Her Left Hand, The Darkness by Alison Smith

Ari Meermans

MacAllister's Official Minion & Greeter
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 24, 2011
Messages
12,854
Reaction score
3,057
Location
Not where you last saw me.
READ Her Left Hand, The Darkness by Alison Smith (in Granta Online Magazine), particularly if as a writer you're having a hard row to hoe right now. It's about meeting and learning from Ursula K. Le Guin. It's about life, about each person's need for understanding, and about how each one of us needs help in reinventing ourselves. It's about writing and the goals we set for ourselves. And it's about who determines where we fit.

What are your takeaways from the essay?
 
Last edited:

Kylabelle

unaccounted for
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 3, 2013
Messages
26,200
Reaction score
4,015
I love this article. I love the view into Ursula Le Guin's personality, and the delightful way she handled some of the challenges of that week. :)
 

Ari Meermans

MacAllister's Official Minion & Greeter
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 24, 2011
Messages
12,854
Reaction score
3,057
Location
Not where you last saw me.
The thanks are all Mac's. She tweeted the link. I read the essay. Oh, hey! Everbuddy over at AW needs this right about now. It's thought-provoking, it's uplifting . . . it's . . . it's . . . well, dangit, it's just plain inspirational.

So, here it is. :)
 
Last edited:

Introversion

Pie aren't squared, pie are round!
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 17, 2013
Messages
10,652
Reaction score
14,890
Location
Massachusetts
I must confess that I’ve only read Le Guin’s Earthsea series. I attempted The Left Hand of Darkness in high school IIRC, but gave up quickly. Probably should try it (and her other works) again, as my literary tastes have grown a bit since then. :tongue
 

Ari Meermans

MacAllister's Official Minion & Greeter
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 24, 2011
Messages
12,854
Reaction score
3,057
Location
Not where you last saw me.
Do at least give them another shot. As with any author's works, some books may be more to your taste than others. One I recommend to everyone—and I know I've recommended it here too—is No Time To Spare: Thinking About What Matters. It's part a reprinting of some of her essays and part autobiography, yet fully a philosophy of life and writing. (It was published in December 2017 a little over a month before she died.)
 

mrsmig

Write. Write. Writey Write Write.
Staff member
Moderator
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 4, 2012
Messages
9,885
Reaction score
7,179
Location
Virginia
What a terrific, inspiring article. I love what she said about being a writer rather than an author. I need to have that cross-stitched and hung where I can see it every day.

Thanks for the link to her essays, too. I've added the book to my TBR list.
 

Woollybear

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 27, 2017
Messages
9,727
Reaction score
9,712
Location
USA
I've had difficulty reading Le Guin despite trying a few times, but I'm finally starting to 'get it.'

For me, about 25 pages into one of her books, I realized why I was having difficulty. It was because I expected so much from her writing. Because of Le Guin's reputation and impressive body of work, I expected to become somehow enlightened by the first words on the page. Any page. It wasn't a conscious expectation, but it was hiding inside--and completely unfair of me.

So, on page about 25, when I realized I held such an unrealistic expectation, I let it go and imagined the book had been written by a random author I had never heard of before. :) And I was amazed by the writing. It is quite good.

‘If no one is expecting much, it’s not hard to exceed their expectations.’ So, that phrase in the essay struck me, and she intended it in a different way at the time, but turned on its head (or not) it says a lot.

Great essay. Great great stories in that essay. What a neat and determined self-defined woman.
 
Last edited:

jjdebenedictis

is watching you via her avatar
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jun 25, 2010
Messages
7,063
Reaction score
1,642
Ah, a lovely essay. Thanks you! (And I've loved LeGuin's writing for a long time -- but not all of it -- so I'm fine with people not liking what they've been exposed to. Maybe they just haven't found the right one of her books at the right time of their life yet. :) )
 

Ari Meermans

MacAllister's Official Minion & Greeter
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 24, 2011
Messages
12,854
Reaction score
3,057
Location
Not where you last saw me.
I haven't toted up how many essays and autobiographies vs. how many works of fiction I've recommend but it's probably about a fifty-fifty split. I'm highly selective wrt the autobiographies I read—they must be about what the author learned and be about growth and the more witty or wry the better. Mastery of the language is a requirement as well. Le Guin excelled.

Then I got to thinking about all of her works of fiction I have and was wondering which would be my favorite—would it be The Lathe of Heaven or something from the Hainish Cycle or the Earthsea Cycle books? But, no, as much as I still enjoy those and others, my all-time favorite is an oldie: Always Coming Home. Point being—you just never know.
 

Kjbartolotta

Potentially has/is dog
Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 15, 2014
Messages
4,197
Reaction score
1,049
Location
Los Angeles
I've always enjoyed her nonfiction and accounts of people who've met her, because she was always rather entertaining and had a firm no BS rule about just about everything.

Thank you for the link, got a little teary thinking about her...
 

Snitchcat

Dragon-kitty.
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 2, 2006
Messages
6,344
Reaction score
975
Location
o,0
Thank you for the link.

Have it bookmarked and also saved on my phone to read when I need it.
 

MontyBurr

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 26, 2018
Messages
55
Reaction score
9
Location
Washington State
Then...

READ Her Left Hand, The Darkness by Alison Smith (in Granta Online Magazine), particularly if as a writer you're having a hard row to hoe right now. It's about meeting and learning from Ursula K. Le Guin. It's about life, about each person's need for understanding, and about how each one of us needs help in reinventing ourselves. It's about writing and the goals we set for ourselves. And it's about who determines where we fit.

What are your takeaways from the essay?

When an article like this approaches 3,000 words, it picks up an odor of agenda. Waxing rhapsodic isn’t always fashionable.

My thoughts - I am entitled to them.

Monty
 

Helix

socially distancing
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 31, 2011
Messages
11,698
Reaction score
12,083
Location
Atherton Tablelands
Website
snailseyeview.medium.com
That was splendid. Especially the bit where Le Guin was invited out to dinner.

When an article like this approaches 3,000 words, it picks up an odor of agenda. Waxing rhapsodic isn’t always fashionable.

My thoughts - I am entitled to them.

Monty


You are indeed entitled to them and no one is forcing you to read a personal essay if you don't want to. But since it is a memoir of the author's mentorship by Ursula K LeGuin, I'm wondering what you think that agenda is and why it's so noisome.
 

mccardey

Self-Ban
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 10, 2010
Messages
19,214
Reaction score
15,830
Location
Australia.
Oh, that was lovely, and I'd have missed it. Thanks, Ari, thanks, Mac. She was a wonderful writer and this is a lovely record of how the person existed alongside the writing. It's gorgeous.

Most of all, I'm glad that young Alison Smith was assigned her. What a perfect moment for her, and how much she realised that and was grateful for it and drank it in, let it teach her.

Lucky girl - but it wasn't wasted. :)



ETA:
When an article like this approaches 3,000 words
Oh, good grief. How many words would have worked for you?
 
Last edited:

Ari Meermans

MacAllister's Official Minion & Greeter
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 24, 2011
Messages
12,854
Reaction score
3,057
Location
Not where you last saw me.
When an article like this approaches 3,000 words, it picks up an odor of agenda. Waxing rhapsodic isn’t always fashionable.

My thoughts - I am entitled to them.

Monty

Why, bless your heart, of course, you are.


Oh, that was lovely, and I'd have missed it. Thanks, Ari, thanks, Mac. She was a wonderful writer and this is a lovely record of how the person existed alongside the writing. It's gorgeous.

Most of all, I'm glad that young Alison Smith was assigned her. What a perfect moment for her, and how much she realised that and was grateful for it and drank it in, let it teach her.

Lucky girl - but it wasn't wasted. :)


ETA:
When an article like this approaches 3,000 words
Oh, good grief. How many words would have worked for you?

It isn't about the number of words so much as it had the "odor of agenda". So, for everyone's benefit, let me just say this about that: If you don't have an agenda, if your writing doesn't make a point, it's just so much word salad and it won't have the odor of published. That agenda is called theme.

Preaching, on the other hand, is belaboring your point and should be avoided, but that's not what happened in the essay. It was a lovely piece about the right mentor at the right time in a young woman's life.
 
Last edited:

Kylabelle

unaccounted for
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 3, 2013
Messages
26,200
Reaction score
4,015
(I keep encountering circumstances where I really want to holler "Ba-aa!" but I am too shy.) :gone:
 

AW Admin

Administrator
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 19, 2008
Messages
18,772
Reaction score
6,285
When an article like this approaches 3,000 words, it picks up an odor of agenda. Waxing rhapsodic isn’t always fashionable.

My thoughts - I am entitled to them.

Monty

Well of course you are. But the point of writing that is non-fiction is to persuade. That's its purpose.

So asserting that a long personal essay has an "agenda" is tantamount to noticing that water is wet.
 
Last edited:

Introversion

Pie aren't squared, pie are round!
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 17, 2013
Messages
10,652
Reaction score
14,890
Location
Massachusetts
When an article like this approaches 3,000 words, it picks up an odor of agenda. Waxing rhapsodic isn’t always fashionable.

Like others, I’m curious what you thought that agenda was, or why having an agenda when writing is a bad thing?
 

P.K. Torrens

Saving up for a typewriter
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 15, 2017
Messages
513
Reaction score
313
Location
Auckland, NZ
Gorgeous essay.

Thank you very much for sharing.

My take away is that Ursula was one badass intellectual with a heap of attitude.
 

Jaymz Connelly

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 2, 2012
Messages
12,797
Reaction score
2,700
Location
under a rock
That was an excellent essay.

My takeaway? Don't be afraid to be yourself. If you don't define who you are, someone else will try to do it for you. Better to be yourself than someone else's idea of who you are.

I doubt very much I'll ever be an author with books on a store shelf, but I sure as hell am a writer!
 

Ari Meermans

MacAllister's Official Minion & Greeter
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 24, 2011
Messages
12,854
Reaction score
3,057
Location
Not where you last saw me.
That was an excellent essay.

My takeaway? Don't be afraid to be yourself. If you don't define who you are, someone else will try to do it for you. Better to be yourself than someone else's idea of who you are.

I doubt very much I'll ever be an author with books on a store shelf, but I sure as hell am a writer!
[Bolding mine]

But when you are you'll know what to do when you see them there, yes?

:greenie