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Because of HN I just finished the left hand of darkness. It was a smooth read, the book requires no motivation to pick up after putting it down. I felt the cold

Because of HN I just finished the left hand of darkness. It was a smooth read, the book requires no motivation to pick up after putting it down. I felt the cold, the landscapes, the atmosphere, even some of the sexlessness of the Gethenians eventually became real. Not many writers can do that to me. That said, someone commented here that it was possible to state what the left hand of darkness was but that you only truly understand after reading the book. I must says, I didn't experience it that deeply. It was nice, but it didn't alter my thinking as some books do. Some aspects kept me thinking: like Estraven and the miscommunications, the shifgrethor which seems to exist in some culture here in some form. But it didn't change me. Did I miss something profound?

bshepard 9y ago
This passage points towards what (I experienced) as profound about the novel: "Our entire pattern of socio-sexual interaction is nonexistent here.They cannot play the game. They do not see one another as men or women. This is almost impossible for our imagination to accept. What is the first question we ask about a newborn baby?Yet you cannot think of a Gethenian as "it." They are not neuters. They are potentials, or integrals. Lacking the Karhidish "human pronoun" used for persons in somer, I must say "he," for the same reasons as we used the masculine pronoun in referring to a transcendent god: it is less defined, less specific, than the neuter or the feminine. But the very use of the pronoun in my thoughts leads me continually to forget that the Karhider I am with is not a man, but a manwoman."
irb 9y ago
It's about seeing natures that we consider separate and opposing as instead complimentary, and part of the same whole - light/dark, male/female... Whether or not you consider this meaningful or profound is of course up to you.
mattmanser 9y ago
I'm just reading Lathe of Heaven also because of the thread a couple of weeks ago on HN after her death. It's brilliant. I'll have to check this one out too. Speaking of authors that make you think, Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice is a recent Sci-Fi that made me think. Without spoiling, the odd person view seemed a bit jarring when I first started reading it, but within a few chapters it makes sense. I enjoyed the trilogy as a whole, but the first is the best of the three.

bshepard 9y ago

This passage points towards what (I experienced) as profound about the novel: "Our entire pattern of socio-sexual interaction is nonexistent here.They cannot play the game. They do not see one another as men or women. This is almost impossible for our imagination to accept. What is the first question we ask about a newborn baby?Yet you cannot think of a Gethenian as "it." They are not neuters. They are potentials, or integrals. Lacking the Karhidish "human pronoun" used for persons in somer, I must say "he," for the same reasons as we used the masculine pronoun in referring to a transcendent god: it is less defined, less specific, than the neuter or the feminine. But the very use of the pronoun in my thoughts leads me continually to forget that the Karhider I am with is not a man, but a manwoman."

irb 9y ago

It's about seeing natures that we consider separate and opposing as instead complimentary, and part of the same whole - light/dark, male/female... Whether or not you consider this meaningful or profound is of course up to you.

mattmanser 9y ago

I'm just reading Lathe of Heaven also because of the thread a couple of weeks ago on HN after her death. It's brilliant. I'll have to check this one out too. Speaking of authors that make you think, Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice is a recent Sci-Fi that made me think. Without spoiling, the odd person view seemed a bit jarring when I first started reading it, but within a few chapters it makes sense. I enjoyed the trilogy as a whole, but the first is the best of the three.