Always Coming Home discussion

Here you cats go, if you want a place to chat while you read.

Awesome! I'm glad you made this thread. I also had never read the Aeneid before Lavinia and it was no hindrance, in case anyone is wondering.

I had never really considered reading it before but now I'm pretty excited :)

Should I maybe send out an announcement for a group read? Starting in June? Seems like it is organically going that way anyway.

Sounds good to me!

I'll try to get in on this, but I'm traveling half of June and making up work after that, so I may not have much reading time in the near future.

I'm also traveling for work in June but I'll take the book with me. Plenty of time in airports to read.

I read Lavinia about 6 months ago, so I've had a chance to let it simmer in my mind for a while. It does have a somewhat supernatural core, I'd say, while not being so very science fiction as most of LeGuin's writing. I heartily recommend the book. I find Ursula LeGuin to be a fascinating writer, and every thing she told me, I believed. It was a wonderful read.

Just got my copy from Amazon. I was going to get it on my kindle but it was like 3 bucks cheaper to get the paperback and, with Amazon prime, free 2-day shipping :)

I have it in hardback but also added it on Audible so I'd have it for travel.

Time to start soon! I'm excited!

Yay! I'm finishing up Planet of Exile right now.

Okay, I'm starting today! I love this book. I've already read it several times. =)

I got about half way through it last night, and just made myself stop because it's so good!

I'm interested in Lavinia's ideas of fas and nefas, the way things should be and the way things should not be, or something. Are they at all similar to our modern ideas of right and wrong, good and bad? Or is it more fatalistic than that? Or maybe just more realistic, acknowledging the way nature rules us, at times, and things often are pretty much out of our control? Is there a connection between these ideas and UKL's philosophical Taoism? Curious what people think.

I found a quote I love on page 185 of my paperback edition.

"...there were no restraints on me at all but those of religion and my duty to my people. I had grown up with those, they were part of me, not external, not enslaving; rather, in enlarging the scope of my soul and mind, they liberated me from the narrowness of the single self."

I thought it was such a good description of what I've found my religion to be like, in contrast to so many who seem to feel religion restricts and squashes them. It seems to me that real religion is meant to open us up and expand who we are, not to damp us down or restrict us. UKL, I believe, is not religious in a conventional sense, but it's clear that she touches upon the numinous, the thing that makes us all more than one narrow self, all the time in her work. What do y'all think?

I think the repressive element of religion comes primarily from churches (as institutions) and institutions are human things, not divine...

I see churches as attempted reifications of the ideals of religion, which of course always fall short, because they are real and not ideal. But they do reach out to share the ideals with others, and they are communities in which to attempt to put the ideals into practice. They (we) do sometimes tend to favor rulemaking and the letter of the law above the spirit, if only because the spirit is so darn hard to exemplify. While it's quite easy just not to cut your hair (for instance) or not to drink coffee, or perhaps not to show your wrists or ankles in public, or your brazen face. Those things are simple, and so we crave the certainty that we feel we can attain by doing those simple things. Loving your neighbor as yourself, though, is extremely hard, and even if you succeed once, it's still to do over and over again the next day and the next, and doesn't get any easier (or only a little, perhaps) over time.

Thus our institutions end up exemplifying our human weaknesses every bit as much as our divine spark of genius or moral purity or transcendent spirituality or whatever. But trying and failing is also worthy. The attempt is necessary. That's what I think about churches, and humanity, and divinity.

Perhaps that's just exactly what you said, Robert, only I took a lot more words to say it.

Lavinia, to bring it back to her, seems mostly to be free of any institutional religion. Or maybe as Princess then Queen, she becomes the institution. I'm not sure.

Question: If you had a chance to sit down opposite your poet (author, maker, whoever) in the woods, what would you ask her or him?

Ah, I've finished now. Is anyone else reading? The ending is so beautiful and sad! It makes me love the book more every time I read it. It's really grown in my heart over time. What a wonderful character.

I'm not reading along with you guys, but I completely burst into tears at the end of this one.

I can't figure out why, but the ending does make me terribly sad and also gives me a feeling that this book matters very much, that it's one of the truly great books of the world. Does anyone else feel that way?

The bit about the owl reminds me of the story of Blodauwedd from the Mabinogion and I've wondered if that was intentional or not.