaps I will feel that I only have permission to read this one. \u00a0I am not certain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thoughts upon not reading A Wizard of Earthsea for many times, and then thoughts upon reading A Wizard of Earthsea for the first time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[54,55],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/coolskill.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/coolskill.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/coolskill.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/coolskill.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/coolskill.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/coolskill.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":542,"href":"http:\/\/coolskill.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions\/542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/coolskill.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/coolskill.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/coolskill.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}