Thursday, July 26, 2012

Ursula K. Le Guin is still battling the status quo. Photo: Marion Wood Kolisch


Underwire - Email Author

Author Ursula K. Le Guin says she is in full sympathy with Occupy Oakland protesters who reportedly safeguarded themselves behind shields made to look like The Dispossessed, her 1974 sci-fi novel about anarchism on an alien world.
Recent years have seen the 82-year-old writer engaged in numerous clashes with the powers that be, from Google and Hollywood to the literary establishment and an increasingly corporate publishing industry, which, despite her celebrated career, wants to make fundamental changes to the books she writes.
“There was an increasing pressure to make them more like Harry Potter,” says Le Guin in this week’s episode of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast.
She’s managed to fend off such meddling with her work … for now. And her campaign against Google Books over what she calls a “tremendous rip-off ” has met with some success in the courts. Still, the fact remains that these are dire times for writers, and things are getting worse all the time.
“I don’t teach writing classes anymore,” says Le Guin, “and I’m really glad I don’t, because I would feel very strange about telling people, ‘Go out there and be a writer, and make a living from it.’ I mean, ha.”
Read our complete interview with Ursula K. Le Guin below, in which she gives warnings to new writers, discusses some of her best-loved books, and shares her memories of Philip K. Dick and Ray Bradbury. Or listen to the interview in Episode 65 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast (above), which also features a discussion between hosts John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtley and guest geek Rajan Khanna about the life and works of Bradbury.



Wired: It’s been reported that some of the protesters at Occupy Oakland have been carrying shields in the image of books, including your novel The Dispossessed. How do you feel about that?
Ursula K. Le Guin: Terrific. I am proud and happy that a book — and actually a book printed quite a long time ago now — is still making some waves and being of some use to people thinking about this stuff.
Wired: Did you write any of those books intending to inspire action, or was it purely artistic?
Le Guin: I do try to separate my personal activism — showing up at a demonstration or something — from what I write. I don’t write tracts, I write novels. I’m not a preacher, I’m a fiction writer. I get a lot of moral guidance from reading novels, so I guess I expect my novels to offer some moral guidance, but they’re not blueprints for action, ever.
Wired: In 2008, you wrote an article in Harper’s called “Staying Awake: Notes on the Alleged Decline of Reading” in which you lamented corporate control of publishing. Have things changed at all — for better or worse — since you wrote that article?
Le Guin: I think they’ve gone downhill. I mean, I think corporate control has just increased as publishing goes into terminal panic about how to handle e-publishing. Maybe this is the dark part of the tunnel and we are going to figure out how to do it, and how to pay writers some kind of decent return for their writing, but at the moment — I don’t teach writing classes anymore, and I’m really glad I don’t, because I would feel very strange about telling people, “Go out there and be a writer, and make a living from it.” I mean, ha. The writers and the editors are very, very low on the totem pole in the world of corporate publishing, and I don’t think it’s very good for books, and I know it isn’t very good for what writers have to buy their peanut butter.
Wired: A few years ago, you resigned from the Authors Guild over their settlement with Google. Could you talk about that?
Le Guin: That was over the Google settlement, which appeared to be in many ways a wrong-headed and unjust settlement with Google, who was doing — and is continuing to do — a tremendous rip-off job of printing copyrighted material without asking or obtaining permission, and the Authors Guild seemed to be settling, saying, “Well, all right. You’re so big, and we’re so little. I don’t know.” So I was indignant, and I withdrew, and it made a much bigger stink than I expected it to.
The Authors Guild had never really noticed me for about 35 years, but they noticed when I dropped out, and a lot of other people did too, and so I found myself helping along an anti-Google protest movement by writers — and readers — but mostly by professional writers — people who make their living from writing. And I was pretty well out of my depth in many ways, because it’s a terrifically complicated issue, but there were many very smart people and lawyers and such helping. And so we did get a protest movement going, and we were able to write judge Chin, who was arbitrating the case, and I think make some points which persuaded him to judge as he did. So I found myself an activist where I never expected to be one.
Full interview at Undewrwire

No comments: