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May list, and Wiscon
24. Ursula Le Guin thanked our panel for the insights into the recent Earthsea books.
It was a good panel. I'd been a little concerned in the Green Room, because one of the panelists seemed to have definite Plans as to how things should go. In the end, Pat Hodgell did a fine job moderating, and we had lots of connections among the books, and to Le Guin's other material, and to Tolkien and the Greeks and Gilgamesh (the latter on the theme of unappealing afterlives).
Le Guin came in quietly just as the panel started. She mostly sat quietly in back, answering a few specific questions like how to pronounce "Atuan" and offering some good comments on Tolkien.
It was the sort of good panel where I said things I hadn't thought of before: in addition to re-visioning gender relationships in Earthsea, The Other Wind shows us that the Kargs are not just ignorant barbarians: they are right about major metaphysical matters. The ambiguity of the dry land in Earthsea goes back at least to "The Word of Unbinding."
Other topics included the forest; another panelist's wish for Tenar to revenge herself, at the end of The Tombs of Atuan; similarties to the end of Pullman's His Dark Materials, and Lebannen as an unusual-for-fiction male character (feeling) trapped by an arranged marriage. We don't see what happens after the wedding, or how he feels in the long run, but I did point out that he hasn't had significant choice since his father sent him to Roke to ask why spells had stopped working, at the beginning of The Farthest Shore. Ged and Tenar are both unusual in that the standard plot arc is poor boy/girl makes good, including peasant turns out to have great magical gifts or be heir to something; they've had that, and walked away from it, and are happy living quietly and farming in the hills of Gont.
In the end, I didn't use my notes on Tehanu from the other day (though I did print them out). I introduced myself by noting that the first three Earthsea books were the first books I ever bought for myself.
Also, I have lilacs in my room, and Kate and Dave found us a lunch place that managed to be good, fast, and cheap: Madison Masala's (vegetarian) lunch buffet, just what I needed, not having had enough vegetables of late.
It was a good panel. I'd been a little concerned in the Green Room, because one of the panelists seemed to have definite Plans as to how things should go. In the end, Pat Hodgell did a fine job moderating, and we had lots of connections among the books, and to Le Guin's other material, and to Tolkien and the Greeks and Gilgamesh (the latter on the theme of unappealing afterlives).
Le Guin came in quietly just as the panel started. She mostly sat quietly in back, answering a few specific questions like how to pronounce "Atuan" and offering some good comments on Tolkien.
It was the sort of good panel where I said things I hadn't thought of before: in addition to re-visioning gender relationships in Earthsea, The Other Wind shows us that the Kargs are not just ignorant barbarians: they are right about major metaphysical matters. The ambiguity of the dry land in Earthsea goes back at least to "The Word of Unbinding."
Other topics included the forest; another panelist's wish for Tenar to revenge herself, at the end of The Tombs of Atuan; similarties to the end of Pullman's His Dark Materials, and Lebannen as an unusual-for-fiction male character (feeling) trapped by an arranged marriage. We don't see what happens after the wedding, or how he feels in the long run, but I did point out that he hasn't had significant choice since his father sent him to Roke to ask why spells had stopped working, at the beginning of The Farthest Shore. Ged and Tenar are both unusual in that the standard plot arc is poor boy/girl makes good, including peasant turns out to have great magical gifts or be heir to something; they've had that, and walked away from it, and are happy living quietly and farming in the hills of Gont.
In the end, I didn't use my notes on Tehanu from the other day (though I did print them out). I introduced myself by noting that the first three Earthsea books were the first books I ever bought for myself.
Also, I have lilacs in my room, and Kate and Dave found us a lunch place that managed to be good, fast, and cheap: Madison Masala's (vegetarian) lunch buffet, just what I needed, not having had enough vegetables of late.
Mellan hägg och syren...
We only have bird cherries yet.
(An old expression for early summer in Sweden is "between bird cherries and lilacs," and it's rumoured to come from a cobbler who closed his shop every early summer with the sign "closed between..." posted on the door.)
Re: Mellan hägg och syren...
no subject
Oh, I love when that happens. It's one of the best parts about being on panels or in classes or whatever forces you to talk about literature in a relatively structured way.
MKK
Did you perchance