Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018), R.I.P.

The Wizard of Earthsea is gone, and I hate it.

Ursula K. Le Guin died this week. (Link to New York Times obituary.) She was 88.

I first read some of Le Guin's books back in the 1970s when I was teaching seventh graders at the old Aurora Middle School and then Harmon Middle School. I had some units on fantasy fiction, and my kids read Tolkien and Lewis and Alexander. And Le Guin.

I loved her Earthsea series--a series that began with A Wizard of Earthsea (1968). (I just checked ABE, by the way, and you can get a signed first edition today for $5000.) I gobbled up that book--and its sequels about a young boy, Ged, who's becoming a wizard (hmmmm, sound familiar?): The Tombs of Atuan  (1971) and The Farthest Shore (1972). Twenty years later she wrote more about Earthsea, but I didn't read them. Can't say why ... ?

Years passed. I retired from public school teaching in January 1997. And then I returned to teaching, this time at Western Reserve Academy here in Hudson, Ohio, where I taught (mostly) high school juniors. I could walk or bike to work. And I did.

My first year back in the classroom--2001-2002--I also had a senior class that met twice a week. Called "Senior Seminar," the course was a requirement for seniors. They read works in common (mostly essays) and wrote a major research paper--the dreaded "Sem Paper" that was due just before spring break. When they returned from break, things lightened up a bit: the reading, the writing.

That year the post-break book was Le Guin's The Dispossessed (1974), a sci-fi work (oh, she hated having her work so labeled!) about two neighboring and competing planets. (I can't for the life of me find my copy right now, but it looked like the one in the image below.)

I thought it was be great if we could have Le Guin visit the school, meet with classes. So I had written to her in the fall to see if she would agree.

On October 25, she replied ...

So ... no visit, but, as you see, she left open the possibility of another way to communicate, and so, finally, we arranged a teleconference (audio only), and each Senior Seminar class had a couple of representatives there.

On May 23, 2002, at 2 pm (EST--she lived in Oregon) eighteen students gathered around a seminar table; the Seminar teachers were all there; I dialed the number she'd given me; an answer; it was she; and off we went ...

I wrote a series of posts here about Le Guin back in October 2012, and here is a lightly edited copy of what I wrote then about the teleconference:

There are times I hate myself.  Take now, for instance.  As I've written previously somewhere in these blog posts, I started keeping a journal, every day, in January 1997, the month I retired from public school teaching.

When I returned to teach at Western Reserve Academy ..., I tried to keep it up but had a hard time: I was teaching a full load, had two daily preparations (courses I'd never taught before), had other duties associated with boarding schools (meals, dormitory duty, committees, etc.).  And so ... my journal-keeping suffered.  And when I looked yesterday to see what I'd written about the teleconference my students had with Ursula K. Le Guin, I found ... nothing.  I'd not written anything at all for the entire month of May.

And so ... I proceeded to hate myself for a day, more or less.

But I do have some memories, and I do have some documents related to that day, 22 May 2002, so here goes ... 

... the other teachers and I had every student submit five questions.  The Senior Seminar chair and I then went through them all and picked kids who we thought had been especially thoughtful--and their questions became the ones we would use to initiate the conversation with Le Guin.

[Actually,] almost all the questions were thoughtful--

• Do you believe in the idea that without decentralization there really is no true personal freedom?
• If you had to live on [either of the two planets], which would you choose?
• Is there a difference between a "good" war and a "bad" war?

There were also some perfunctory, cliched clunkers--"How did you ... incorporate your life experiences into the book?"  "When you were a child, what was your favorite book?"  That sort of thing. [Actually, in retrospect, these questions seem fine to me now!]

We decided, too, that we would pick eighteen students--a random drawing--to participate in the discussion--three from each of the six sections of the course.  But we also asked students to withdraw ahead of time if they really didn't want to do it.  A few did.

And so we all assembled that afternoon in a conference room in Hayden Hall on the campus.  The phone hook-up was ready.  And at the agreed time, I phoned the number Le Guin had given me.

She answered almost immediately (was it the first ring? I think so!), and I was immediately struck by how gracious and personable she was.  Laughing at herself. Confessing to slips in the book.  Asking the kids questions about their reactions to things.  She was wonderful with the students--never argumentative (even when a couple of them tried to be) but genial and humorous and understanding all the way.

The other teachers and I, per agreement, stayed completely out of the conversation.

The kids clapped for her when it was time to end ...

We exchanged another letter or so.  On 25 May, I wrote and said: "All the students were so impressed with your intelligence, your humor, your warm, self-effacing manner, and I could tell as I watched them that they realized they were involved in something quite special."  My letter indicates we sent her a gift.  I cannot for the life of me remember what it was.

And so I'm hating myself again, right now.

And so another remarkable, unique human voice is gone. But I think of all the pleasure she gave my students--all the pleasure she gave me--and I think of that generous manner she had with our students back in 2002; I hear her laugh. And I weep for the loss; I weep at the silence; I weep with gratitude for her life and work.