
Ursula K. Le Guin at the National Book Awards - benbreen
http://parkerhiggins.net/2014/11/will-need-writers-can-remember-freedom-ursula-k-le-guin-national-book-awards/
======
jseliger
I heard her make remarks in a similar vein at the Washington State Book Awards
in 2006: [http://jakeseliger.com/2006/10/28/le-guin-at-the-seattle-
pub...](http://jakeseliger.com/2006/10/28/le-guin-at-the-seattle-public-
library) .

Incidentally, though, I think this no longer true: "Developing written
material to suit sales strategies in order to maximize corporate profit and
advertising revenue is not quite the same thing as responsible book publishing
or authorship."

It's now _easier_ than ever for writers to answer to no one but readers; the
Internet in general and Amazon in particular are tremendous open platforms
that let writers decide what to publish without the need for a conventional
publisher.

See further [http://www.vox.com/2014/10/22/7016827/amazon-hachette-
monopo...](http://www.vox.com/2014/10/22/7016827/amazon-hachette-monopoly) .

~~~
Booktrope
The problem with Le Guin's position is that it's so Manichean, a world
composed of good guys and bad guys with no ambiguities. To her, it's either
sell books like deodorant or some ideal system where it's quality, not
marketability, that makes books sell. This sounds good, but it's tripe. As you
say, the Internet in general and Amazon in particular have opened up
publishing -- Amazon getting huge credit because it not only allows freer
publishing, but has set up a system that allows many thousands of new authors
to actually connect with readers. Yet, Amazon is also a business focused on
selling products at high volume with tight margins. These two goals aren't
opposed, they're different aspects of a complex business. Amazon can be both a
great contributor and profit-motivated, it's not that hard to see how.

Who defines quality, anyway? The tastemakers, like newspaper reviewers, who
nobody much pays attention to anymore? Or Le Guin -- she seems to think she
knows what's good. I imagine, what if John Kennedy O'Toole had the opportunity
to self-publish A Confederacy of Dunces, instead of facing despair when all
the traditional publishers turned him down. What if he'd been able to sell his
work like toothpaste on Amazon, even if the tastemakers thought it wasn't
worth publishing. To Le Guin, this would somehow violate the ideals the
publishing world ought to aspire to. To me, I wish the opportunities offered
by Amazon had been around back then.

~~~
WalterBright
Herman Melville's "Moby Dick" was a complete failure when published in 1851,
and was essentially forgotten. It was rediscovered after WW1, becoming a great
classic of American literature.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby-
Dick#Later_reception](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby-Dick#Later_reception)

~~~
jseliger
_It was rediscovered after WW1, becoming a great classic of American
literature._

There's also an open question about the book's intrinsic merit versus the need
at the time to "discover" American literature and find exemplary American
texts of the sort that were needed to instil a sense of unity in a country of
disparate immigrant groups.

Menand discusses some of this in _The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and
Resistance in the American University_ , which is an interesting and wonderful
book. I wrote more about the book here:
[http://jakeseliger.com/2010/01/21/problems-in-the-academy-
lo...](http://jakeseliger.com/2010/01/21/problems-in-the-academy-louis-
menands-the-marketplace-of-ideas-reform-and-resistance-in-the-american-
university-2)

~~~
WalterBright
Having read the book myself, I'm confident it has a lot of intrinsic merit.

~~~
Uhhrrr
Yeah - I avoided it for a long time because of its reputation as a
paperweight, but it's a great, multilayered, witty book.

And it's unencumbered by copyright, so there's little reason not to give it a
go.

~~~
WalterBright
One thing I like about Amazon is their large selection of classics like this,
formatted for the Kindle, at $0.00.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
Thank Project Gutenberg instead.

~~~
WalterBright
P.G. deserves most of the credit, that's correct. But Amazon also deserves
credit for integrating it into the Kindle system. They didn't have to do that,
and they make no money off of it.

~~~
judk
Well they sell kindles for it and they know most people will get bored of
classic literature with aging dialect.

------
plover
Video is up: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et9Nf-
rsALk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et9Nf-rsALk)

~~~
carlob
This should be further up.

I personally found myself skimming through the written version while her
delivery left me glued to the screen and quite moved.

------
WalterBright
The notion that the publishing industry was ever able to reliably discern
quality is scuttled not only by "Moby Dick", but by a long list of other
failures:

[http://www.literaryrejections.com/best-sellers-initially-
rej...](http://www.literaryrejections.com/best-sellers-initially-rejected/)

~~~
afterburner
That's a list of "Best-sellers initially rejected", though. Not quite the same
as quality initially unrecognized. Some of them could still be books of low
quality, that happen to be popular.

~~~
WalterBright
Nobody has found a reliable metric to determine the quality of art, not even
close, other than what others are freely willing to pay for it.

~~~
logicchains
You might be surprised how many people there are who would consider the
quality of art to be inversely proportional to what others are freely willing
to pay for it. Particularly those in the business of making art that few are
interested in paying for.

~~~
WalterBright
Not at all. I've also run into people who put on stage productions who are
disappointed if people actually go to see them, feeling that means they "sold
out".

While they're entitled to their opinions, I suspect that this is just a
rationalization for being terrible artists :-) It's like people who take pride
in not knowing anything about technology.

------
clebio
> We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right
> of kings.

~~~
vixen99
What a bizarre connection! Disputing the divine right of kings had to be a
private act or you faced the consequences; you and I, the consumers,
ultimately decide the fate of the millions of businesses that constitute the
system we call capitalism within a free market.

~~~
davedx
She is talking about moving to a new system outside of capitalism, not causing
a dip in profits for one particular company.

~~~
logicchains
"Capitalism" is a system in which people are allowed to exchange and
accumulate goods freely. Moving to a system "outside of capitalism" involves
preventing this, and necessarily involves large scale violence both to take
the accumulated capital of savers and to persecute anyone who still seeks to
engage in the free exchange of goods. See for example the merchants in Maoist
China and Stalinist Russia who were hung or shot for being capitalist
traitors, and the landowners who were exiled or killed. It was literally
illegal to own a shop, or to grow or make something and exchange it for
something else.

~~~
lazaroclapp
Not really. Those are reasonable examples of what it takes to try to "force"
an entire country out of capitalism "for their own good". Socialism as a part
of a general economic or ethical philosophy - embedded within the liberal
democratic system - is not quite as bad on its own. The fundamental ideas
behind the movement led to things like universal public education, national
investment in the sciences and arts, as well as universal public healthcare.
These are all things which almost every modern nation recognizes as good
ideas. Where it goes off the rails is when you formulate an entire political
theory that can be summed as "We shall get a moral and dependable dictator to
forbid people from engaging in Capitalism or owning excessive property, thus
forcing everyone to work for the common good. This will eventually lead to
people naturally working for the common good, because that's what humans
naturally do.". The main problem with that one is obvious by word #8, but it
contains a few extra fallacies beyond that.

Now, it's perfectly possible to embed socialized literature grants and
"literary tenure" within a capitalist system if democratic society believes
that is the best way of generating valuable literary works that are not likely
to produce an immediate return of investment in the open market. We can even
do that simultaneously with a publishing industry producing literary works
with a focus towards profitability. Scientific research and some forms of
artistic creation already work this way.

As for completely replacing capitalism, as opposed to just having a mostly-
capitalist mixed economy? Well, I can't see it happening in a scarcity
society, but I can imagine it happening in a post-scarcity one. Suppose we get
to the point where robots farm food for us, robots gather natural resources
for us and robots keep basic infrastructure working for us. Now, suppose that
at one point we mostly trade in "services" and "ideas" (software, books,
music, movies, 3D printable designs for all our physical stuff). At what point
there does capitalism becomes silly? "Oh, I don't need money to live, I am
designing this car to get paid so that I can buy the 3D printable design of my
bed. Oh, wait, someone open-sourced the design for the bed I wanted, neat, let
me print it. Guess I can open-source my car design too." "But hey, does that
mean you are never making another car design?" "Are you kidding? I love
designing cars and what else would I do with my time? Besides, I get a kick
out of seeing people driving the car I designed!". The beauty is that we
wouldn't even need most people to think that way, just a small fixed count
from the population. Things like reputation and competition for real state
might have to be solved differently in a society without capitalism, but lets
be honest, capitalism is a poor system for solving those two anyways, as
evidenced by rent prices in the Bay Area and "Am I a failure if I am not worth
$1Bn by age 22?" questions on Quora.

Now, capitalism is probably still the best system we know of to solve resource
allocation and promote technological innovation in the conditions of
contemporary human society. But those conditions are subject to change. So,
yes, "we need capitalism because people need to exchange and accumulate
[physical, non-duplicable, scarce] goods freely" is true at the moment. But so
would have been at a time: "we need the King to keep all the feudal lords and
their peasants united in peace and organized in the case of barbarian
invasions".

(Note: This rant turned longer than I expected. Also, HN might be the weirdest
place on the net to do a Commie rant ;) )

~~~
logicchains
>Well, I can't see it happening in a scarcity society, but I can imagine it
happening in a post-scarcity one.

The thing is, scarcity in the economic sense is defined in terms of peoples'
wants, which seem to be able to expand indefinitely. Short of discovering an
infinite energy source, there will never be enough energy to completely
satisfy everybody's wants. So a method will be needed of deciding whose wants
get satisfied. This method can be exchange based: you do x for Joe, because
Joe either did something for you or did something for someone else and has a
scarce token (money) to prove it. Or, it can not be exchange based: somebody
makes you do x for Joe, because Joe himself doesn't have anything to offer you
to make you want to do x for him.

>Suppose we get to the point where robots farm food for us, robots gather
natural resources for us and robots keep basic infrastructure working for us.

I think it's an open question whether we can get robots that are capable of
doing almost everything for us without requiring those robots approach human
intelligence levels. If the robots that do all our work for us need to be as
smart as us to do so, then they probably wouldn't be willing to work for free.

~~~
lazaroclapp
> The thing is, scarcity in the economic sense is defined in terms of peoples'
> wants, which seem to be able to expand indefinitely.

It's unclear to me whether this is true. For most of history, "infinitely
expanding people wants" was not a thing, at least in terms of material wants.
Maybe because it was not believed to be possible? But there are plenty of
examples of autocratic rulers in pre-industrial times who extracted less
resources from their subjects than it's believed they could. So, did they
balance that against some risk or the effort required? Or were they simply
uninterested in maximizing their personal wealth beyond a point? I feel even
in modern capitalist society, above a certain threshold (which varies from
person to person and according to circumstances) people are more motivated by
status and recognition than material wants...

> If the robots that do all our work for us need to be as smart as us to do
> so, then they probably wouldn't be willing to work for free.

Does being as smart as us require being as self-aware as us? Does it require
free will? Does it beget human needs and values? If 000, my scenario holds. If
100, we might be faced with a serious moral dilemma. If 110, who knows what
our relationship with such beings would be. If 111, I've re-invented slavery
and it should be abolished again at once, but I sort of doubt the answer to
all three questions will be true. All other configurations are hard to
imagine.

~~~
dragonwriter
> For most of history, "infinitely expanding people wants" was not a thing, at
> least in terms of material wants.

Economics addresses material wants exclusively, but with a broader view than
many people take when informally using the term "material wants". The only
situation in which economic scarcity would not exist _in the general sense_
would be if there was no good, service, or change in condition which would
improve experienced utility for any person.

Further, with real people rather than the basically omniscient beings modeled
by rational choice theory, to have a non-scarcity society in any meaningful
sense, you'd need instead for their to be no good, service, etc., which any
person would _expect, even irrationally_ to increase their experienced
utility.

To be a non-scarcity society with regard to a particular good, service, etc.
(or any class of such good, service, etc.), requires the same thing (for
either the theoretical and practical interpretations as above), but only
within the class of goods, services, etc. of interest.

While there's certainly evidence that there may be a certain level of wealth
-- which a number of people in the modern developed world reach or far exceed
-- beyond which increasing wealth has no net positive impact on experience
utility _on average_ , I don't think there's any evidence that at any point in
history there has been an society that is non-scarcity either in the _actual_
sense of no actual capacity for improved utility from increased supply of
goods, services, etc., or the _practical_ sense of no _expectation_ of
improved utility from such things. There's certainly times where economic
growth was not the norm and so _expectations_ didn't expand as rapidly, but
infinite wants doesn't mean that expectations are infinite, its that more
goods (even in excess of expectations) won't satiate the desire for _even
more_ goods on top of that.

> people are more motivated by status and recognition than material wants...

Status and recognition are basically services provided by other people in
exchange for something done for those other people -- they are economic goods,
even though they may generally be the subject of fairly informal exchanges
that are harder to attribute monetary value than more formal (even barter)
exchanges.

------
bhrgunatha
> Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art
> of words.

I never really studied history in any depth. Do you think this is just
hyperbole? By which I mean is she simply overstating or exaggerating the role
of art in historic events? Am I taking it too literally - that art is the
first step towards cultural upheaval? Can anyone give some examples of art
effecting some kind of huge social change?

~~~
avalaunch
"So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war."

Supposedly Abraham Lincoln said this to Harriet Beecher Stowe in reference to
her book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, which is often credited for changing the North's
attitude towards slavery.

~~~
bhrgunatha
That's a really great example, thanks!

------
CaptainSwing
Thanks for a great post! I'm a big fan of Le Guins fiction, as well as her
commentary and critique of literature as commodity.

Another great (anti-capitalist) novelist who I admire, China Mieville, touched
on some similar topics in his keynote speech at the Edimnburgh International
Book Festival a few years ago:
[http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/aug/21/china-
mieville-...](http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/aug/21/china-mieville-the-
future-of-the-novel)

"But who decides who qualifies as a writer? Does it take one sonnet? Of what
quality? Ten novels? 50,000 readers? Ten, but the right readers? God knows we
shouldn't trust the state to make that kind of decision. So we should
democratise that boisterous debate, as widely and vigorously as possible. It
needn't be the mere caprice of taste. Which changes. And people are perfectly
capable of judging as relevant and important literature for which they don't
personally care. Mistakes will be made, sure, but will they really be worse
than the philistine thuggery of the market?

"We couldn't bypass the state with this plan, though. So for the sake of
literature, apart from any- and everything else, we'll have to take control of
it, invert its priorities, democratise its structures, replace it with a
system worth having.

"So an unresentful sense of writers as people among people, and a fidelity to
literature, require political and economic transformation. For futures for
novels – and everything else. In the context of which futures, who knows what
politics, what styles and which contents, what relationships to what
reconceived communities, which struggles to express what inexpressibles, what
stories and anti-stories we will all strive and honourably fail to write, and
maybe even one day succeed? "

------
davedx
I love Ursula Le Guin's books.

My favourite quote by her (if not in general) in this one:

“If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets,
lives... But up close a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a
hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern.”

------
InAnEmergency
Her comments seem somewhat related to her book "The Dispossessed" which
contrasts a capitalist world with a plausible anarchist/communist world.

~~~
slowmovintarget
While she may speak with the authority of having written "The Dispossessed"
(which is wonderfully good), her words seem to mostly be about Amazon.

In that regard I think her comments miss the mark ("corporate fatwa" being the
biggest silliness).

~~~
the_af
In what way do they miss the mark? I have immense respect for both Ursula K.
Le Guin's work _and_ her ideology. Her comments seem pretty sensible to me.

~~~
slowmovintarget
I cannot speak to her ideology, as I've only read her novels and admired her
amazing craftsmanship and care. For example, in "The Dispossessed" she crafts
a point of rational observation of both extremes of capitalism and communism.
I've not had the opportunity to read of or hear her own personal views.

I think her remarks aimed at Amazon miss the mark. She said: "...We just saw a
profiteer try to punish a publisher for disobedience and writers threatened by
corporate fatwa, and I see a lot of us, the producers who write the books, and
make the books, accepting this. Letting commodity profiteers sell us like
deodorant, and tell us what to publish and what to write."

Amazon was not "punishing disobedience", rather they are attempting to
negotiate more favorable terms for literally all involved parties. (Amazon's
historical data shows a lower price for e-books increases overall sales
generating a higher profit for Amazon, for the publisher, and for the author.)

To me, attempting to show an equivalence between Amazon's contractual
negotiation with Hachette and religious pronouncements from Muslim clerics
sounds a false note in an otherwise important statement.

------
aerovistae
Reminds me of Roald Dahl's short story "The Great Automatic Grammatizator."

I cannot recommend it enough. Amazing story about a future in which an
engineer creates a machine that writes stories quick and cheap, thousands and
thousands of them in no time at all.

[http://bookophile.weebly.com/uploads/6/4/0/8/6408830/the_gre...](http://bookophile.weebly.com/uploads/6/4/0/8/6408830/the_great_automatic_grammatizator_and_ot_-
_roald_dahl.pdf)

------
sxcurry
Sorry, I admire her writing, but I call complete and utter bullshit on this
speech. Books are commodities, not some magical elixer from the gods. Some are
good, some are terrible. I buy mine from Amazon and Audible. New technologies,
and they are helping more people to read more books than ever before.

~~~
rquantz
This is a typical view around here. Obviously to Le Guin they are more than
that. But what would one of the great writers of our time, approaching the end
of her life, know about that?

~~~
jasonisalive
She's very good, but great? I don't know about that. I've really enjoyed many
of her books, but at heart they seem to me to be the books of an author who
isn't particularly conscious of her privilege level in the world. Furthermore
she never really seemed to move beyond a very American-centric strain of 60s
radical politics in her thinking and aesthetics.

If you're a certain type of American, I'm sure you could be convinced that
she's a truly rich and resounding thinker. People on the other side of that
fence would probably wish she was interested in speaking to the whole human
audience.

~~~
jkaunisv1
That's surprising because in every one of her stories I've read, there is a
stark awareness of racial, social and class differences. She is one of the
most aware authors I can think of. She writes about differences between men
and women, the rich and the poor, capitalists and socialists, leaders and
servants, personal family events and large-scale world events.

I am not American and your comment comes across as very pigeonholing. What
other part of the human audience do you wish she'd speak to?

