Ursula K. Le Guin - The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction
A Lunar Perspective hopes to speak to Ursula K Le Guin’s notion of
a Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction - hoping to bring
voices together and hold them in relation to each other to offer or suggest new
possibilities of reading our relationships to the politics of traversing the
border
Le Guin, Ursula K. ‘The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction’. In Dancing at the Edge of the World, 165–70. New York: Grove Press, 1989.
Le Guin, Ursula K. ‘The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction’. In Dancing at the Edge of the World, 165–70. New York: Grove Press, 1989.
“I would go so far as to say that the natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.”
(page 169)
“It is a strange realism, but it is a strange reality.”
(page 170)
“Science fiction properly conceived, like all serious fiction, however funny, is a way of trying to describe what is in fact going on, what people actually do and feel, how people relate to everything else in this vast sack, this belly of the universe, this womb of things to be and tomb of things that were, this unending story. In it, as in all fiction, there is room enough to keep even Man where he belongs, in his place in the scheme of things; there is time enough to gather plenty of wild oats and sow them too, and sing to little Oom, and listen to Ool’s joke, and watch newts, and still the story isn’t over. Still there are seeds to be gathered, and room in the bag of stars.”
(page 170)
(page 169)
“It is a strange realism, but it is a strange reality.”
(page 170)
“Science fiction properly conceived, like all serious fiction, however funny, is a way of trying to describe what is in fact going on, what people actually do and feel, how people relate to everything else in this vast sack, this belly of the universe, this womb of things to be and tomb of things that were, this unending story. In it, as in all fiction, there is room enough to keep even Man where he belongs, in his place in the scheme of things; there is time enough to gather plenty of wild oats and sow them too, and sing to little Oom, and listen to Ool’s joke, and watch newts, and still the story isn’t over. Still there are seeds to be gathered, and room in the bag of stars.”
(page 170)