This is an interview about the book “The Lathe of Heaven” with the author Ursula Le Guin by Bill Moyers.
The interview was shot in the year 2000. It is true that the interview is quite specific and old and the book even older (1971), and that it was the first film that PBS made (1980), but it still has some wonderful insights.
The book is about a man, George, who finds his dreams are coming true. Now, you will agree, when dreams come true, that can be ridden with goods and bads. So he goes to therapist, Haber, who finds immense possibilities to do good to the world by using the “efficient” dreamer.
Le Guin says, “Somebody is trying to do good and is always sort of defeated by reality…doing good alone is not enough…you have to go be realistic, have to go with the flow. You can’t push the river as the Buddhists say. Haber is a do-gooder…he is not defeated by anybody evil, but he is self-defeated, he is not evil, he does good all through… he is doing it wrong…if you want to do good in the more aggressive way…it does not work… if you say we are going to make war on this and so make it work, it will not…George is more passive, he is in tune with things…he is a go-with-the flow man. This is a Daoist book…Daoism says you do things by not doing it and all attempt to do and set things right, make things happen, eventually backfires.”
Le Guin’s book does not have a villain, “I am not very good at bad guys. I do not find villainy by itself, very interesting. I find the normal attempt to do good and get through life much more interesting.” Le Guin quotes a Chinese philosopher saying, “To let understanding stop at what cannot be understood is a high attainment. Those who cannot do it will be destroyed by the lathe of heaven.” Le Guin says that is pretty much what happens to her character, Haber, who has taken on too much.
Le Guin brings in some turtles into her story to show the third side; “Don’t ask me who they are or where they come from, they just came in when I wanted them to. They are easy going and calming.” Le Guin says we do not put much by being easy going.
Yet, she is resistant to a single explanation, “I do get asked to interpret myself but I am not sure my interpretation is the right on…it is part of the nature of the book that there is no final meaning or interpretation…the book is an exercise in saying you cannot ever really grasp reality. I began the book with the image of the Jellyfish…I love that image because nothing is more passive, they just follow the current and yet they are such a beautiful life form and have survived many eons…but a novel is a rich and complicated art form, it cannot be reduced to a message or two.”
About making women her heroes, Le Guin says, “…When I started writing the easiest thing for a woman to do was to be an honorary man, to pretend to be a man, to put a man in the centre of the story. Girls are used to being a male protagonist...but men cannot have their masculinity compromised by pretending to be a heroine. I asked myself: am I not a woman then why am I writing as a man. There were differences in sensibilities when I put a woman in the centre, but that put me more in the centre of my own being, to not pretend that I was male or that I thought the world revolved around men…it strengthened my writing.”
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