Ursula K. LeGuin

David, I've just seen this announcement about another publisher who is putting out collections of LeGuin's stories. is this going to interfere with LOA's plans for LeGuin's works?

>1 Podras.:

The short answer is almost certainly not in the long run, and probably not even in the short run--at least for the works in these two collections. The tentative plan for future LOA omnibus editions is starkly different in both format and arrangement of contents of these volumes.

Also note: one of those two collections (The Real and the Unreal) is actually a reissue; the original edition was previously released as two volumes in 2012 by Simon & Schuster (which is the parent company of Saga Press); the only change is that they're re-releasing it as one volume. The combined edition contains "only" 39 of her stories--including four Orsinian tales that actually appear in the new LOA volume.

--David

>2 DCloyceSmith: Thanks much. Whew!

>2 DCloyceSmith:

That's good news, not just for LOA but for readers generally, and hopefully authors. That works can be released in vastly different editions seems a boon for book culture, frankly. I realise that isn't a law, the circumstances in individual cases will rule the day, but it's heartening to see a specific case allowing this diversity.

>2 DCloyceSmith: DCloyceSmith:

Aaaactually, THE REAL AND THE UNREAL (Where On Earth, Vol. 1; Outer Space, Inner Lands, Vol. 2) was published by Small Beer Press, a (naturally) small press out of MA. I've got the copies on my shelves (beautiful covers, solid, well-made hardcover books -- as good as say, Subterranean Press, and their solid biblio-constructs). And the stories only total 38, with 18 in volume one, and the rest in volume two). The books are, in fact, still in print as far as I know (at least they are still listed for sale by Amazon).

Speaking of unusual and diverse publications: I've had to move so much -- and so far -- in the past 11 years, that I've had to pare down my book collection, and sometimes even manage to lose a box or two in transit here or there. One such box contained a box set of ALWAYS COMING HOME, which told a tale of "the Kesh". And not only came with drawings but also came with cassettes including 10 musical pieces and some poetry -- ostensibly by the Kesh.

(I imagine that the latter things won't be included should that book be part of the forthcoming LOA omnibus editions. :) Then again, I NEVER would have thought a "Calvin & Hobbes" cartoon would show up in an LOA book! ANYthing is possible!)

>5 Truett:

Thanks for the correction, re: who published the original two-volume edition of The Real and Unreal. I'd misunderstood; it seems the rights for the collection were transferred to Simon & Schuster.

I'm not sure (yet) if a new story has been added (or if Saga Press's count of "39" is simply wrong). The page count of the new edition seems to be quite a bit higher than the original two-volume edition, so I suspect the new edition has also been complete re-designed, probably to match the companion volume.

--David

Does anyone know how many LoA volumes of Le Guin are planned?

Here's a FASCINATING article on LeGuin and her recent induction into the rarefied halls of Living Library of America inductees.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/books/ursula-le-guin-has-earned-a-rare-honor-j...

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/books/ursula-le-guin-has-earned-a-rare-honor-j...

>8 Truett:

Thank you for sharing, looking forward to that volume.

DCloyceSmith: Couple of questions. First, I noticed that the same publisher which is putting out the short stories and novellas of Le Guin this year -- before rights revert to LOA, I assume -- is publishing the EARTHSEA books in 2018. Will LOA be publishing a volume of Le Guin's EARTHSEA books soon after (or before)?

Also, and this is just curiosity, not complaint: I noticed that in some of the LOA volumes, mention is made of when an author publishes a short story which was given an O Henry Award, or a story that was included in the Best American Short Story anthologies. Is that something the _editor_ of each volume has to cobble up, or is there a different team that does so? (Wondering, because I noticed that "Sur" was awarded an O.Henry Award, and -- in '82 or '83 -- she had two stories included in the same Best American Short Stories anthology ("The Professor's Houses", and "Hand,Cup, Shell").

(I also hope whoever does the editing includes "The Word for World is Forest" when the put together her short fiction volume. The folks at Saga Press _didn't_ include that in the recent novella collection, which makes no sense, since that novella is an award-winner and a classic).

>10 Truett:

It's unlikely that we'll be publishing the Earthsea books anytime soon, for rights reasons.

That said--although we haven't received all the signed, final contracts--we're far along enough to unofficially announce that the next two volumes of the Le Guin edition, scheduled for Fall 2017, will collect all of the novels and stories set in the Hainish universe (including "The Word for World is Forest").

As for your second question: The editor, with help from the staff, compiles the information for the Chronology; we don't make it a rule to include every award or to include particular awards. In Le Guin's case, of course, we had help from the author herself, and it would be impossible to list all her awards without turning the Chronology into a litany of honors. But, as you point out, Le Guin has had one O. Henry Prize story ("Hand, Cup, Shell" in 1991), and two selections were included in the 1983 Best American Short Stories anthology edited by Anne Tyler ("Sur" and "The Professor's Houses").

--David

>11 DCloyceSmith:

A real event, getting the rights for these Le Guin works ... and hopefully a bonanza that LOA works directly with her rather than her estate or editor. Hopefully the Earthsea books will be added eventually.

Mr. Smith: I'm smacking my forehead -- I read about the awards for those three stories (in separate books), a few weeks ago, but didn't mention anything when the information was fresh in my mind. I managed to confuse which one got the "O Henry Award" and which two were given the Best American Short Stories treatment when I posted the other day. Sorry. :) And THANKS for setting the record straight. (Bet Mrs. Le Guin was bowled over to get two mentions in one year!)

And the information about the Hainish stories and novels coming up is great news (I'm thoroughly enjoying the first Le Guin LOA volume -- and impressed that the novel, in nascent form, appeared so early in her writing career, when she was younger). I've only read _some_ of the stories in that cycle, and one of the novels, so that will be a treat (I'm still kicking myself for managing to lose my original copy of ALWAYS COMING HOME, the novel that was published with recorded music of "the Kesh"; on the other hand, LOA will eventually make sure I get a new copy).

Thanks again, Mr. Smith, for your gentle corrections and your gracious info regarding forthcoming LOA titles!

Just got my copy of ALWAYS COMING HOME in the mail (living on the other side of the earth, mail moves more slowly, even here in the 21st century). I knew it was going to have all of the poetry and Kesh-related fiction and mythology, and al of the drawings that were in the copy I owned long-ago (when the book first came out). But I had no idea that it would come with such beautiful endpapers -- the drawing of the Valley of Na.

Question for David Cloyce Smith: I haven't glanced through all of the copies of LOA tomes I have on the bookshelves upstairs, but is ALWAYS COMING HOME the first edition to include special endpapers like this? And will all future copies include them or is this just for the initial printing (printings)?
Just curious.

>14 Truett: I can't speak for the entire series or anything, but I know that Le Guin's Orsinia has a map or Orsinia's Ten Provinces as endpapers. Le Guin's 1st Hainish Volume contains a map of "The Great Continent" described in The Left Hand of Darkness, and the 2nd Hainish Volume includes a large painting of a red planet or sun, titled "Some Worlds of Hainish Descent" and including a list of twenty or so planets and the relative distance of some to another landmark in the Hainish Universe... such as "100 Light Years from Terra" for example...

I'll be excited to see the endpapers for Always Coming Home, once I get around to ordering it!

Doc Flanders: Oy veh! I actually paged past the Orsina endpapers whilst reading the book! And I haven't yet got round to re-reading the material in boxed Hainish set (read 'em all before, a looong time ago). So I completely missed those endpapers! And, yeah, beautiful maps and drawings thereof. The map endpapers for vol 1 of the Hainish were drawn by LeGuin, so perhaps the Orsina maps were done by her as well (someone from LOA added the color). And Donna Brown did the diagram of different worlds for vol2 of the Hainish books. The endpapers for ALWAYS COMING HOME differ in that they feature actual illustrations, by Patrick Wynne.

I DID look (a bit more closely) through my volumes and found that only two other sets contained anything but the usual endpapers (and open book with an arc of stars): L'Engle's box set of books (they have "sci-fi" illustrations) and the Laura Wilder books -- which have endpapers featuring...a midwestern wallpaper design, I think, :)

Interesting that, so far, it's only the ladies -- and only specific ones -- that have endpapers out of the ordinary.
I wonder if L'Engle had as big a hand in the design of her LOA volumes as did Le Guin.

>16 Truett:

"I wonder if L'Engle had as big a hand in the design of her LOA volumes as did Le Guin." Since L'Engle died in 2007, I would suspect not.

>17 euphorb: I would suspect not.

Unless her wishes were advanced by her estate in negotiations with LOA. These are merely speculations by way of pointing out it's possible despite the timeline, I have no insight into what happened in actual fact.

Euphorb: LOL. Yeah, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say your suspicions are probably accurate. That'll teach me to try and comment whilst watching a show on iTunes ("True Detective", which made great use of a Robert Frost poem, and alerted me -- since I've never read his work or, ashamed to say, heard of him -- to Dennis Johnson). Now, I'm presupposing that Laura Wilder had no hand in the design of her LOA set, either.

Elenchus: thanks for the save. That was very kind of you. :)

It IS interesting that only certain books, or sets, had those out-of-the-norm endpaper designs. Obviously, Le Guin had a say in those used for the first four books in her LOA publications.

Which helps me formulate a better (and still annoying) question for DCLOYCESMITH:
Who (besides the author) decides when the endpaper design will be changed (as they were for L'Engle and Wilder) and
why?

Personally, I think more of that sort of thing should be done. That way, the outside of the books are still uniform -- to appease those to whom that is important -- while the inside, the endpapers, can work to put forth some original design or drawing that signifies or says something about the author. I mean, just imagine the endpapers that could have been done for Philip Roth! PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT (the mind fairly boggles)! I MARRIED A COMMUNIST (hammer and sickle?). AMERICAN PASTORAL (a nice pen and ink sketch would work really well). THE GHOST WRITER! Or, THE BREAST!

And, of course, Twain, Melville, Shirley Jackson, Eudora Welty, Ross MacDonald...all of the SF novels, and fantasy novels...Lovecraft!
LOTS of potential throughout the LOA.

In the last decade we have begun using the endpapers to present illustrative material related to the book. The editors and production staff work together to determine whether to use the endpapers for such material, especially when we feel the images or maps benefit from being printed in color or using the wider two-page spread.

In Le Guin's case, the endpapers for all four volumes were made with materials chosen and provided by the author; the volume of Albert Murray's novels has a map of Gasoline Point based on a sketch found in the author's files; the map of Port William in the Wendell Berry volume was drawn for a previous edition in consultation with the author.

Several historical volumes also contain special endpapers with period illustrations or maps: Reconstruction, Tuchman, all four Civil War volumes, War of 1812, the forthcoming Cornelius Ryan have maps; the Abigail Adams volumes have intricate family trees that would not have been as easy to read if included in the text; the John Quincy Adams volumes have sample pages from the diaries (showing how his writing changed as he got older). The Olmsted endpaper features a painting the architect made for his renderings.

For volumes of works specifically written for young readers (L'Engle, Wilder, and the forthcoming Burnett), endpapers have been designed to match the specially designed jackets. Similarly, the Lynd Ward volume has endpapers using a pattern found in one of his original books.

Those are the ones that come immediately to mind; I'm sure there are a couple of others i'm forgetting.

--David

>20 DCloyceSmith:
Thanks, David, for this detailed information. Though I had not noticed anywhere near all of these examples, now that you've brought them to our attention I, for one, think these endpapers are a terrific addition to the elegance of LOA volumes.

I'd forgotten the Olmsted example (though I'm still reading through it) and had wondered about the Ward but never pulled it from the shelf to clarify.

Agreed this is an elegant way of both illustrating the book while keeping to the LOA series format, hope it continues!

Since this thread is recently active again, you all reckon there are plans for more Le Guin volumes after Always Coming Home? I knew it was planned to be a multivolume thing, but I was wondering if the LOA might collect some for her stand alone works next, or if this is it for the foreseeable future on Le Guin. Pretty happy about it either way, but I’d welcome more LOA editions of Le Guin if they decide to publish them.

>23 Dr_Flanders: I emphatically second the motion.

Good news from the LOA website today (quotes from LOA Associate Editor Stefanie Peters):

“ 'We have plans to continue our Le Guin edition with at least three more volumes of fiction—the next, collecting the trilogy Annals of the Western Shore in one volume for the first time, and containing a never-before-published map drawn by Le Guin, will be published in October 2020—and a volume collecting her poetry, with an introduction by Harold Bloom, which was one of the last things he wrote before he died. He wrote: ‘The voice in her poems haunts me. I know that it haunts many others. It will continue to do that for a long time to come.’

'Beyond these concrete plans,' Peters continues, 'we hope that Le Guin’s complete fiction as well as her wonderful essays will join the LOA series in the future.'

Annals of the Western Shore will include the novels Gifts (2004), Voices (2006), and Powers (2007); several essays on the books; and a set of interviews she gave around the time of their publication. The volume will be edited by Brian Attebery, professor of English at Idaho State University and the editor of all four of LOA’s previous Le Guin titles."

>25 euphorb: That is very good news. The article doesn't say what will be in the other two of the three volumes that LOA has concrete plans for, but it also says that they eventually plan to put all of Le Guin's writing into print. That's a bit ambiguous, but it seems to me that they would have to have more than three more volumes in order to publish all the rest of her writings. I think her Earthsea works alone may require two volumes. There's lots of good reading ahead.

I read Bloom's piece on Le Guin in LOA's recently published The American Canon. I'm not sure how his praise for her writing could have been higher.

>26 Podras.: It does say "at least" three volumes, so that indicates possibly more, even for the concrete plans. Also, the volume of poetry is in addition to the "at least three volumes of fiction." Finally, it says that "beyond these concrete plans," they hope eventually to include her complete fiction -- so that indicates, as you surmise, that three volumes (or even the "at least three volumes") will not comprise her complete fiction. I would imagine more than one volume would be necessary for her complete essays, as well.

If we know that the next fiction volume is Annals, any predictions on what the other two fiction volumes might be?

Either way, I’m excited at the prospect of more Le Guin!

Podras: Harold Bloom's praise never meant much to me. Like that of Updike -- when he was in a "I've deigned to step down from the altar and walk amongst the great unwashed" mood as a critic -- Bloom's "praises" always seemed a bit faint (even feint); and, with Bloom, it too often smacked of band-wagon jumping (as time went by, Bloom could tell things were changing, and -- in my view -- he decided to make allowances with authors, so that no one could accuse him of elitism, sexism or racism, etc). ANY-one who chooses to title a book HOW TO READ AND WHY just _has_ to be more than a little full of himself. And he WAS part and parcel of the problem of the mostly white, mostly male, "American Canon".

As for LeGuin: yes, a million times, yes. Hope that wording in the PR statement -- "we hope that Le Guin’s complete fiction...will join the LOA series in the future" -- doesn't mean there will be a long, drawn-out, battle over the copyright issues now that SAGA PRESS is publishing the most popular of her series (Earthsea).

>25 euphorb: Nice! Four more volumes! Thanks for the update.

>29 Truett:
I don’t understand. You criticize Bloom for being part of a “mostly white, mostly male, American canon,” and then criticize him for beginning to include women and minorities in that canon. The poor man couldn’t win!

jroger1 -- Caeful, Roger: in your reinterpretation of what I wrote, you almost come off like a Fox "news" employee! :) Although my writing style might be termed a bit too complex, it doesn't seem that convoluted. I pointed out that 1) Bloom jumped on the LeGuin bandwagon ten years after she had already been recognized -- by many -- as a magnificent artist of the prose world; and, 2) that doing so as late as he did -- first in the 80s, then with more "gusto" in later years, was his attempt to seem more inclusive and broadminded (no bad pun intended) because enough younger writers and readers were starting to say, "literary canon? We don't need no steekin literary canon!" (see "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" if you didn't at least smile); and, finally, 3) I pointed out that Bloom was part and parcel of the Bigger Problem: a sort of "good ol' boy's club" that not only ignored anything which they believe was genre ghetto fiction (nevermind that Shakespeare embraced it all), but which also largely ignored women writers, while only occasionally acknowledging writers outside the Caucasian branches of humankind's family tree (and yes, I know that plenty of writers who aren't Caucasian -- the odious V.S. Naipaul, f'rinstance; or the equally foul Orson Scott Card -- have done even worse things).

So you see: I wasn't "criticizing him" (Bloom) for INCLUDING women and minorities -- I was criticizing him for including them in a manner that would seem to be more about Bloom than it would about the literature itself.
And, in the end, I DID say that ANY-one who would presume to write a book that tells others what and how and why to read, is so full of hot air, he comes off way too full of himself.

Now: since I was originally "just" responding to a comment about Bloom that Podras had inserted into this Ursula K LeGuine thread, howzabout you hold off on anymore Sean Hannity-style conclusions and I hold off on my retorts, and we both let this thread remain about the subject at hand?

Namely: URSULA K LeGUIN AND HER MAGNIFICENT FICTION and NONFICTION!
:)

LOA is to be congratulated for publishing the complete Hainish stories, but some of us might be interested in also having an illustrated copy of “The Dispossessed.” Folio Society has just published one:

https://www.foliosociety.com/usa/the-dispossessed.html

>32 Truett: >31 jroger1: My mention of Bloom in >26 Podras.: above wasn't intended to set off a firestorm; only to say that, incidentally, he gave a shout out to Le Guin. The only thing other than that about him that I know besides that he is generally highly respected is that his Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human is invaluable to me as one of the Bard's reviewers I keep at my side as I reread the complete works. (Also recommended are Harold Goddard's The Meaning of Shakespeare (2 vols.), and especially Marjorie Garber's Shakespeare After All.)

Since Bloom's reviews of women writers came up, I'll provide a list of those included in LOA's recent special publication The American Canon and then leave off: Emily Dickinson, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Marianne Moore, Katherine Anne Porter, Zora Neale Hurston, Eudora Welty, Elizabeth Bishop, Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Toni Morrison.

This article https://www.tor.com/2020/03/13/library-of-america-ursula-k-le-guin-annals-of-the... says that the other two volumes of Le Guin's works will be her "complete short stories" (which seems like alot for one volume?) and her previously uncollected novels (Lavinia, Searoad, The Lathe of Heaven, The Beginning Place, and The Eye of the Heron (and I assume also Very Far Away From Anywhere Else)). Do we have any other confirmation of this?

I just finished the Orsinian volume and was incredible impressed, and I would greatly look forward to an LOA collection of Le Guin's short stories :)

I suspect that those four won't be the last of LOA's edition of Le Guin's works. The Earthsea novels (and associated short stories?) will still remain. LOA has said they plan to release all of her published works. The Earthsea stories are perhaps her most famous works.

I vaguely (cannot confirm) that either LOA or D Cloyce Smith mentioned that Earthsea would be released much later, as there were other recent editions issued by other publishers. One of these was the recent illustrated edition through Saga Press, for which Le Guin collaborated with illustrator Charles Vess. That edition is the "complete" Earthsea, including both short stories and essays.

So no guarantee but an expectation that Earthsea eventually would be published under LOA auspices.

>35 vharty:
>36 Podras.:
>37 elenchus:

LOA Associate Editor Stefanie Peters did say that hey have hopes to include all of Le Guin's fiction as well as her "wonderful essays." (see quote in my post above at number 25 in this thread). So it seems there are plans, even if not fully formed at this time, to have more than the four additional volumes that are currently planned for the next 2 or 3 years.

The next Le Guin volume will be the volume of her complete poems, which Harold Bloom finished editing (and writing an introduction for) in the year before he died. It has been tentatively scheduled for 2022-23.

Beyond that, although we had outlined a tentative plan when Le Guin was still alive, the schedule and exact contents have yet to be confirmed, pending rights negotiations and other issues. We hope to publish at least one volume of her-cycle stories (non-Hainish, non-Earthsea, non-Searoad, etc.), and one of non-cycle novels. As mentioned above, the Earthsea volume will have to be much later and probably last, because of other editions.

--David

I certainly hope this results in a lot of LOA sales when people who haven't read her work wonder who she is! :D

https://twitter.com/RonCharles/status/1350173328691109888

This may not be ALL of the American writers who have made the US Postage stamp -- Alcott, Baldwin, Carlson, Du Bois, Ralph Elison, Fitzgerald, Frost, Geisel, Hawthorne, Hemingway, Hughes, Irving, Lewis, Longfellow, Melville, O'Connor, Parker, Poe, Porter, Rand, Rawlings, Roethke, Saroyan, Serling, Steinbeck, Stowe, Thoreau, Thurber, Twain, Webster, Wharton, Whitman, Wilder (Thornton AND Billy), Williams, Wolfe and Wright -- but it clearly shows Le Guin is joining distinguished and talented company.

Need a Ray Bradbury U.S. Postage stamp next -- followed closely by Octavia E. Butler!
And, before that: Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill!

>39 DCloyceSmith: are there enough essays and other misc non-fiction writings for a volume?

A_B -- NOT that I'm presuming to answer for DClyyceSmith, but...I have only a few of her nonfiction books, and I've read quite a lot of other essays, and I feel comfortable in saying the answer is likely: yes. I'd say there's enough essay and misc. nonfiction work by LeGuin to fill 1 1/2 to 2 volumes; but I figure it'll be pared down to one concise volume of essentials.

>41 A_B: I just finished The Annals of the Western Shore and loved it. I have a lot prettier and more expensive books in my collection, but love LOA for their readability and selection. The supplementary material in the volume was also nice.