My life in books

Ursula Le Guin: Conversations on Writing is the last published book to which Le Guin was an active participant - her death came, says collaborator David Naimon - as the final corrections to the manuscript were being discussed and approved or changed. In a way, how like Le Guin, who retired from writing major pieces of fiction a few years back, to still be involved in communicating her thoughts literally up to the day of her death.

The book arose from a series of interviews Naimon conducted with Le Guin on her writing - fiction, non-fiction, and poetry - but they cover in fact a wide range of topics associated with writing, literature, and ideas. Conversation between Le Guin and Naimon is interleaved with illustrative selections from both her work and the work of others.

Here you will hear the names of writers and philosophers that influenced Le Guin’s thought and craft, and the authors she recommends as teachers of a particular approach to writing, or piece of craft. And her own ideas of how to write, her craft and her art. Nd you will wish she could have tarried with us forever.

Living Our Language: Ojibwe Tales and Oral History, edited by American/Ojibwe scholar Anton Treuer, is a collection of cultural narratives, tales and remembrances recorded by Treuer in conversation with Ojibwe elders. The collected narratives of the elders he spoke with are presented in both Ojibwe and in English translation. Treuer's intent in publishing these narratives is not just to preserve the legacy of the elders, but to offer material that will serve the vital project of preserving the language itself. As he says in the Introduction to the volume,

" 'We’re not losing our language, our language is losing us,' says White Earth elder Joe Auginaush. I have been both haunted and driven by that thought for many years now. The current peril faced by the Ojibwe (Chippewa) language is a matter of a declining number of speakers and a people who have lost their way, rather than a language that is lost or dying. The Ojibwe language, spoken by as many as 60,000 Anishinaabe people in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, is alive. The grammar, syntax, and structure of the language are complete. The oral tradition and history of the Ojibwe are still with us. Yet in many areas fluency rates have plummeted to unprecedented and unsustainable levels. Especially in the United States, most speakers are more than forty-five years of age. In some places, the fluency rate is as low as one percent. As the population of fluent speakers ages and eventually leaves, there is no doubt that the Ojibwe language will lose its carriers. We are not losing our language. Our language is losing us."

Preserved in the collected oral histories of the elders interviewed by Treuer are the memories of traditional ways of life, seasonal activities, and aspects of those ceremonies which may be written down or shared with those not Ojibwe (Treuer makes it clear that he has published nothing that can only be transmitted orally, or only within the Ojibwe people). The personal histories also speak of transitions to other ways of living and their consequences.

Some elders directly address their concerns about the lost of their language and of their traditional spiritual knowledge and traditions. Among the elders Treuer interviewed are those who are Drum keepers, entitled to teach about and conduct Drum ceremony, which is central to Ojibwe religious practice. Although direct information about the ceremonies is part of the knowledge that may not be written, only transmitted orally, those who are Drum keepers, who 'carry a drum' or who 'carry a pipe' talk about the importance of preserving Indigenous religion as another vital aspect of their culture and way of life.

A valuable contribution to the attempt tp preserve Indigenous languages and to record the memories of a people to whom the memories of elders are a vital element of cultural transmission, an element that has been severely undermined by colonialism and forced assimilation.

Aliens and Linguists: Language Study and Science Fiction, Walter E. Myers

Walter Meyer’s book, published in 1980, is and overview of the use of the science of linguistics in science fiction. As Meyers notes:

Recent years have seen a number of introductory critical works bent on discussing the “science” of science fiction, to shoe how the field achieves that alchemical mix of art and science that is its distinguishing characteristic…. But we notice a gap in works of this kind: they neglect linguistics.

Meyer goes on to discuss the irony inherent in the lack of interest in the use of linguistics in a genre that places so much emphasis on communication – not only within the works of the genre, where first contacts and other challenges to communication are prominent, but also in the nature of the genre as, at least in part, a genre in which "what if" scenarios are used to propose and explore and communicate ideas, speculations, theories, thought experiments, cautionary perspectives or future possibilities.

Meyers looks at how both the ideas and theories of linguistics, and the technical specifics of language formation production, and development, are used in a wide variety of classic science fiction (and fantasy) texts and for a number of different purposes.

It’s an interesting way to look at many of these older texts, and I enjoyed the new perspectives that reading this book gave me on some familiar (and not-so-familiar) works - even though it is occasionally disappointing to discover that a book that seemed so insightful on precisely these issues of language and communication (to a layman reader such as myself) is in fact riddled with inaccuracies (as is my beloved childhood favourite, Samuel Delaney’s Babel-17).