Nov 07, 2021

Ursula K. Le Guin's Planet of Exile

This year I am reading Ursula K Le Guin.

I was introduced to her work by my friend, Alexis, almost four years ago. The first book I read was The Left Hand of Darkness and right away I fell in love with her work.

She and Murakmi are the two authors who make me cry. Murakmi for the pain that underlies our sedate day to day lives and Ms. Le Guin because her writing makes me yearn for a time and a people of simplicity and nobility.

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Favourite Quotes

"Neither grief nor pride had as much truth in them as did joy..."

In her 1978 foreword,  she writes: "Jakob is the hero, active, articulate, rushing about fighting bravely and governing busily; but the central mover of the book, the one who chooses , is in fact, Rolery. Taoism got to me earlier than modern feminism did. Where some see a dominant Hero and a passive Little Woman, I saw, and still see, the essential wastefulness and futility of aggression and the profound effectiveness of wu wei, "action through stillness"."

I have never come across so many different evocative descriptions of the of fallen leaves buffeted by wind. Here are a few of  them: 

"...through the storming of dead leaves" ;

"Bare feet beating in the surf of leaves..."

"...huge drifts of leaves"

Read on Medium