Ursula K. Le Guin Beyond Genre: Fiction for Children and Adults (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Ursula K. Le Guin Beyond Genre: Fiction for Children and Adults Brian Attebery (bio) Ursula K. Le Guin Beyond Genre: Fiction for Children and Adults. By Mike Cadden . Children’s Literature and Culture Series, Vol. 33. New York and London: Routledge, 2005. There are many reasons why it is impossible to write the definitive book on Ursula K. Le Guin. She is prolific without ever repeating herself; her work spans a formidable array of themes and techniques; her own critical essays are so intelligent and thought-provoking that a scholar is likely to feel he is merely following in her wake. If that all were not enough to make the task sufficiently daunting, there is also her penchant for revisiting her fictional universes from time to time and shaking things up. The Earthsea we thought we knew after the publication of Le Guin's classic fantasy trilogy in the 1960s and 1970s turns out, after the appearance of three subsequent volumes, to be a very different place: darker, more complex, and considerably more substantial. Not surprisingly, then, Mike Cadden has not written the final word on Le Guin, but he has written a very fine word indeed, and a significant addition to earlier critical work by Elizabeth Cummins, James Bittner, Samuel R. Delany, Robert Scholes, and others. His strategy has been to begin with the idea of Le Guin as a writer of children's books. From that vantage point, her work takes on a very different shape and significance from those identified by previous writers. The fact that Le Guin has produced a significant body of children's literature is somewhat of an open secret among both children's literature scholars and fans of her science fiction or fantasy. Cadden's bibliography lists many works on Le Guin and many on children's books but only one article—by Mike Cadden!—whose title explicitly links her with children's literature. The Earthsea stories, with an audience of both children and adults, are frequently cited by children's literature scholars, but picture books such as Leese Webster, A Visit from Dr. Katz, and the haunting Scandinavian-style tale A Ride on the Red Mare's Back have had little critical attention. Within the other camp, science fiction fans began to complain in the late 1970s that Le Guin had abandoned them, or abandoned the genre, because the extraordinary stream of novels that began with Rocannon's World in 1966 had slowed to a trickle. Yet it was exactly at that time that Le Guin began establishing herself as a writer for children and adolescents. In the interview with which Cadden concludes his study, he comments to Le Guin on the apparent split between her science fiction and her children's books and observes that "there hasn't been a lot of criticism that connects them." She [End Page 199] agrees: "particularly with the actual children's books, which have barely been mentioned" (147). A book like Cadden's is long overdue. Looking at Le Guin's various works in relation to her children's books brings out certain patterns that might not be so evident if one began from a different perspective, such as Le Guin the poet, or Le Guin the feminist essayist, or Le Guin the science fiction writer. Cadden focuses on three such patterns. Each of these gets a chapter in the book. First, children's literature frequently uses animals as stand-ins for people, and Le Guin's work does include examples of anthropomorphized animals, such as the cats in her Catwings series. More often, though, her animals retain their animal natures even while speaking or acting like humans. The winged siblings in Catwings may argue like human brothers and sisters, but the way their mother sends them out into the world is the behavior of a real feral cat. In these books, as in the short story "Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight," the mask of humanity is thin and semi-transparent—the strongest impression is of a glimpse into an alien way of seeing and living. That glimpse of the alien Other pervades Le Guin's writing for both children...