Title:
Dancing at the edge of the world : thoughts on words, women, places
Publication Date:
1989
Publication Information:
New York : Grove Press, [1989]
© 1989
Physical Description:
viii, 306 pages ; 24 cm
ISBN:
9780802111050
9780802135292
9780575045088
9780080211107
Abstract:
"I have decided that the trouble with print is, it never changes its mind," writes Ursula Le Guin in her introduction to Dancing at the Edge of the World. But she has, and here is the record of that change in the decade since the publication of her last nonfiction collection, The Language of the Night. And what a mind - strong, supple, disciplined, playful, ranging over the whole field of its concerns, from modern literature to menopause, from utopian thought to rodeos, with an eloquence, wit, and precision that makes for exhilarating reading
General Note:
Contains a review by Le Guin of Carolyn See's novel, Golden days (p. 300-302).
Contents:
Talks and essays: The space crone -- Is gender necessary? Redux -- Moral and ethical implications of family planning -- It was a dark and stormy night -- Working on 'the lathe' -- Some thoughts on narrative -- World-making -- Hunger -- Places names -- The princess -- A non-Euclidean view of California as a cold place to be -- Facing it -- Reciprocity of prose and poetry -- A left-handed commencement address -- Along the Platte -- Whose lathe? -- The woman without answers -- The second report of the shipwrecked foreigner to the Kadanh of Derb -- Room 9, car 1430 -- Theodora -- Science fiction and the future -- The only good author? -- Bryn Mawr commencement address -- Woman / wilderness -- The carrier bag theory of fiction -- Heroes -- Prospects for women in writing -- Text, silence, performance -- 'Who is responsible?' -- Conflict -- 'Where do you get your ideas from?' -- Over the hills and a great way off -- The fisherwoman's daughter -- Reviews: The dark tower / C.S. Lewis -- Close encounters, star wars, and the tertium quid -- Shikasta / Doris Lessing -- Two from venom: Freddy's book and Vlemk / John Gardner ; The marriage between zones three, four and five / Doris Lessing -- Kalila and Dimna / retold by Ramsay Wood -- Unfinished business / Maggie Scarf -- Italian folktales / Italo Calvino -- Peake's progress / Mervyn Peake -- The sentimental agents / Doris Lessing -- Difficult loves / Italo Calvino -- 'Forsaking kingdoms': five poets -- The mythology of North America / John Bierhorst -- Silent partners / Eugene Linden -- Outside the gates / Molly Gloss -- Golden days / Carolyn See.
Genre:
Language:
English
