One of those intermittent book posts

[leahbobet]

I'm reading The Dispossessed (please no spoilers, since I'm not yet finished) and have just noticed a terribly, terribly clever thing.

(Well, first off, it's another book that owes a great deal to the picaresque: Shevek's progress through two societies and all the elements thereof, his recasting as child to student to physicist to labourer to superstar to social revolutionary, used as a comment on those societies. And very much involved with the question of truly, this is the best of all possible worlds. I'm starting to wonder just how much of science fiction has those strains of Candide in it; how much is actually necessary for the form.)

One of Shevek's few discourses on actual physics and the theory of time he's always supposed to be working on is at a party where he gets very drunk. An industrialist straw-man character (sorry, he is) argues that clearly time is linear, and Shevek explains that time is perceived as linear, but is periodic, circular. That it's both at the same time.

So think about the actual structure of the book. It's in alternating chapters, present-past-present-past, telling the story of Shevek's time on Urras in the present and catching us up slowly on his childhood, education, life, and so forth on Anarres. Now, I have not yet finished reading, but I'm about 70 pages out from the end, and I have read much in my life, and I know how to feel the curve of a narrative structure under my hand. And that past-thread is going to come around again. It's going to return to the moment at which the present-day thread opened, bringing it new weight, bringing a sense of closure to the narrative.

It's going to circle.

So what we have here, folks, is a book about contradictions, about how time is both linear and periodic/circular, written with a structure that is both linear and periodic/circular.

That is a wicked smart subtle way to do your thing.

Comments

[asatomuraki.livejournal.com]

Oh, I LOVED that book.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I'm enjoying it. It's funny; I have to take a running start at every Le Guin I read, but once I'm in, I'm in.

[asatomuraki.livejournal.com]

LOL! I know just what you mean about 'running start' but once she's got her hooks in you, it's all over.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I have the same thing with China Mieville. And Umberto Eco, which I need to read with a machete in hand to cut away the undergrowth as I seek the good bit that'll get me reading until 3am every night. *g*

[erinya.livejournal.com]

Such a fantastic novel. One of my favorite LeGuins.

[delta-november.livejournal.com]

I shall join the chorus: that was a great book. I do believe I got mine used for a few cents at a certain book shop :).

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Mine is from the used store where stillsostrange works; we dropped in to visit her at work and I walked out with a small boxful of books. *g*

[theengineer.livejournal.com]

I had this book lying around for years before I read it, the cover made it look like some sleazy space opera. Like everyone else I'll agree that it's an amazing book.