Ursula K Le Guin took no shit and gave out mucho heaps of shit and for that I salute her. Ursula K. Le Guin: The Last Interview and Other Conversations is a monument to a lady who should have some how some way been appointed to mediate and somehow also participate all presidential debates because when asked a stupid question framed badly she has the gumption and/or balls to say No. Try Again.
I’m not 100% sure why I even read this because between you and me, the only Le Guin fiction I’ve read was a couple of the Earthsea books a million years ago as a teen and I didn’t even like them much? But, just like On Writing, an author whose fiction I have no use for is SO INTERESTING as a person and as a professional example.
For example … she is pretty frank about the fact that she got into speculative fiction because she wrote a ton, and SF is the first market that started getting her sales, so she kept marketing that way. She thinks of herself as a literary writer. She’s a bit defensive about it.
Another recurring theme is that of feminine brilliance willingly penned in by family life. Her father was a celebrated anthropologist, and Ursula grew up in the company of anthropological “subjects” – collaborators, objects of inquiry, and friends – that her father brought into their lives. But is was Le Guin’s mother who, after raising her children and thrusting them from the nest, wrote the bestselling Ishi In Two Worlds about a man who her father had studied and befriended.
Le Guin is frank about the compromises she struck – and the support she absolutely relied on – in raising her own brood of three children in partnership with her husband of 60 years. While the children were young she only wrote after they were asleep. And she is explicit that two can do the job of three — that is, she and her husband could work two fulltime adult jobs and share the fulltime adult job of raising children — while she doubted the ability of one (single parent) to fully do the job of two (a job and raising a child).
If you actually enjoy Le Guin’s fiction, definitely check out this collection of interviews with her. She comes across as a brassy lady who is not holding back her real opinions on anything. Even if you don’t like her fiction, there’s something here as just a character study. It did tempt me to add some of her fiction on my to-be-read pile … but there’s nothing on there I wanted to supplant, unfortunately, so those additions are getting stacked so low I’m afraid I still won’t get to them. Oh well!
Two Wrongs and a Write 