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Ursula K. Le Guin is the world-renown author of the Earthsea Cycle, The Lathe of Heaven, The Left Hand of Darkness, and Lavinia. Several movies have been produced from her books. She has received many honors, including six Nebula and five Hugo Awards, the National Book Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Newbery Silver Medal, the Pilgrim, the Tiptree, World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, Margaret A. Edwards Award, Boston Globe-Horn Book award, Pulitzer finalist, and at least 19 Locus Awards.
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This episode originally aired on 11/12/2009 with the following authors:
Note: The following interview has been transcribed from The Author Hour radio show. Please excuse any typos, spelling and gramatical errors.
Interview with Ursula K. Le Guin | | |
Bonus Question(s) that Didn't Air on the Live Radio Show
Note that you can also listen to this while you read it.
Matthew Peterson:
Let me ask you a bonus question: We’ve been talking a little bit about the movie . . . in a perfect world if you could choose a director and a screen writer to do justice to the Earthsea Cycle, who would they be?
Ursula K. Le Guin:
Golly. You know, a few years ago, I would have said, well, Hayao Miyazaki, who would take it and make his own movie of itm but it would be a wonderful movie. But since that’s kind of out of the question, at this point, I really don’t know. With screen writers, I don’t know the screen writers well enough, to tell you the truth, at this point.
Matthew Peterson:
Mm hmm.
Ursula K. Le Guin:
It’s a good question, I’ll think about it. But I can’t really give you a name, at this point.
Matthew Peterson:
Well, that’s one of those things I’d like to see happen. You never know. I remember growing up watching the animated Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.
Ursula K. Le Guin:
[laughs]
Matthew Peterson:
That was my staple growing up. I loved those! And then, when I heard that a movie was going to be made, it definitely did it justice. Your series needs justice.
Ursula K. Le Guin:
You know, to me, the movie is a very much smaller thing than the book, but it’s a beautiful movie. And it’s accessible to younger kids, than the book is, and so on. So, it was done with a lot of heart and a lot of intelligence.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah.
Ursula K. Le Guin:
So, I’ve got a lot of respect for the Lord of the Rings movie.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah. I do too. Well, thank you so much for being on the phone today, Ursula.
Ursula K. Le Guin:
Sure.
Extra Material That was Cut from the Show Because of Time Constraints
Note that you can also listen to this while you read it (you'll need to fast forward past the bonus questions).
Matthew Peterson:
And I was a little surprised to see that you have a new children’s picture book that came out called Cat Dreams.
Ursula K. Le Guin:
For little, little kids.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah, for little . . . yeah, I didn’t know you did illustrated books.
Ursula K. Le Guin:
Well, yeah, actually, my four Catwings books which are, you know what they call Chapter books for kind of 6 to 8 year olds? Those are pretty popular.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah. I can imagine.
Ursula K. Le Guin:
I hadn’t done an actual picture book for kind of babies before, you know. But it’s sort of embarrassing, the whole text of the manuscript was on one typed page.
Matthew Peterson:
[laughs]
Ursula K. Le Guin:
And the guy who has to do the work is a Mr. Schindler, who draws the pictures, ‘cause really it’s a picture book, you know. So he just takes my text and runs with it and of course, he did a beautiful job.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah. I noticed, and I didn’t know that you did those. And I looked and I saw, “Oh yeah! The Catwings series.”
Ursula K. Le Guin:
Oh, I do many things. [laughs] Whatever comes to mind.
Matthew Peterson:
Well, you write books and stories for all ages.
* * * * * * * * * *
Ursula K. Le Guin:
[regarding Annals of the Western Shore] Well, I find it very exciting that it happened at all. They were published as young adult because it’s what category publishers love to publish in, because it has a fairly reliable market.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah. Kids are still comin’.
Ursula K. Le Guin:
There’s nothing particularly young about them except the protagonists are under twenty, I guess. But you know that’s true of Romeo and Juliet and a few other people. They’re just sort of a new departure in fantasy for me, with a different setting than Earthsea.
Matthew Peterson:
And you have 3 books. Are there going to be any more in that series?
Ursula K. Le Guin:
I don’t know. I never can say. [laughs]
Matthew Peterson:
Well, like the Earthsea . . . like . . .
Ursula K. Le Guin:
After the fourth book of Earthsea I said, “Oh this is the last book of Earthsea.”
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah [laughs]
Ursula K. Le Guin:
‘Cause I really thought it was, you know. Well, then a couple years later I started thinking, “Hey, I didn’t finish that story. There’s a whole lot left hanging here.” And sort of how did it get that way? And so I had to go and write two more books. Which is sort of embarrassing. So, I’ve learned not to say never, and not to promise.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah. That’s safe to do.
* * * * * * * * * *
Matthew Peterson:
You know, it’s based, like you said, back in history, so we get all . . .
Ursula K. Le Guin:
It’s really in mythology, not history, because this is 8th century BC.
Matthew Peterson:
Oh yeah! It’s hard to trust much what happened.
Ursula K. Le Guin:
So we really don’t know every single . . . but we’re at the edge of these great legends about the Trojan War and all those guys. ‘Cause Aeneas is the man who escapes from Troy. He’s a Trojan. He gets out when the city burns and takes his people. You know, the gods tell him, “You gotta take them to Italy, get married there, and found a new dynasty.” And that’s of course what he’s doing. Although, he doesn’t know he’s founding the city of Rome. This is a Roman legend. And it’s kind of fun to deal with those people, you know.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah.
Ursula K. Le Guin:
I could leave the gods out, it’s a novel, I don’t think the gods really belong in novels very much.
* * * * * * * * * *
Matthew Peterson:
I read and listened to the audio books actually also, a long time ago, and all of a sudden, “There’s more!? Whoa, when did this happen?” It’s like the last unicorn series. You know, after all these years that’s coming back, a couple more in there. It’s an exciting thing when you’ve read a book years and years ago and all of a sudden another one comes back.
Ursula K. Le Guin:
It is, isn’t it?
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah. It’s just another exciting thing.
Ursula K. Le Guin:
Completely! It was exciting to me when I was sort of like, “I’ve got to write at least one more book!” And one more didn’t do it; it took two.
Matthew Peterson:
Well, The Wizard of Earthsea and those novels are just amazing. [speaking to audience] If you haven’t gotten a chance to read them, go ahead and read them.
* * * * * * * * * *
Matthew Peterson:
I mean, I did watch the mini-series, and by itself it was okay. But it wasn’t Earthsea. I liked it because I like Danny Glover, you know, and I watched it for him.
Ursula K. Le Guin:
There were a couple of very good actors in it.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah, there were.
Ursula K. Le Guin:
But [laughs] the parts they were playing were pretty darn silly.
. . .
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah. The animated one, which is in Japanese, hasn’t come to the U.S. I’m going to watch it no matter what.
Ursula K. Le Guin:
Well, probably, they’ve got only a year more, I think, on it. So, they’ll probably release it next year.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah.
Ursula K. Le Guin:
It will be released through Disney because Ghibli Studios works with Disney here. And I’m going to just try to keep out of it. But it’s not the movie that I . . . well it wasn’t made by Hayao Miyazaki, it was made by Goro Miyazaki. He’d never made a movie before and apparently hasn’t made one since and it’s just not at all what I hoped from Ghibli Studios.
Matthew Peterson:
Hayao Miyazaki did Totoro and Howl’s Moving Castle. He’s just amazing.
Ursula K. Le Guin:
Oh yeah. He is just . . . absolutely . . .
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah.
Ursula K. Le Guin:
I met him and I liked him very, very much. But he handed this one to his son for reasons I do not understand. [laughs] It was a big mistake.
Matthew Peterson:
I don’t know if you can trust everything you see on Wikipedia, but last night I was reading about Goro, ‘cause I hadn’t heard of him. And I understand there was some conflict between him and his father. His father didn’t think he was ready to direct a film like this.
Ursula K. Le Guin:
Yeah. I have to say, “No comment, here.” You know, it’s none of my business what goes on behind the walls of Ghibli Studios. [laughs]
Matthew Peterson:
Yep, yep.
Ursula K. Le Guin:
Except that the movie made of my book is my business and I have to say I think it was a mistake, but anyhow, it’ll come out here and I don’t think it’ll do very well, but you know, you never know.
Matthew Peterson:
Well, hopefully we’ll get another re-make of Earthsea someday. I know they’re doing that with the Dune books. I mean I loved all the Dune movies, actually the re-makes, and I hear there’s another one, and so . . .
Ursula K. Le Guin:
You know, if anybody seriously made an Earthsea movie, it wouldn’t even be a re-make. It would be a first time that anybody had really made an Earthsea.
Matthew Peterson:
A first time, yes. [laughs]
Ursula K. Le Guin:
‘Cause the other two have nothing really to do with the book. They just use the names.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah.
* * * * * * * * * *
Matthew Peterson:
And I have a question for you, before we end this interview. I have a question for you that I think is on everyone’s mind, and you kind of answered it a little earlier, but will there be another Earthsea cycle novel?
Ursula K. Le Guin:
Well, you know, I don’t think so. I don’t want to say never, but it seems to me that with The Other Wind I did bring the story around to where it was always going, finally. It took me six books, but I got there. And so, I kind of feel like, Ged and Tenar are together and people don’t have to go to that awful place when they die. [laughs]
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah.
Ursula K. Le Guin:
And so I think maybe that story got where it was going. But who knows!
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