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-----Original Message----- From: Laurence Davis [mailto:ldavis@oceanfree.net] Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2009 9:35 AM To: H-NET List for Utopian Studies Subject: Re: FW: [SFRA-L] Scholarship treating Le Guin's Four Ways to Forgiveness ------------------ Oddly, very little has been published on this gem of a book, which is I think a superb work of political fiction and well worth reading. The fourth story suite in particular, entitled "A Woman's Liberation", is truly outstanding and one of my favourites. It may be helpful to you to take a look at the bibliography of a recent essay I wrote on the work, entitled "Love and Revolution in Le Guin's *Four Ways to Forgiveness*", to be published (I believe - I don't have my notes in front of me at the moment) in Richard Cleminson & Jamie Heckert (eds.), *Dangerous Desires: Anarchism and Sexuality* (Routledge, 2010). Or you could write to me off-list. Incidentally, Le Guin has also published a fifth story suite in this series. It appears in her collection, *The Birthday of the World*, published by Gollancz in 2002. The title of the piece is "Old Music and the Slave Women". Le Guin writes about it, and about FWTF, as follows in her introduction to the volume: "My book *Four Ways to Forgiveness* consists of four connected stories. Once more I plead for a name, and thus recognition, for this fictional form (which goes back at least as far as Elizabeth Gaskell's *Cranford* and has become increasingly frequent and interesting): a book of stories linked by place, characters, theme, and movement, so as to form not a novel but a whole. There's a sneering British term 'fix-up' for books by authors who, told that collections 'don't sell,' patch unconnected stories together with verbal duct tape. But the real thing is not a random collection, any more than a Bach cello suite is. It does things a novel doesn't do. It is a real form, and deserves a real name. Maybe we could call it a story suite? I think I will. So the story suite *Four Ways* gives a view of the recent history of two worlds, Werel and Yeowe...The slave-based society and economy of these worlds is in process of revolutionary change. One critic scoffed at me for treating slavery as an issue worth writing about. I wonder what planet he lives on? 'Old Music' is the translated name of a Hainishman, Esdardon Aya, who turns up in three of the stories of the suite...Its origin was a visit to one of the great slave plantations upriver from Charleston, South Carolina. Readers who have seen that beautiful, terrible place may recognise the garden, the house, the haunted ground." Best, Laurence Davis (National University of Ireland Maynooth) -----Original Message----- From: barrm@imap.mail.rcn.net [mailto:barrm@imap.mail.rcn.net] On Behalf Of barrm@rcn.com Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 6:57 PM To: h-utopia@h-net.msu.edu; h-utopia@h-net.msu.edu Subject: RE: FW: [SFRA-L] Scholarship treating Le Guin's Four Ways to Forgiveness ------------------ Re query on Le Guin's Four Ways to Forgiveness: I remember that there is an article on this work written by the South African scholar Deirdre Byrne published in one of my anthologies. Best, Marleen Barr From: sfra-l-bounces@wiz.cath.vt.edu [mailto:sfra-l-bounces@wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of ariel wetzel Sent: Monday, November 02, 2009 4:27 PM To: sfra-l@wiz.cath.vt.edu Subject: [SFRA-L] Scholarship treating Le Guin's Four Ways to Forgiveness Hello Everyone, I am writing on Le Guin's story collection Four Ways to Forgiveness in a graduate seminar on neo-slave narratives. I was wondering if anyone knew of scholarship on this book. I'm not finding much on my university's journal search engines. Cheers, Ariel Wetzel University of Washington
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