Courage is one of my must-haves in *any* book. There has to be a sense of utter honesty - with compassion, even forgiveness, but NOT with apology, or I'm just not interested. Courage is what holds my interest the most. It's the foundation of nuance, you know? You can't examine the morally gray or the infinite catalog of human failings+human triumphs in character without that honesty. If you're dishonest, you'll gloss over these things and now? The story is mush :P
Ursula K. LeGuin has got to be the most honest author I know - and she's been my favorite author for 20+ years as a result :) The books where she slips up are my least favorites of hers. Very few authors could take a book ostensibly about gender (Left Hand of Darkness) and make it into an honest book about two despairing, unique people, ignoring Gender Studies (TM) as the central theme) or anarchism (The Dispossessed) and make it into an honest book about that delicate boundary between science and mysticism.
She's one author I wish I could talk to before she dies (she's only a few hundred miles from me) but I'm kind of terrified by the idea of someone who sees life with the kind of utterly open-eyed compassion - terrified of what she'd see in me, you know?
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momijizukamori and
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Date: 2010-02-25 04:26 pm (UTC)Ursula K. LeGuin has got to be the most honest author I know - and she's been my favorite author for 20+ years as a result :) The books where she slips up are my least favorites of hers. Very few authors could take a book ostensibly about gender (Left Hand of Darkness) and make it into an honest book about two despairing, unique people, ignoring Gender Studies (TM) as the central theme) or anarchism (The Dispossessed) and make it into an honest book about that delicate boundary between science and mysticism.
She's one author I wish I could talk to before she dies (she's only a few hundred miles from me) but I'm kind of terrified by the idea of someone who sees life with the kind of utterly open-eyed compassion - terrified of what she'd see in me, you know?
Right - I'm rambling :D ITA, basically!