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Sorry, I admire her writing, but I call complete and utter bullshit on this speech. Books are commodities, not some magical elixer from the gods. Some are good, some are terrible. I buy mine from Amazon and Audible. New technologies, and they are helping more people to read more books than ever before.
Her comments seem somewhat related to her book "The Dispossessed" which contrasts a capitalist world with a plausible anarchist/communist world.
While she may speak with the authority of having written "The Dispossessed" (which is wonderfully good), her words seem to mostly be about Amazon. In that regard I think her comments miss the mark ("corporate fatwa" being the biggest silliness).
> Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words. I never really studied history in any depth. Do you think this is just hyperbole? By which I mean is she simply overstating or exaggerating the role of art in historic events? Am I taking it too literally - that art is the first step towards cultural upheaval? Can anyone give some examples of art effecting some kind of huge social…
The "art of words" has certainly effected huge social change. This is self-evident if you include political commentary and philosophy (Common Sense, Wealth of Nations, Federalist Papers, Communist Manifesto, etc.). If you restrict it to fiction, a common example is 1906 novel The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. If you're talking about art like paintings, plays, music, etc., I don't have any examples off the top of my head.…
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle#Federal_response
> Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words. I never really studied history in any depth. Do you think this is just hyperbole? By which I mean is she simply overstating or exaggerating the role of art in historic events? Am I taking it too literally - that art is the first step towards cultural upheaval? Can anyone give some examples of art effecting some kind of huge social…
"So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war." Supposedly Abraham Lincoln said this to Harriet Beecher Stowe in reference to her book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, which is often credited for changing the North's attitude towards slavery.
I heard her make remarks in a similar vein at the Washington State Book Awards in 2006: http://jakeseliger.com/2006/10/28/le-guin-at-the-seattle-pub... . Incidentally, though, I think this no longer true: "Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximize corporate profit and advertising revenue is not quite the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship." It's now easier than eve…
"We just saw a profiteer try to punish a publisher for disobedience..."
> We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.
My favourite quote by her (if not in general) in this one:
“If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives... But up close a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern.”
The notion that the publishing industry was ever able to reliably discern quality is scuttled not only by "Moby Dick", but by a long list of other failures: http://www.literaryrejections.com/best-sellers-initially-rej...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Herman Melville's "Moby Dick" was a complete failure when published in 1851, and was essentially forgotten. It was rediscovered after WW1, becoming a great classic of American literature. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby-Dick#Later_reception
It was rediscovered after WW1, becoming a great classic of American literature. There's also an open question about the book's intrinsic merit versus the need at the time to "discover" American literature and find exemplary American texts of the sort that were needed to instil a sense of unity in a country of disparate immigrant groups. Menand discusses some of this in The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance…
The notion that the publishing industry was ever able to reliably discern quality is scuttled not only by "Moby Dick", but by a long list of other failures: http://www.literaryrejections.com/best-sellers-initially-rej...
That's a list of "Best-sellers initially rejected", though. Not quite the same as quality initially unrecognized. Some of them could still be books of low quality, that happen to be popular.