Ursula Leguin Legend. God save the Queen




Ursula le Guin writes: "The Hero has decreed . . . that the proper shape of the narrative is that of the arrow or spear, starting here and going straight there and THOK! hitting its mark (which drops dead); second, that the central concern of the narrative, including the novel, is conflict; and third, that the story isn't any good if he isn't in it.

"I differ with all of this. I would go so far as to say that the natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.

"One relationship among elements in the novel may well be that of conflict, but the reduction of narrative to conflict is absurd. (I once read a how-to-write manual that said, 'A story should be seen as a battle,' and went on about strategies, attacks, victory, etc.)

"Conflict, competition, stress, struggle, stress, etc., within the narrative conceived as carrier bag / belly / box / house / medicine bundle, may be seen as necessary elements of a whole which itself cannot be characterized as conflict or as harmony, since its purpose is neither resolution nor stasis but continuing process."

 #scifiempress #88soul #lucky7 #lefthandofdarkness thank you for your blessings 😭🎐🔹😌🔘

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