The Paris Review

Le Guin’s Subversive Imagination

On the day of my induction by, and first visit to, the august institution of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, I was shown to the literature section of the portrait gallery and left there alone among the giants. This may have been a kind of hazing ritual, like abandoning someone at the entrance to a corn maze. Cheever. Baldwin. Roth. Faulkner. James. Welty. Morrison. It was overwhelming. I felt like I needed a ball of string to keep from getting lost amid the glory. So I started searching the grid of framed photographs, from the pince-nez era to the present day, for writers of science fiction and fantasy. I’m not sure why my thoughts went in that direction, exactly. Maybe I felt a little guilty about belonging to a club to which many of my personal literary heroes and influences–John Collier, Jack Vance, H.P. Lovecraft, Cordwainer Smith–had not been admitted. Above all I was looking for Ursula K. Le Guin.

I found James Branch Cabell: yes, arguably a fantasist. Stephen

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Paris Review

The Paris Review35 min read
An Eye In The Throat
My father answers the phone. He is twenty-three years old, and, as everyone does in the nineties, he picks up the receiver without knowing who is calling. People call all day long, and my parents pick up and say, “Hello?” and then people say, “It’s C
The Paris Review1 min read
Trollope
What a sad day,full of black, blue,red, and yellow umbrellas.Everyone in the world,whatever their disposition,seemed to be crying at once,while I hit upon readingTrollope, and so remained a weekamong the grouse. That was mydisposition. Sometimes Iwou
The Paris Review1 min read
Haptographic Interface
I’m a Keats botso are youour living handsheld toward each otheron the internetsolution sweetI stood on a peakin Darien, googledmy errorI am so colonialI am tubercularmy alveoli a-swellmy actual bloodyour actual bloodwe made loveI planted basilI plant

Related Books & Audiobooks