Does This Mean We’re Respectable?

It certainly looks like it.  The Paris Review has interviewed Ursula K. LeGuin.

The interview is worth reading for a couple of different reasons . . . well, actually, at least three.

One is that the interviewer is not somebody from inside the science fiction/fantasy community, so the interview’s questions and answers aren’t the ones that a lifetime of reading interviews in Locus and similar in-group publications has trained us to expect.

Two is that the interviewer is not someone who knows a great deal about science fiction, to put it kindly, and watching LeGuin maneuver diplomatically around the resulting areas of ignorance is a pleasure to behold.

And three, this is Ursula K. LeGuin we’re talking about.  She’s always interesting, no matter who’s interviewing her and for what.

4 thoughts on “Does This Mean We’re Respectable?

  1. I liked how the interviewer kept (either deliberately or unconsciously) trying to get her to say something negative about genre writing, and she was clearly having none of it.

    That’s one of the things I’ve always liked about LeGuin: She’s never tried to do the Dance of Genre Disavowal, the way some sf/fantasy writers do when they start receiving mainstream acclaim.

  2. It always amazes me how many mainstream critics believe that a science fiction/fantasy writer (or a mystery writer, or a romance writer) is going to take being told that they’ve “transcended their genre” as a compliment.

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