So, thanks to Janice for sharing the link to an interesting piece by John Garth, who suggests that Le Guin paid a hidden tribute to JRRT by making "tolk" and "-ien" mean Earth (or stone) + Sea in her invented language created for her EARTHSEA trilogy. Right or wrong (and there seems to be no way to find out now) it's an intriguing idea.
Co-incidentally I'd just re-read THE TOMBS OF ATUAN the day before --the first book of fantasy I read after Tolkien himself, way back in the fall of 1973 (when it was quite a new book). This makes it the first of many books I read after being told it was 'like Tolkien'. And I've always rather unfairly judged by that standard. Re-reading it now for what I think is the fourth (or fifth) time I still find it claustrophobic and oppressive --which is the point, of course, but still doesn't make the experience of reading it any less drab and nightmarish.
And since I've found out over time that books change depending on what books you've read before and after them,* I now find myself wishing that someone wd do a study comparing Le Guin's TOMBS OF ATUAN with another labyrinth book:: Mary Renault's THE KING MUST DIE, with which I can now see it shares a lot of what I assume are deliberate parallels.
Source-study and influence are always tricky, though. It would seem clear to me now that Lewis's TILL WE HAVE FACES was very deliberately written in the style and mode of Mary Renault, whose work we know Lewis admired, except that the timing doesn't work out: Lewis's book would have already been written or at least drafted by the time Renault's was published.
Here's the link:
--John R.
current reading: THE SOUL OF AN OCTOPUS by Sy Montgomery (2015)
*the old 'statues in the garden' analogy
5 comments:
I saw John Garth's Twitter post on this a few days ago. It does seem very logical...
I'm unfamiliar with the '"statues in the garden" analogy'. Could you explain further?
Andrew McCarthy (ATM)
When I read Til We Have faces in Summer 2019 I immediately thought "Renault!" and was shocked when I compared publication dates.
I agree about the claustrophobia in Tombs of Atuan, and about it being the point. I greatly enjoyed Le Guin's Earthsea works, but I am still not sure I really understand them. And the addition of later works like Tehanu and The Other Wind confuse me even more. I'm just not certain I quite understand her point, and if I do, whether or not I agree with it. But I am absolutely convinced she has one and that it is very worth considering. AT any rate, Atuan itself is fairly straight forward, even if Tenar herself, later, is not, quite.
(Maybe I just regretted the loss of Ged as a POV character after The Wizard of Earthsea)
One can only speculate about what Ursula Le Guin would have thought about this news regarding her father.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/27/us/uc-berkeley-removes-kroeber-from-anthropology-building-trnd/index.html
My guess is that she would have had a nuanced comment.
Dear Wurm:
I had not heard of this story; thanks for the link.
I think Le Guin wd be distressed.
For myself, I'm not much for weaponizing history. I don't want history sanitized. I want the past remembered flaws and all.
--John R.
Dear Andrew
The idea is that a work of art does not exist in a vacuum. Like a statue in a garden, it has a context. Placing another statue near it changes our perception of the original piece. It's been a long time since graduate school, but I think it was put forward by T. S. Eliot to express his view of the Canon of literature.
--John R.
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