Book Thoughts: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
After I read a book, I generally email my thoughts or notes to a friend. I'm now copying these first emails to this blog since it's easier to revisit.
Original Sent Date: Oct 28, 2024
The sentence structure was quite nice and relatively easy for me to get into, which means that the adjustment period was shorter than with other books. That said, I don't really care for the contents that much.
There were maybe a few scenes that will stay with me (mostly the one about the kids making a real prison while doing pretend play), but the rest is... eh. I don't really find it that interesting. I can see vaguely what it's trying to do and the main theme in contention is what freedom is and what control is. It reminded me about how Democrats are framing their arguments now about calling certain things freedom (like arguing for more gun control so their children can have the freedom of going to school without worrying about school shootings; arguing for reproductive rights as a freedom thing; arguing for stuff like vaccines to be free from plague etc.). Like the idea that you can be more free in some ways when you have certain restrictions.
Well, it's just okay at being interesting.
Le Guin being a white cis writer still has very obvious gender and race biases or whatever. There was literally a part in the book where Takver was thinking about how coming together across the distance of sex meant so much because blah blah blah coming home to each other, choosing each other, etc. Even if I agree that the idea that something is chosen every day is more meaningful to me than by being forced into it through some eternal vow you undertake one time like marriage, the distance of sex is just boring and bioessentialist, as you know. The other thing was that despite these cultures not being of Earth, it was very clear that certain people from certain planets had a "look" to them, which was mildly racist. Apparently there are no East or Southeast Asian humans on Anarres given that Shevek sees 2 women of these descent and thinks they look like children among other descriptions of their faces that was quite otherizing.
The joke is on Le Guin though, since though Shevek is probably meant to be white I couldn't stop imagining him with darker skin and dark black hair, specifically as an Arab man. Was that correct of me? No. This is also why I don't like reading fictional books because I can't always beat my head biases. This image of him was just chosen in my brain from the moment that I saw his name and said "well that's not very European", and despite any attempts of book description to the other (saying he had long hair but my head kept giving him short hair), I did not keep it in my memory file long enough to willingly conjure up a correct image. The desert comparisons in Anarres did not help my brain bias either.
Oh yeah, there was a tree / greenery bias in this book, like many others. Sometimes I wonder what people who live in deserts are writing about deserts and if they find comfort in the sand and talk about how beautiful the ecosystems are. I feel like I should pick one up someday to try to balance out the "deserts evil they have no water only cacti and suffering" bias I've internalized.
Anyhows, the way Anarres was run was somewhat interesting, I suppose. I haven't seen anything else like that in fiction because I don't read widely, so it's going to be my brain stand-in for possible anarchist outcomes, I guess, though at times things did feel too simplistic? But I'm not necessarily sure in what manner.
Also, I guess I really do subscribe to the idea that human relations are ultimately decided by threat of violence and the like. Like, I feel like Anarres would just fall the moment they could be used in some political struggle, given that they have no military. Maybe that's a lack of imagination on my part, but it feels like societies that don't understand violence intimately don't know how to guard themselves against it. But also understanding such a thing requires being in the throes of violence to begin with. So I often feel like this is just a forever problem with humanity, since societies that are too kind will be exploited by people who have no qualms about it. And so it continues.
I think that's why communists (in terms of states) have an emphasis on the necessity of having a military, though. At least the people I see online speak of the necessity of having a way to self-defend, though having states at all sucks. It often feels like it's a necessary sort of evil, though. Since to coordinate a large number of people and to plan for things like public health you're going to need some form of centralization.
Shevek, for his part, also never thinks about what the outcome of bringing such technology might be to Anarres. But hopefully because some planets' societies seem to be Better ™ they'll be defended by them, or something. Eh. I guess there's the idea that he wants to spread the truth no matter what and that is his prerogative and freedom. Since other people are building walls and he presents something that could make communication more instantaneous and whatnot, un-building those walls.
But anyway. It was just okay to me. Better crafted than most but I'm otherwise lukewarm.