No Time to Spare by Ursula LeGuin (June 2018)
Urusla K. LeGuin pulls selected posts from her blog to form this collection of short essays. As it tends to go with such works, the collection was loosely (and needlessly) organized around some theme - in this case, the aging LeGuin is finally ‘writing about what really matters’. Of course, the reality of my reading experience was that I was very willing to follow LeGuin’s pen into the many different topics her essays explored and, if such meanderings failed to take a place within the context of the work’s larger theme, then no problem...
I suppose this is loosely related to one of the observations I liked the most – successful denial means creating a reality where things do not change. As mentioned above, the stated aim of the book was to discuss ‘what really matters’ and some of the writing did indeed cover the classic Big Ideas such as how to live a life or what to make of death. But LeGuin also knows that an individual life is much more than worrying about the same things a society (or even the human race) worries about. This meant her essays mused on topics such as the point of a question (don’t ask a question unless you really have one), what makes a bad memoir (it takes the liberties of fiction without the imaginative risks), and whether economics is worth studying (probably, given that we all live in some form of an economy) (1).
One up: My favorite thought from the collection – honesty is difficult when you generalize (2).
One down: I heard an interesting theory many years ago about how famous comedians eventually lose their touch because their fame separates them from the regular daily lifestyle that once was the source of their comedy. I think a version of this can happen in writing when an author forgets how comfortable his or her lifestyle is relative to the rest of the world.
Sometimes, this forgetting results in ‘thoughtful’ pieces about what might happen in the future if circumstances lower the standard of living. It’s not a terrible idea in general, I suppose, but it falls apart as soon as the reader realizes the reference point for the author is the standard of living enjoyed by the comfortable citizens of the world's richest countries. I think it's important to keep in mind that in the time it took me to write this trivial blog post someone on the planet died because of a problem we comfortable Americans have not worried about in decades.
To be more direct in the context of this book, I’m not sure it’s very thoughtful at all to write about what might happen if we run out of water in the future when there is almost always a they somewhere in the world who are out of water right now. Instead of treating such a thought as a hypothetical, it might be better to learn about the reality of what people are doing today and sharing those stories with the readers who are able to afford the expense of buying a book.
Just saying: The essay I reread was ‘Clinging Desperately to a Metaphor’. I think this is the kind of essay a regular reader encounters from time to time – in short, a lament against capitalism and a prediction about its eventual end.
What I liked about LeGuin’s arguments was how she avoided using too many present-day details to make her point. Instead, she looked at capitalism’s underlying principles to explain her positions. She pointed out, for example, how the mystery of capitalism is why growth and stability are considered the same thing. And she added later on that the system’s fixation on unlimited, unceasing growth means abandonment of notions about balance and optimal size.
The one question I had after reading was a typical one for me whenever I read a principled argument against an existing institution – since all things end when they start to go poorly, why is it so important to write about how something like capitalism is no exception? To put it another way, I guess I don’t see why so many are compelled to point out how capitalism will end. It’ll go just like everything else - it'll work fine for a while and come to an end when things start to go really (and obviously) poorly.
Footnotes / a couple more digressions…
0. But I suppose this is no different than going to a library, at least in cost terms…
One important thing to keep in mind about reading these blog-turned-books: it is possible to lookup almost anything on the original source... so… here's a link to the blog… and… well... here’s a link to the essay I cite above, ‘Clinging Desperately to a Metaphor’.... right here, just wait... OK, hold on...
I guess it makes sense that the essays in this book were taken off her blog.
1. And bad fiction?
A couple of other musings…
a) Bad fiction means taking the authority of history while shirking the responsibility of getting the facts right.
b) Opinions often crowd out the possibility of any other form of thinking.
c) Those who dismiss education because it represses a child’s natural spontaneity must explain how children would learn to overcome their tendency toward irresponsibility and ignorance without being taught by adults. Although spontaneity is a useful quality, it tends to get wasted by the irresponsible and ignorant. And if a child goes too long without overcoming these qualities, they soon become ethical failures.
2. I do think I’m on to something, though!
I thought a little more about this idea and came up with a related concept of my own – you can lie to everyone but you can only be honest with one person at a time.
It’s a little rough around the edges, no doubt, and I thought about trying to polish it up a bit before I realized: this, too, is a generalization.
