Mariella Gattini

Thinking about the importance of Ursula K. Le Guin’s life as a writer, I’m trying to find my own way in the same land she lived and loved, where she could create the worlds that accompanied her the rest of her life. Like her, I believe that literature is not escapism, literature is a way of making reality even more widespread without the need for sensationalism or overexposure of the subjects discussed, the ones fundamental for the structure of any story.

In my blog entry The Ones Who Walk Away, where I discuss current events inspired and supported by her short story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, she’s aligned with the thoughts of Italian writer and philosopher Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837), who said that the happiness of the masses is the unhappiness of the individual (what William James called “lonely torture”), but in her work, she adds a more modern twist that offers a light at the end of the tunnel, a practical alternative to get away from what it seems inescapable. In fact, when she received a Lifetime Achievement award at The 65th National Book Awards, in 2014, she used that specific word when she said: “Books, they’re not just commodities. The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable, so did the divine right of kings.” Which makes me think that she was aware of the perils of money for the sake of money and its detrimental influence in the arts, something that she had deep in her mind until the end.

Here, in the United States, I finally am in the place I envisioned myself to be when I was twelve and my mom was far away. This country was for me not only a place to escape from the frightening times I was living during the coup in Chile and its aftermath—it also represented my future. Today I’m living in that future, so, in a way, I find myself in the place where a desperate little girl needed to be. That girl doesn’t exist anymore, but, just before she disappeared, she left me in this country, a country of smoke and mirrors that only a twelve-year-old can believe in. Now, I’m the one who walked away from my place of origin, imagining new places, places that can illustrate our real world, so that it can be more manageable, but without false promises. Maybe that was the reason I took my only child with me when she herself was twelve, who is making a life of her own in this country with no need for places to escape to in her own mind—because I didn’t want her go through the same predicaments I had to.

The path of a writer is long and unpredictable, because as Ursula says: “Every time you think you’ve found your way, the way changes.” In my view, it is because in order to look for possible solutions to our predicaments, we can only imagine the benefits of the changes we propose, we don’t really want to see the backlash of our decisions, otherwise, we would live in an impossible situation all the time, looking at a frail, naked reality that hurts, and hurts so much. Therefore, the solution is to dream for a better day ahead, until we make it. And when we do, we realize that all the struggles we have been through all that time have left traces of despair, of pain to the stomach, and of disillusion in our walk ahead.

Ursula and I walk together now, supported by so many other writers and artists, and often stopping at lines that linger, such as: “A little smoke lost in the air, that was the life of a man.”, by W. Somerset Maugham, or remain aware of what Hitchcock said once: “Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.” Also, taking into consideration Eva Hesse: “Life doesn’t last, art doesn’t last; it doesn’t matter.”, and Hannah Arendt: “Thinking is a lonely business.”, despite the fact that she made a distinction between loneliness and solitude. For Hannah, solitude meant that she was able to keep herself company, whereas loneliness was her inability to be there for herself.

Just like Ursula, the fact that I’m able to put my thoughts and the worlds that come to me in a book does not mean I stop thinking about those thoughts and those worlds that only I can see in that moment. Ideas are infinite and can take us to places never conceived before, and even after walking in the shoes of the protagonists for the duration of the story, we can still feel the pain, the anguish, and the joy they harbor way after we finish the story. However, stories must end before they really end, otherwise they would be unbearable for the reader.

According to Ursula K. Le Guin, writers are just like scientists, they name things, an exercise that she found deeply satisfying. We have to, because we deal with discoveries without a definition yet, without a label.

She passed away in 2018, but she still is among us in her books and documentaries that carry her name. To me, she is the mother I didn’t have in this country, a mother who speaks American English and guides me, not only in the formal ways of writing, but also in the bravery you need to have to be able to face the reality of our times, especially as a woman writer.

My last three books have strong women protagonists, three different individuals with different lives, different goals, and different upbringings, but all of them have something fundamental in their minds: nobody is going to define who they are but themselves. The three of them are submerged in a world dominated by men, a world that necessarily needs to unravel to finally show itself the way it is: frail and naked right in front of our eyes. A world that does not offer other than the promise of a new day that unfolds as a blank canvas.