Oh, okay. I get it. This is the book where Le Guin becomes Le Guin. Earlier she has touched on some ideas about politics, gender, the role of science or creativity, and interesting characters. But never to the depth I know she achieves later in her career. Here, in this novel, she finally does. Though it’s not shown all the way through the novel. And it’s not quite brilliant yet. But hey, it’s the switch I was waiting for.
Hope is a slighter, tougher thing even than trust, he thought, pacing his room as the soundless, vague lightning flashed overhead. In a good season one trusts life; in a bad season one only hopes, But they are of the same essence: they are the mind's indispensable relationship with other minds, with the world, and with time. Without trust, a man lives, but not a human life; without hope, he dies. When there is no relationship, where hands do not touch, emotion atrophies in void and intelligence goes sterile and obsessed. Between men the only link left is that of owner to slave, or murderer to victim.
And this change occurs over a single page within this novel. It might be halfway through, three-quarters through, two-thirds through—somewhere around there—where the novel flips a switch and later Le Guin writing suddenly appears. No slow growth leads to it. She starts with a fantasy/science fiction quest storyline by now familiar from the two prior novels. Here, Falk, a forgotten man who has forgotten everything, resurrects in the forest, learns to be human, and then returns to the only place from where he could have come to find answers about his past, including whether he came from there. The book focuses on Falk’s journey. And that journey allows the only hint at Le Guin’s later complexity: Falk explores the world, showing states of humanity—small kingdoms, cowboy cults, forest houses filled with inbred families. These heights of human culture exist so far fallen from us in their post-apocalyptic American midwest. Their variety of natures fascinate while tending towards primitive, a variety that hints at Le Guin’s later writing. She’s known for depth of discussion from multiple viewpoints, and here we start to get multiple viewpoints on primitivization, though it takes most of the book in the slow telling.
Fish and visitors stink after three days.
And then Falk gets to the city he seeks, and he gets jumped by a bunch of goons. This is where Le Guin starts: writing character, delving deeper into themes, exploring them from different points of view at the same time instead of slowly over two thirds of the novel. At one point, her main character simultaneously has four minds within his own, so she kind of has to include multiple viewpoints. But boy does she run with it! Even before Falk inhabits minds with three other characters, he’s introspective and moody and allowed to ruminate deeply. Where I had begun contemplating whether I bored of Falk and his journey, suddenly everything happens all at once. And it’s a bit of a mess. She’s not the best at writing complex things right off the bat here. But it feels like the other shoe dropping: it’s a relief as a reader who started on later Le Guin novels. What great heights really start to be forged here. Emphasis on start to be. It’s a touch confused and confusing, but it’s passionate and breathtaking and it reads more like The Dispossessed than Rocannon’s World.
I am no more lonely than the loon on the pond that laughs so loud.
The biggest problem with the novel should be apparent from what I said above: this novel reads like two novellas shoved together. The awakening and journey, and the rest. And this shift is awkward. To me, it felt like the other shoe dropping only because I started with later Le Guin books, but I would not have enjoyed it as much if I hadn’t.
Was he leaving home, or going home?
The themes are sanctity of life, lying, the Tao Te Ching, and the earth being over run by humanoid aliens that keep humans primitive for no apparent gain. Le Guin states that lying is bad, and shows some examples. The aliens are clear monsters, and the main liars in the tale, and she uses a few examples of them and views about them. The Tao not only acts as a talisman in the novel, but informs much of the words with this constant light-dark interplay, the consistent illusion-reality discussion. For instance, the bomb bird looks like a bird, but is a bomb, putting Falk onto the ground instead of his air-transportation. Also, the walls of the city are clear but not, projections and windows being indistinguishable. And of course, the illusion of a lie and the reality of a truth.
Seen rightly, any situation, even a chaos or a trap would come clear and lead of itself to its one proper outcome: for there is in the long run no disharmony, only misunderstanding, no chance or mischance but only the ignorant eye.
But she also uses the lying aliens’ lionization of the sanctity of life to question their reasons for illusion, which she blames on anxiety over the biological necessity of death. This strong critique sounds contemporary today, almost fifty years later, as it is trendy to do anything that could result in a longer life, even at the expense of enjoying the moment and the life you have now. But her earlier critique of the sanctity of life—through having Falk murder somebody right in front of the alien representative sent to bring him in—seems at odds with this later, more interesting critique. Like I said, she somewhat confuses the theme. But when she looks at the themes from different viewpoints, by using different characters, she wrinkles the theme instead of confusing it. So, Falk’s ruminations on the origin of alien obsession with life, and his sudden murder of another human are at odds with each other. While her later discussion of the sanctity of life through multiple viewpoints seems more even handed, the former murder acts to counterpoint this even handedness. And by placing the whole on her reader’s same earth, she runs the risk of sounding mean spirited instead of interested.
Laws are made against the impulse a people most fears in itself. Do not kill was the Shing's vaunted single Law. All else was permitted: which meant, perhaps, there was little else they really wanted to do.
The other main problem is lack of explanation. What do the aliens get out of keeping humans down? Jollies? Self-worth? Are they proselytizing? Where in later books Le Guin seems to know which questions need to be answered, here she slides over things that she has built up too much and they seem more like plot holes. Why so much talk about primitivization with no real conclusion? This is a dropped ball. Likewise, Estrel goes away as suddenly as she appeared, despite spending so much time on-screen and being so influential to Falk. This shows a missed opportunity more than a necessary focusing of the novel—especially as it happens after Le Guin has so widely expanded the scope of the novel. Falk stays alive, yet forgets about the house in the forest as much as Le Guin does.
"Oh fool, oh desolation!" said the Prince of Kansas. "Ill give you ten women to accompany you to the Place of the Lie, with lutes and flutes and tambourines and contraceptive pills. I'll give you five good friends armed with firecrackers. I'll give you a dog—in truth I will, a living extinct dog, to be your true companion. Do you know why dogs died out? Because they were loyal, because they were trusting. Go alone, man!"
So, this is a good book, and the one where Le Guin really starts to flex her writing. And after she does start to flex, boy does this book become engrossing. Yet, issues remain within both the book and that second half that hold it back from achieving the greatness that Le Guin will become known for. This is the first time her writing can be great, but she wasn’t able to match story structure to that greatness quite yet. Six novels later, the structure of The Dispossessed—where every other chapter works either towards or away from the first chapter—explores a similarly split narrative with but solves the structural issues I have with this book. Two novels later, The Left Hand of Darkness includes a slow journey but puts it at the end of the novel where I already care about the characters. It shows that Le Guin learned from this admittedly enjoyable book, and wrote even better later. She also translated the Tao Te Ching and used it extensively throughout this work, which should probably be noted.
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