AN URSULINE PRELUDE

I dimly remember reading the 1979 edition of Ursula LeGuin's LANGUAGE OF THE NIGHT (henceforth LOTN) sometime in the 1980s, probably as soon as I found a copy at some public library. At the time I think that  I liked certain essays in the book better than any of LeGuin's much-heralded fiction: THE DISPOSSESSED HAND OF EARTHSEA and all that. Even the best of the late author's works I found characterized by a certain intellectual hauteur that didn't resonate with me, even when I recognized the general quality of the style and content.

Still, for the most part I had good memories of the essays, even if I didn't care for the way LeGuin took unjustified pot-shots at comics characters, referring in one essay to "the Superman and Batman dope," showing little originality in her comparison of superheroes to addictive drugs. And then there's "Myth and Archetype in Science Fiction," whose wholly inadequate definition of "myth in literature" irked me for many years before I finally blogged my answer to LeGuin in the 2008 essay THEMATIC REALISM PART 2.

Still, it's possible that LeGuin was a partial influence on me in terms of my desire to come up with a better and more pluralistic understanding of the interactions of myth and art. I've now recently re-read the original essays once more, and in my next two essays I'll cover many of the flaws in LeGuin's logic. At no time do I deny LeGuin the right to have had tastes that don't align with mine. But the ways in which she justified her tastes are, as always, open to debate.