Ursula K. Le Guin slams Kazuo Ishiguro for prejudice against fantasy. Updated with free book winner.
The Buried Giant is now available at National Bookstores, Php799. Ishiguro’s previous genre-ish novel Never Let Me Go, Php315.
Ooh, major writers fighting. Well, Ursula Le Guin attacking and Kazuo Ishiguro defending.
It started with this interview in the New York Times, in which the author of The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go said
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “Will readers follow me into this? Will they understand what I’m trying to do, or will they be prejudiced against the surface elements? Are they going to say this is fantasy?”
The author of The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, whom we think should win a Nobel Prize because she’s brilliant and because recognition for science-fiction is way overdue, was not amused.
Well, yes, they probably will. Why not?
It appears that the author takes the word for an insult.
To me that is so insulting, it reflects such thoughtless prejudice, that I had to write this piece in response.
Fantasy is probably the oldest literary device for talking about reality.
‘Surface elements,’ by which I take it he means ogres, dragons, Arthurian knights, mysterious boatmen, etc., which occur in certain works of great literary merit such as Beowulf, the Morte d’Arthur, and The Lord of the Rings, are also much imitated in contemporary commercial hackwork. Their presence or absence is not what constitutes a fantasy. Literary fantasy is the result of a vivid, powerful, coherent imagination drawing plausible impossibilities together into a vivid, powerful and coherent story, such as those mentioned, or The Odyssey, or Alice in Wonderland.
To which Ishiguro replied:
“I think she wants me to be the new Margaret Atwood,” he said, referring to the criticism the Canadian author and poet has received from Le Guin for distinguishing her writing as “speculative fiction” and for saying science fiction was about “talking squids in outer space”.
“If there is some sort of battle line being drawn for and against ogres and pixies appearing in books, I am on the side of ogres and pixies,” he said. “I had no idea this was going to be such an issue. Everything I read about [The Buried Giant], it’s all ‘Oh, he’s got a dragon in his book’ or ‘I so liked his previous books but I don’t know if I’ll like this one’.
“[Le Guin]’s entitled to like my book or not like my book, but as far as I am concerned, she’s got the wrong person. I am on the side of the pixies and the dragons.”
What do you think? Weigh in on the “argument” and our favorite comment wins a copy of The Buried Giant.
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Thanks, commenters, for the good points. We’ll give the book to the nerdiest personal perspective. balqis, it’s yours.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
March 16th, 2015 at 17:59
Ishiguro’s anxiety comes from the possibility that exclusive literary fiction readers will drop it because of the surface elements and exclusive fantasy readers will be disappointed because there are only “surface” elements in it. However, when the readers say your novel is fantasy, resistance is futile. The readers have the final say. Once the book is out there, don’t even try. Ishiguro should have known better.
Le Guin is rash to place a judgment on Ishiguro. She already admitted to it and said this in the addendum to her piece:
“Many sites on the Internet were quick to pick up my blog post, describing it as an “attack”, a “slam”, etc. They were hot on the scent for blood, hoping for a feud. I wonder how many will pick up this one?”
Pick it up here:
http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2015/03/10/addendum-to-are-they-going-to-say-this-is-fantasy/
March 16th, 2015 at 21:33
Finally! A literary feud — if it is anyway — that’s actually interesting (unlike Bret Easton Elliis’s annoying rant on Alice Munro winning the Nobel). And both writers maintained their own pride even while acknowledging the other’s point. Impossible to take sides, especially since their readers still win.
This controversy will have literary readers paying attention and taking note of SF&F. Genre readers — the less snobbish ones in my opinion — have everything to gain in discovering Ishiguro.
March 16th, 2015 at 22:20
It’s the oldest argument that starts between people who are not among the popular crowd in high school, the geeks and the nerds. One guy attempts to expand his circle by trying to appeal to a larger crowd by presenting himself less as a fan of science fiction and fantasy and more of a sensitive-type, in touch with his emotions, the other embraces being a Trekkie or Whovian, not afraid to have a smaller, but more dedicated audience. In effect this is similar to what happened between me and my best friend in high school, I embraced D&D and Star Trek, he tried to present himself more as an artist-type. I called him a phony, he called me a loser.
March 17th, 2015 at 15:03
These “literary feuds” are so amusing. But this one pales in comparison to “Tom Wolfe VS The Three Stooges,” which remains my favorite. I believe Updike and Mailer still turn in their graves whenever they’re reminded of it.
Anyway, there is no feeling like seeing a package of books by your door as I did yesterday. (Amazon delivers on Sundays now!) The Buried Giant is one of the most physically beautiful hardbacks I’ve ever seen and owned.
Ishiguro is still my favorite fiction writer. His words sound elegant and effortless while masking the disquiet and turbulence underneath. I haven’t started this one yet, though. And I hope I like this drastic stylistic departure.
March 18th, 2015 at 00:45
I had a chance to hear Kazuo Ishiguro talk about “The Buried Giant” in Oxford last Thursday, a plus that he stayed to sign books, as I heard he is quite nervous to make these appearances.
I was thrilled that he appeared to be in awe of the younger generation of writers, particularly David Mitchell. Below I’ll quote from an article by Lorien Kite, the same writer who had interviewed him last Thursday. This was just one of the many things they had talk about on stage:
“He also acknowledges the influence on his own work of Mitchell and his peers, a cohort that Ishiguro sees as more willing than his own to mash genres and styles. “With Never Let Me Go, I’m not sure I would have had the courage or even the inclination to use a sci-fi premise if it wasn’t for people like that. Even with The Buried Giant, someone might say that I’ve gone into the fantasy genre. Perhaps I might worry about that more were it not for the climate set by a younger generation of writers, where almost anything goes.””
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/24786502-c29e-11e4-ad89-00144feab7de.html#axzz3UZCSWRwb
March 18th, 2015 at 12:08
This one can be likened to a bubble on a burning cauldron. That’s the way I see it.
Speaking of literary feuds, I think there are a lot of literary feuds in the past that are more exciting than this one. One with Wordsworth and Coleridge comes to mind. (This one is just my imagination for I read about W-C feud just seconds ago. Haha.) This article made me google more about lit feuds. Eureka! I found a lot. Brilliant lot.
Nevertheless, I think Le Guin-Ishiguro lit-feud sells to literary followers. Reason: It’s human’s atavistic nature to love and enjoy seeing other people destroy each other. Talking about Gladiators. And Schadenfreude.
March 18th, 2015 at 17:13
Yes, the “argument” should really be a non-issue. I’ve joked elsewhere on this blog before that if Ursula were Pinoy, she would’ve said “Ang arte-arte ng fren kong si Peggy, ayaw ng sci-fi, sa kanya e dapat spec-fi.” And I totally get both Le Guin and Atwood–sinong Nobel prize laureate na ba ang nanalo dahil sa fantasy genre?
I don’t need to point out that I love fantasy and I enjoy both Le Guin & Ishiguro. On one hand, I can understand Le Guin’s reaction, as hasty as it may seem. It does smart for a writer whose main body of work has been lovingly labeled as SF/F and followed as such to hear from a fellow writer that his work might ceased to be followed because it will be tossed into a box called Fantasy. Saint George became a saint because of a damned dragon.
Despite the fact that Ishiguro had trepidations with labeling, he shouldn’t have had said trepidations if he thinks that “genre rules should be porous, if not nonexistent,” with which I concur: whenever I’m asked what genre I prefer in literature, I’m unable to give a straight answer (it would be easier to ask me if I’ve read Fifty Shades of Twilight), not only because I have no single preference but also because I do not base my preference/choice of reading material on its genre. In addition, chucking book A into this genre and book B into that genre feels like taxonomy to me. Say, Anna Kavan’s novel Ice is classified as slipstream–what in tarnation is slipstream exactly anyway? Although I may agree that categorizing a book into a particular genre can be of help in understanding its themes, how it portrays the human condition, etc., in the end I always go back to Sontag: an erotics of art is preferable to a hermeneutics of art.
I have always been of the opinion that how we “classify” books should be based on a scale–fiction can tend toward pure entertainment or toward an attempt in comprehending our position in the universe. Yes, this story has a commonwealth of faeryfolk but it helps me better grasp our reality and why people behave as such-and-such. No, that story has a “manang”-turned-sex-slave-by-a-gorgeous-CEO but I’m better off reading the pornography of Virgil and Ovid.
Ursula: O, ayan, pasalamat ka sa ‘kin, nagkaro’n ng ibayong atensyon ang libro mo dahil sa ‘kin. Chos.
Kazuo: Hindi ko naman kelangan ng hype from you. Chos.
And I told myself I was just going to put in a comment and (not “weigh in” on what should be a non-issue) to commemorate a beloved fantasy novelist who recently passed, Terry Pratchett.
March 18th, 2015 at 19:13
Who could handle verbal tussles better than veteran writers? And how can the literary world not pay attention to the likes of Ursula Le Guin and Kazuo Ishiguro?
The thing started, rather fittingly, with words – by Ishiguro:
“Will readers follow me into this? Will they understand what I’m trying to do, or will they be prejudiced against the surface elements? Are they going to say this is fantasy?”
It is easy to impute prejudice to these words. Ishiguro’s anxiety over surface elements seems groundless (Why did he use them anyway?), and the final question derogates fantasy. In reaction, Le Guin was saying that Ishiguro’s anxiety over the reception of his work is borne out of his own prejudice against fantasy, which is what The Buried Giant giant is, at least superficially.
Le Guin, a distinguished fantasy author (I only read two of her works so far, The Lathe of Heaven and A Wizard of Earthsea, both stellar works.), took umbrage against the slight. I think it’s instinctive, hence understandable. Her concluding remarks-slash-review of The Buried Giant is: “I respect what I think he was trying to do, but for me it didn’t work. It couldn’t work. No writer can successfully use the ‘surface elements’ of a literary genre — far less its profound capacities — for a serious purpose, while despising it to the point of fearing identification with it…” Le Guin found The Buried Giant wanting in conjuring “a vivid, powerful, coherent imagination drawing plausible impossibilities together into a vivid, powerful and coherent story”, and she traced the cause of this failure on authorial prejudice against the very genre he uses.
For his part, Ishiguro clarified his stance and defused the tension right away : “[Le Guin]’s entitled to like my book or not like my book, but as far as I am concerned, she’s got the wrong person. I am on the side of the pixies and the dragons.”
Ishiguro, author of a dystopian rumination on human dignity and worth that is Never Let Me Go, perhaps the closest of his efforts to The Buried Giant in its departure from reality, is telling Le Guin: Hey, we’re in this together!
Roundabout, writerly, and dignified.
March 19th, 2015 at 17:43
I’ve read half of Ishiguro’s work and two traits that stand out from these books are the author’s immense capacity for empathy and display of honesty. Hence, when he made his statement fearing that his work will be labeled as “fantasy”, (I think) it is a reflection on the reader’s (or the larger public’s) own prejudice against fantasy —a prejudice that Ishiguro acknowledges exists. Acknowledgment is different from approbation or encouragement.
LeGuin, on the other hand, I have not read, although I have been meaning to read her since Hugh Dancy’s character in The Jane Austen Book Club endorsed her to the other book club members. [I was recently reminded of my intention to read her when you featured a link to a speech she made while accepting an award.] From what I have read of LeGuin, she appears very protective of her domain, i.e. fantasy. What she should realize is that fantasy is not for everyone and that whenever someone says that “fantasy is not for me”, it is not a judgment that fantasy, as a genre, is inferior. Maybe it sometimes means that the reader does not have the cognitive abilities, the imagination, or simply the patience to appreciate fantasy fiction. Maybe, when Ishiguro made his statement, it was on behalf of the readers who lacked these sense of cognition, imagination and predisposition. Maybe, when Ishiguro made his statement, it was an acknowledgment of his own shortcomings as a writer of fantasy.
I’ve read Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Coetzee, Auster, Rushdie, etc. I’ve also read Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Rowling. I have just finished Book II of A Song of Ice and Fire. I followed these authors despite the “surface elements”. But I do not think I will ever pick up a Philip K. Dick book. He is not for me, much in the same way that Dickens never appealed to me, no matter how much I, as a reader, have tried. Yet, I will never argue against Philip K. Dick’s place in literature or Dickens’ recognized greatness.
March 20th, 2015 at 08:01
Ang aking akala naman sa simula ay mukhang may dalawang nagpapataasan na naman ng projectile ng kani-kanilang dyinggel. Pero nang matapos basahin ang interbyu, mukhang sinsero naman ang agam-agam ni ishiguro sa pagsasali at paggamit nga ng ‘surface elements’ (anghusay namang termino nito) ng Pantasya sa kanyang bagong libro.
isa lang ang nabasa kong obra ni ishiguro–yaong ‘Never Let Me Go’ lang na nasa picture din sa itaas. Ang aklat yatang iyon ang ‘pinakontroladong’ nobelang nabasa ko. Sa tema at plot, parang hinihintay mong dapat sa mga susunod na pangungusap may, ika nga ng the buzz, zazabog (!); dapat may magwawala, dapat may aalagwang eksena. Pero nandun man ang tensyon, walang nangyaring pagzabog. May humiyaw lang sa bandang huli, at sa mas dulung-dulo pa, may nagsabi lang nang “…complaining about how memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that. The memories I value most, I don’t see them ever fading. I lost Ruth, and I lost Tommy, but I won’t lose my memories of them.” Yun lang. Parang bulkang sumabog nang may finesse. Kung ganito nga si Ishiguro na parang sukat na sukat at kontrol na kontrol ang bawat pahina ng aklat nya, natural lamang siguro na magsabi kung paanong nakakabahala nga naman–uubra nga ba sa mga mambabasa nya ang pagpasok nya sa bagong genre? Isama pa ang konsiderasyon na naglilimbag lang ang awtor ng libro bawat dekada, at malamang parating iniisip ng mga awtor na dapat may sabihing interesante sa bawat interbyu, pinalampas na lang sana. Isa pa, napahapyawan lang naman ang puntong iyon.
Subalit si Ursula naman ay may karapatan din sigurong mairita. Bakit nga naman kailangang banggitin pa. Puwedeng inisip ni Ursula na feeling ‘high lit’ si ishiguro at kinailangan pang banggitin na tinatawid nya ang linya papunta sa Pantasya na masyadong mababa para sa kanya. Oks rin ang puntong yan dahil katulad sa larangan ng Oscars na napakahirap manalo ng Best Actor ang mga komedyante, siguradong si Bill Murray ay magtatampo rin kung magkokomedya si Sean Penn at babanggitin pa (pahapyaw man) ni Sean Penn ang kanyang agam-agam sa pagkokomedya. Kesyo baka di tanggapin ng mga fans ni Sean Penn…
Ah, marahil hindi ito away talaga. Hindi rin pataasan ng dyinggel. Pag-uusap lang ng mga manunulat na naglalatag ng kani-kanilang mga punto. Iinom na lang yan. Sali kami!