
For Ursula - sohkamyung
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/24/books/review/for-ursula-le-guin-poem-naomi-novik.html
======
teekert
Because of HN I just finished the left hand of darkness. It was a smooth read,
the book requires no motivation to pick up after putting it down. I felt the
cold, the landscapes, the atmosphere, even some of the sexlessness of the
Gethenians eventually became real. Not many writers can do that to me. That
said, someone commented here that it was possible to state what the left hand
of darkness was but that you only truly understand after reading the book. I
must says, I didn't experience it that deeply. It was nice, but it didn't
alter my thinking as some books do. Some aspects kept me thinking: like
Estraven and the miscommunications, the shifgrethor which seems to exist in
some culture here in some form. But it didn't change me. Did I miss something
profound?

~~~
bshepard
This passage points towards what (I experienced) as profound about the novel:

"Our entire pattern of socio-sexual interaction is nonexistent here.They
cannot play the game. They do not see one another as men or women. This is
almost impossible for our imagination to accept. What is the first question we
ask about a newborn baby?Yet you cannot think of a Gethenian as "it." They are
not neuters. They are potentials, or integrals. Lacking the Karhidish "human
pronoun" used for persons in somer, I must say "he," for the same reasons as
we used the masculine pronoun in referring to a transcendent god: it is less
defined, less specific, than the neuter or the feminine. But the very use of
the pronoun in my thoughts leads me continually to forget that the Karhider I
am with is not a man, but a manwoman."

