(no subject)
On Monday sanguinity and I went down to Reed to see Ursula LeGuin speak.
- I was having all these maudlin thoughts about "this might be my last chance to see her," because she's in her eighties, but she seemed to have lots of energy and no air of frailty at all. She wore an entrancing sparkly silver scarf.
- We parked in the back parking lot by the rugby field, where the students who live in the cross-canyon dorms would park, and every car there was nicer than mine. What the hell! There were a couple that might have been as old as my car, but none were beaters. Oh, Reed money.
- I had wanted to get there good and early because I was sure there'd be a big crowd, but it was nothing like the Bill Nye the Science Guy fiasco last year. Sang and I and our friend Lea (my former boss at the Reed Library) stood by the doors at Kaul until they opened. We were talking about books, of course, and a student (English major!) chimed in. It was such a pleasure to mention Harriet the Spy and see two faces totally light up! Reedies and their books. :)
- This student so reminded me of Sang when I first met her. She was wearing a blouse with puffy sleeves, a bit like the batch Sang made and wore freshman year. And my heart melted when she mispronounced "reputable" like she had only read it, not heard it.
- Kaul Auditorium is lovely with all its shiny wood, and the acoustics are good, but the panic-bar doors and the echo of footsteps on the risers make it sound like a freakin' gym!
- The format was Ursula LeGuin conversing with a political science professor onstage, followed by audience Q&A. The whole first part was about feminism, and I must say it was profoundly depressing that the discussion seemed to be exactly where it was when I was a student in 1988. The same debate about whether young people are willing to call themselves feminists, blah blah blah. There is something very wrong with feminism if it hasn't moved more than that in 22 years.
- Most of the book discussion was about Lavinia, LeGuin's retelling of the Aeneid from the point of view of Aeneas' wife Lavinia. I haven't read it, but I liked what she said about considering that book an act of translation. Later someone asked her about fan fiction, and she said, how else would you describe Lavinia? However, she drew a big distinction between the use of public-domain stories and characters and use of still-copyrighted ones, which she called arrogant and disrespectful. I wasn't sure, listening to her response, whether she was talking about (or familiar with) fanfic as I know it (as commentary or what Sang calls "playing dolls"), or if she had something else in mind, something more commercial.
- She said she never wanted to be a writer-- she just wanted to write (and publish). She likes to write. "Be a writer"-- what's that?