emily’s Reviews > Ursula K. Le Guin: Conversations on Writing > Status Update

‘I don’t know if you can call language ‘technology.’ Technology is—involved w/ tools. Language is something we emit—we have to learn it—Language is strange. That deeper meaning is where poetry approaches music—you can't put that meaning in words in an intellectually comprehensible way. It’s just there—you know it’s there—sound—carries it. This is extremely mysterious—rightly so—Some can hear it & get it / not get it’

‘To assume—the present tense is literally “now” & the past tense literally remote in time is extremely naïve—The present tense is a narrow-beam flashlight in the dark—limiting the view to the next step: now, now, now—Third-person limited is—similar to first person—it is one point of view only—You know where you are, whose eyes you are seeing through, but you don’t have the sense of being jerked from place to place—'

‘—the interviewer is going to discuss the influence—of Schopenhauer—Wittgenstein/Adorno—none of whom I have ever read—or will demand my opinion of queer theory/string theory—instruct me to tell—what Taoism is—or (likeliest of all) ask me about The Future of Mankind. That I know the immensity of my ignorance doesn’t mean I like to display it—There are advantages and disadvantages to living a very long time as I have.’