Wonder

[vaneramos]

Ursula Le Guin reasserts herself as my favourite writer, this strikes so close to my personal credo. Here she reviews a Salman Rushdie novel in The Guardian:

Some boast that science has ousted the incomprehensible; others cry that science has driven magic out of the world and plead for “re-enchantment”. But it’s clear that Charles Darwin lived in as wondrous a world, as full of discoveries, amazements and profound mysteries, as that of any fantasist. The people who disenchant the world are not the scientists, but those who see it as meaningless in itself, a machine operated by a deity. Science and literary fantasy would seem to be intellectually incompatible, yet both describe the world; the imagination functions actively in both modes, seeking meaning, and wins intellectual consent through strict attention to detail and coherence of thought, whether one is describing a beetle or an enchantress. Religion, which prescribes and proscribes, is irreconcilable with both of them, and since it demands belief, must shun their common ground, imagination. So the true believer must condemn both Darwin and Rushdie as “disobedient, irreverent, iconoclastic” dissidents from revealed truth.

As quoted in Science Notes and Missing Points.

Comments

[fr-defenestrato.livejournal.com]

That's awesome! Yay, Ursula! Yay, Salman! Yay, Darwin! Boo, YHWH!

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it does sound like a winning team! I just wish I enjoyed Rushdie's writing (at least what I've read) anywhere near as much as LeGuin's.

[mattycub.livejournal.com]

I just read "Lathe Of Heaven" last year and really enjoyed it. That was my first Le Guin novel - what else would you recommend?

[marian-w.livejournal.com]

The Earthsea Trilogy is a favourite of mine, and the first I read of her's.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Wow, hard question! There is so much of her work I haven't read. Some I read in my teens and have utterly forgotten. I agree with Marian: the Earthsea Trilogy is my favourite, particularly A Wizard of Earthsea. It falls firmly in the fantasy genre. However those are youthful works, and she has offered a library of rich writing since. The Left Hand of Darkness is one of the great science fiction classics, about gender politics. Always Coming Home presents an exquisite anthropological document of a post-apocalyptic society. I thoroughly enjoyed A Fisherman of the Inland Sea when it came out in 1994; it's a collection of short stories set in the same Hainish universe as Left Hand and many other works.

[marian-w.livejournal.com]

I wish science and philosophy intertwined a lot more. I like this article a lot.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

It makes me want to read the book. I wish I had enjoyed Midnight's Children better.

[marian-w.livejournal.com]

Sometimes Salman Rushdie just doesn't fit with a certain era in your life, I've found. Maybe wait a year or more, or less, and maybe read it as two different books, since it's almost written like two.
He also has a children's story I really want to read: Haroun and the Sea of Stories. It's about a child who goes on an adventure and discovers the nature of creativity and storytelling, if I remember it correctly. There's something about children's stories I will never grow out of. I think we learn most readily through the eyes of our inner child.

I have a couple of his books, one's a book of his essays: digestible Rushdie.