Ursula K. Le Guin must be one of the most brilliant women to ever live. I admire her so much. Not only is she brilliant but she is a prolific writer, whose stories are mind bending and intelligent, and are beautifully written. I don't believe there is a better writer of prose.
At 81 she doesn't publish as much as she once did. She recently released a book of poems. Her last novel was released in 2008. A book by the title of Lavinia. Stephen King included her novel The Lathe of Heaven in his list of 100 Greatest Horror Novels. You can find that list in his book Danse Macabre. Thankfully she regularly updates her blog. It is always an entertaining and enlightening read. Today she posted a blog titled Dangerous Writing, Dangerous Cover Copy.
She opened the blog by talking about the word "edgy" is the fashionable word to praise books. Another word to go along with edgy is "gritty." Every time I read a review or check out a blurb or listen to someone talk about a newly published book - especially in the fantasy genre - the word gritty and other such words are heaped upon the novel. This is done to appeal to the readers of George R.R. Martin. Dude has built a gigantic fanbase because his books are edgy and gritty. What folks don't understand is that his books are to the fantasy genre that Alan Moore's Watchmen is to comic books. They are a commentary of fantasy, a look or a reflection of the genre.
The last few paragraphs of Ursula's blog killed me. I'm going to copy/past them here. However you should read the entire blog. Click here.
This excerpt from Le Guin's blog is going to knock your socks off. Enjoy!
But I don’t think Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Bronte, Melville, or Steinbeck were writing to horrify, to shock or frighten or sicken, to sear eyeballs or to wrench guts. They were aware of audience, oh yes indeed, but their intentions were not violent. They were not in assault mode. A writer whose intention is to frighten and distress the reader has a very aggressive program and a very limited goal. Serious writers want to do something beyond asserting power over their audience, beyond self-satisfaction, beyond personal gain — even though they may want all those things very much.
I think the mystery of art lies in this, that artists’ relationship is essentially with their work — not with power, not with profit, not with themselves, not even with their audience.
If this is true, a writer’s relationship with readers has no need to be aggressive, exploitive, coercive, or collusive. To writers whose essential relationship is with their work, the shock, distress, and fear their work may cause their readers to feel are means to an end, their only way of saying what they have to say. They will use these dangerous means carefully, sparingly, at need. The effect can be immediate, long-lasting, and profound. It can last several thousand years.
Writers whose work is not an end in itself but a means to gain fame, power, money, etc., may find that causing shock, fear, digust, etc. are a direct means to that end and can be hugely effective. They use them as a pusher uses drugs. The effect is immediate, brief, and trivial. It lasts until the next best-seller.
Readers who want no more than to get their jollies from the latest exploitation of the latest shock fad are praised by the blurbs for their courage in daring to read dangerous revelations, but I suspect that they’re just as complacent as the readers of “cozy” fiction — risk-free, knowing exactly to expect.
Good writers ask for our consent, in fact our participation in their work, our collaboration in its recreation on the stage as we watch it or on the page as we read it. I guess the reason they’re “good” writers is that they’re so good at winning consent and participation from us, persuading us to give them our trust, and rewarding it with something we did not expect.
That’s quite different from asking us to sit there guzzling another jolt of starbug caffeine while reading a novel in order to have our panic buttons pushed again.
Trust somebody who’s going to give us something we didn’t expect? But that could be dangerous!
Never fear. You’re safe. Just trust the cover copy folks. They’re all out there, ready to wrench your guts and serve them up in a presentation of fried eyeballs and fugu in complacency sauce. Bon appétit!
** I can't figure out why the formatting of the blog is turning out so weird. I apologize. I'm not tech savvy enough to fix it. I hope you enjoyed the blog anyway.
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