The Dispossessed;

I've made it two days and I can make it no longer; I HAVE to explode about this book.

The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin is indubitably one of the most beautiful pieces of literature I have ever had the privilege of reading. And I do mean 'privilege' because I never, in a million years, would have gone into a bookstore and bought this myself. I wouldn't even have picked it up. In fact, I think it's fair to say that myself and this book would never consciously come into one another's orbit. You see:

• Literature and I share a torrid love/hate relationship.
• I generally don't read science fiction. This book is science fiction.
• I think my philosophical ineptitude has been rigorously and humiliatingly established.
• This book deals with philosophy.
• Politics to me is like abstract art; it goes right over my head. I know the basics, and I desperately want to learn more, but with all the spin-doctors and rhetoric and jargon, I think I'd sooner find a way through a stampeding herd of elephants alive than understand politics.
• This book is political.
• Did I mention it's science fiction?
• On the whole I'd say I'm fairly open-minded and adventurous with my reading, but my one preference is that the narrative be character-driven as opposed to plot-driven. If I don't care about the characters, why should I care what happens to them?
• In my experience, polemic literature has a tendency to use its characters as pawns to further its argument or illustrate its point. It works, but at the expense of a flat cast.
• I have a bad habit of mocking literature by putting on a plum voice and describing it as being concerned with The Human Condition.
• This book is about the human condition.
• It's still science fiction, and has been since 1974.

This book is part of the required reading for English Literature: Writing & Ideology, so either way I was going to have to read it. This semester we have to do an eight-minute presentation to our tutorial groups on a book chosen from the list of set texts. Out of all the set texts, this was possibly the one I was dreading most. You know that old proverb that says you shouldn't judge a book by its cover? Well, I think the word 'cover' can be pretty much substituted by any quality related to a book. Do not judge a book by its genre/author/blurb/target audience/length/title/time of publication etc etc. In an ideal world, we wouldn't, but the fact is we don't have time to be endlessly open-minded or unbiased. We need discrimination, distinction, guidelines to help us select--now. We develop a taste for what we like and what we don't based on the standards of a particular division, and there ignorance and missed opportunities for self-expansion abound. Sad, but inevitable. So I'm sitting in the first tutorial and the tutor is going through the list of texts asking who wants to do which, and when she says The Dispossessed, I think Fuck it and my hand shoots up. Because, despite all my preconceptions (and misconceptions), I love a challenge, and if reading a 400 page novel on something completely alien to me (excuse the pun) and then doing an eight-minute presentation on it in front of total strangers is not a challenge, I don't know what is. (I am aware it is a relatively small challenge.)

So on September 26th I sit down at my desk, open up a blank word document to take notes in an unprecedented move of preparation, and begin reading. I'm all Okay book, I don't like you and you don't like me, but goddamnit, we're stuck with each other now, so let's make the most of it.

Two things the book's got going for it at this point:

1. It has an element of physics, a subject by which I am geekily fascinated and completely daunted.
2. The guy on the front cover, who I'm assuming is supposed to be the protagonist, is extremely handsome in a rugged, windswept kind of way. YUM.

The first paragraph has me grudgingly enraptured, moved and intrigued. The story starts right in the middle of things, and being new to the genre, I am totally discombobulated, so that throws me a little, but I persevere, and holy freakshow, am I glad I did.

I think about books and the business a lot, and I've come across this notion that a piece of writing, whatever it is, whatever genre, whatever, should always both be enjoyable and challenging. Maybe the enjoyable thing is the style, the plot, the characters, the language, the ideas, the execution. Maybe the challenges are the vocabulary, the motives, the subtext, the ideologies, the ethics, the questions asked. Maybe the enjoyable and the challenging are synonymous. But both should be present.

Both are definitely present here. The characters, specifically Shevek, the protagonist, are beautifully developed and expanded. They are the driving force of the novel. Without them, there is nothing but some fancy maths equations and a couple of spaceships floating around. The language is succinct and seductive--I learned like five new words! The idealogies, philosophies and theories woven throughout are thought-provoking and have no obvious solutions. The politics and anthropological issues raised are as relevant now as they were forty years ago. There were moments when I felt genuine elation or dread or despair or hope. Nothing short of me squealing/jumping around/talking with my hands/gushing is going to do this book justice. There's some truly moving reviews over on Amazon, and I bet there's loads of insightful critiques out there on the world wide web, but the best thing you can do is just go read the book for yourself! Even if you don't care for the characters or the setting or the plot or any of the superficial stuff, the central issues and themes are too fundamental to our existence to be passed over.


Whew, okay, I have officially done my good deed for the day.

Happy reading!