Ursula K Le Guin's speech at National Book Awards: 'Books aren't just commodities'

Ursula K. Le Guin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin is an American author of novels, children's books, and short stories, mainly in the genres of fantasy and science fiction. She has also ...

‎The Left Hand of Darkness - ‎Earthsea - ‎The Dispossessed - ‎Bibliography

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【《字花》第52期 西西X何福仁對談 科幻作家:菲利普‧迪克、勒‧瑰恩】
//我想特別指出跟迪克同時的Le Guin,她和迪克其實是中學同學。她為科幻小說引進女性主義。她的《黑暗的左手》(The Left Hand of Darkness,1969)很有意思,那是上世紀六十年代末的創作。小說的場景是格森星(Gethen),即冬星,是個冰川星球,格森人的性別會流變,大部份日子是雌雄同體,不分性別,這是所謂Somer期。但有數天為發情 Kemmer期,這時期隨機變為男性或女性,遇上同屬Kemmer期的伴侶,受激素之類影響,其中一方分化為男或女。懷孕的話,則她成為母親,但在另一時候又可能是父親。於是形成獨特的社會文化,超越了性別差異,更沒有性別歧視,兩性相輔互補,「光明是黑暗的左手,黑暗是光明的右手」。書中她轉換不同的人物視角,寫了不同的政治體制、引用各種報告、信仰、神话。//

勒‧瑰恩 (Ursula K. Le Guin) 剛獲得美國國家書獎，並在頒獎禮上說：「我們需要能夠記住自由的作家，以及詩人——那看到異象的，屬於更廣闊的現實的現實主義者。」(We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality.)

hc案：上句的翻譯有問題。

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Ursula K Le Guin's speech at National Book Awards: 'Books aren't just commodities'
In a passionate speech, writer takes aim at publishers who put profit before art

Ursula Le Guin cries freedom as she is honoured for contribution to literature

theguardian.com, Thursday 20 November 2014

Ursula K Le Guin at the lectern at the National Book Awards. Photograph: Robin Marchant/Getty Images

To the givers of this beautiful reward, my thanks, from the heart. My family, my agents, my editors, know that my being here is their doing as well as my own, and that the beautiful reward is theirs as much as mine. And I rejoice in accepting it for, and sharing it with, all the writers who’ve been excluded from literature for so long – my fellow authors of fantasy and science fiction, writers of the imagination, who for 50 years have watched the beautiful rewards go to the so-called realists.

Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom – poets, visionaries – realists of a larger reality.

Right now, we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximise corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.

Yet I see sales departments given control over editorial. I see my own publishers, in a silly panic of ignorance and greed, charging public libraries for an e-book six or seven times more than they charge customers. We just saw a profiteer try to punish a publisher for disobedience, and writers threatened by corporate fatwa. And I see a lot of us, the producers, who write the books and make the books, accepting this – letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant, and tell us what to publish, what to write.

Books aren’t just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.

I’ve had a long career as a writer, and a good one, in good company. Here at the end of it, I don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want and should demand our fair share of the proceeds; but the name of our beautiful reward isn’t profit. Its name is freedom.