(no subject)

[skygiants]

I had my father's copy of The Left Hand of Darkness on my shelf all the time I was growing up, and never got around to reading it. However -- knowing essentially nothing about it except that it was Ursula LeGuin and people generally have said it was good -- I brought it with me everywhere I've lived in the assumption that someday the stars would align and it would be the correct and proper time.

Then a couple years back when I was writing the first draft of The Iron Children, someone (I think it was aamcnamara?) asked if I'd read Left Hand of Darkness on account of Perilous Journey Through Snow, and I said no, and they looked thoughtful and said I might not want to read it until after I'd finished my own Perilous Journey Through Snow book. So I knew there was a big snow trip; and I think perhaps I had seen a post somewhere about how Ursula K. LeGuin was not sure that she would have kept the universal masculine pronoun, were she writing it now, and also I had seen this Tumblr post. All of which I thought had given me at least a decent partial sense of what the book was like.

Of course I was wrong, because, first of all, the book was much better and more compelling than I had imagined; also (only semi-relatedly, because the love story is far from the only compelling thing about Left Hand of Darkness), somehow over all the years no one had actually managed to convey to me the fact that the book is a bona fide textual love story. Definitely nobody had conveyed to me that Ursula LeGuin was simultaneously writing a haunting book about humanity's fear of and attraction to the other/alien, and the near-impossibility of cross-cultural communication, and whether it's possible to have a world without war, AND ALSO, SIMULTANEOUSLY, thoughtfully crossing squares off her trope_bingo card. My guy Genly Ai surely could have collected some folktales of Gethen that didn't involve the tragic romance of two siblings/two mortal enemies/two guys trapped together in a Canadian shack?

But of course he couldn't have, because this book is in large part about fear of & attraction to the other, and the thing that is most extremely Other to Genly Ai about Gethen is Gethenian sexuality. With the most profound respect for the author's right to change their opinions about their own writing over time, I do think Ursula K. LeGuin would have been wrong to change anything about the pronoun situation in this book. Using the universal he for the androgynous Gethenians is a bad translation, and the fact that it's a bad translation is, textually, important; the fact that universal-he is a band-aid that Genly Ai slaps over his misunderstandings and a huge stumbling block for his interaction with the culture as a whole is important! Bad translations are part of (but again very far from all of) what make the book so good.

While I'm talking about language, this, like Moby Dick is another book that occasionally hits Shakespearean enough on the register that it switches on the part of my brain that's constantly scanning dialogue for iambic pentameter. Estraven often has long dialogic speeches that are like 15-20% iambic pentameter. I tend to think of LeGuin's prose as clean, clear, not necessarily showy -- sometimes there's the sense that she doesn't want to get in the way of her own ideas -- but Left Hand of Darkness is truly just a beautiful book, all through. “I certainly wasn't happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can't earn, and can't keep, and often don't even recognize at the time; I mean joy.”

...and now that I've said all that, for anyone like me who didn't particularly know what the book was about: Genly Ai is the first ambassador for a pan-human galactic civilization to the small and extremely remote planet of Gethen where the population is fully androgynous and only sexual for a couple days of their reproductive cycle. At the beginning of the book, he's just had a falling-out with politician Estraven, who has originally seemed to be supportive of his mission to bring the Gethen into the pan-human alliance, only to make (what seems to Genly, who is not very good at his job) an sudden about-face. Then both of them have to (separately) flee the country. Then things get worse. Then they have to make a perilous and romantic journey across the snow together! Probably not science fiction's first perilous and romantic journey through snow, but certainly an extremely formative one, as it fully deserves to be.

Comments

[genarti]

YEAH IT'S JUST SO GOOD

And also, I get Le Guin's point but I agree with you about the pronouns. Maybe they could have changed in the Estraven chapters, but it's right that Genly gets it wrong.

Also also: I love that quote. I love so many quotes from it! Le Guin was just so good at words, and at the numinous juxtaposed with and infused through the everyday.

[sovay]

Then they have to make a perilous and romantic journey across the snow together! Probably not science fiction's first perilous and romantic journey through snow, but certainly an extremely formative one, as it fully deserves to be.

I wrote a poem for it for R.B. Lemberg.

(I was also once on a panel for Readercon called "Winter Is Coming: Feminist SF and the Frozen Tundra Buddy Trek," of which there turned out to be a surprising number. I am glad you are adding to the literature.)

I go back and forth on some things I think about this novel, but I read it my freshman year of college and it has been important to me since.

[starlady]

Such a good book. When I lived in Japan for the first time 15 years ago, when there were no smartphones and my Japanese wasn't that great, I often related my experience as an expat to this book and to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. I should reread it soon.

[kore]

I believe in one of the versions I have, Le Guin revised that scene so Estraven's pronouns change from male to female and then back, and it was really effective.

I can't wish Le Guin wrote the book differently because it inspired Joanna Russ to write "When It Changed," one of the most amazing SF stories I've ever read. And that grew into The Female Man, which is really fantastic. Le Guin also said, much later, she wished that not only had she not written Estraven as male, she wished she'd written Gethenian culture as queer-friendly, too. And she did write at least a couple of later stories -- one of which, "Winter's King," uses female pronouns instead. But I think the real internal rewrite of Left Hand came with "Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea," also narrated by a rather clueless guy, which introduces the concept of sedoretu marriage (now an AO3 trope itself!) which is plenty queer (altho for my money fandom takes the "moiety-cest" way too seriously and Le Guin herself IIRC wrote a fic where it happens).

[snickfic]

Genly is truly NOT VERY GOOD AT HIS JOB. I can't remember if the book itself posits that this is intentional on the part of his bosses, and they habitually send people who have lots of growing to do so they can grow with the culture they're sent to, or if that's just an interpretation I somehow came away with. But truly: NOT GOOD AT HIS JOB.

And you're so right, it's SO much tropier a story than I expected. That long isolated journey across the snow! Basically huddling for warmth! Incredible.

[vass]

Using the universal he for the androgynous Gethenians is a bad translation, and the fact that it's a bad translation is, textually, important; the fact that universal-he is a band-aid that Genly Ai slaps over his misunderstandings and a huge stumbling block for his interaction with the culture as a whole is important!

That's a really good point.

While I'm talking about language, this, like Moby Dick is another book that occasionally hits Shakespearean enough on the register that it switches on the part of my brain that's constantly scanning dialogue for iambic pentameter.

Another one of those for me is Hades, the game. A lot of the characters will break into iambic pentameter, but Zagreus' awful dad most of all.

[kore]

I remember a part where someone very sensibly asks Genly, why on earth does this Ekumen send only one of you, with no backup, when you can easily be dismissed as a total nutbar? And Genly has this beautiful Le Guinian response about how as an individual he can only persuade &c &c., but teenaged me thought when I first read it: yeah, that is a good question!

[kore]

There's also a beautiful BBC full-cast adaptation: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/33199085

[serriadh]

Not to second-guess Le Guin on her own writing, but I wonder if when she reflected on the pronoun use she was thinking mostly of herself as the author, and us as the readers, when the story as told in the book is so clearly coming out of Genly Ai's head. And as you say, Genly Ai is not good at his job (you'd think he'd at least understand politics?!) and also thinks of the Gethenians mainly as men-who-can-give-birth.

I don't always think of Le Guin as a writer who is particularly good at the alien-ness of aliens (because she is so very very good at other things, and finding the common "human"ity) but Left Hand of Darkness and also the bit in Solitude where the visitors just cannot wrap their head around the extreme introvert culture are both absolutely brilliant at it.

[edited to add paragraphs]

[littlerhymes]

You make me wanna read this again! The snow journey is such a memory for me. HUDDLING FOR WARMTH with a sexy alien of no specific gender... iconique.

[princessofgeeks]

I read the book for the first time as a teenager and a lot of the themes and sexuality went right past me, but I sure remembered the beautiful writing about the trek in the snow. And when I reread it years later I was amazed all over again.

It's an amazing book on so many levels.

[raven]

I was about to say, and let me lend you The Birthday of the World! before remembering you are, in fact, 4000 miles away. But I do recommend it, for Le Guin's own updated version of Gethen, from the POV of a Gethen young person living in a happy family set-up.

[lirazel]

Using the universal he for the androgynous Gethenians is a bad translation, and the fact that it's a bad translation is, textually, important; the fact that universal-he is a band-aid that Genly Ai slaps over his misunderstandings and a huge stumbling block for his interaction with the culture as a whole is important! Bad translations are part of (but again very far from all of) what make the book so good.


You know what? I hadn't thought about it like that...but you are correct.

Love your discovery that TLHoD is good, actually!

[larryhammer]

the fact that it's a bad translation is, textually, important

Really good point. Really good.

[oracne]

YAY URSULA.

GIP

[ironymaiden]

Such a good book. My copy has the most amazing cover art (see icon) that is evocative without being prescriptive; it's always spoken to me with or without the story

[pauraque]

This is a great book, and I love your reading of the pronouns as in-universe bad translation.

[rachelmanija]

That Tumblr post is hilarious.

[sophia_sol]

yes! yes!!!! it's SUCH a good book and I'm so glad you've read it now and I would like to enthusiastically rec to you all the Left Hand of Darkness fanfic I've collected because fandom has written some amazing stuff: https://pinboard.in/u:sophia_sol/t:-lefthandofdarkness

revisiting

[brainwane]

I taught this book in a peer-led class during my bachelor's degree, 20+ years ago. And for the first time, now, I am thinking about those students possibly revisiting this book as they matured, AFTER I first introduced it to them. In class we definitely talked about the gender dimensions but probably not about the subtleties of its queerness, since I was so much less able to have or lead that conversation. I wonder what they think of it now.

[heresluck]

Using the universal he for the androgynous Gethenians is a bad translation, and the fact that it's a bad translation is, textually, important; the fact that universal-he is a band-aid that Genly Ai slaps over his misunderstandings and a huge stumbling block for his interaction with the culture as a whole is important! Bad translations are part of (but again very far from all of) what make the book so good.

I love this insight a whole lot, and now I need to re-read IMMEDIATELY.

[luzula]

This is one of my FAVORITE BOOKS EVER.

[obopolsk]

I have a vague memory that I read this as a tween, during my longest LeGuin phase, but I don't remember the specifics particularly well. This post has made me realize it might be interesting to reread for something I'm working on, so thank you for that!

[chestnut_pod]

GOD, the whole passage that ends 'I mean joy' is, to me, the most beautiful paragraph in the whole English langauge. It means so much to me.

I can't congratulate you enough for finally reading this book, my favorite book, the best book there is. I am SO glad it spoke to you.

[soosifroosh]

I went to an actual book club meeting about this book, which is not generally my thing but I had to go talk about it, and one person pointed out that he's in late adolescence. They sent their grad student. My god, guys. I posited that it had to do with Le Guin growing up in in a house full of anthropology grad students who had no business being sent much of anywhere but still are the major contributors to the field.

Reading this book as a teen in the late 90s, I finally felt comfortable with who Genly Ai was when I compared him to Heinlein protagonists written in the same couple of years. Later I positioned him in the appropriate season of Mad Men and asked myself how THOSE people would have done on a genderless planet.