One thing I especially like about China Miéville's introduction (in my edition of this book) is the opening paragraph:
Quote:
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THE UNLUCKIEST BOOKS ARE THOSE IGNORED OR FORGOTTEN. But spare a thought too for those fated to become classics. A classic is too often a volume that everyone thinks they know. ‘Classic-ness’ can be a gilded cage, constraining a live book’s unruly pages. It can be preserving fluid, or a sumptuous coffin.
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The more I read of other's opinions of Le Guin's work, the more apt I find Miéville's introduction. The
Wikipedia article (as just one example) has so many people saying so many things about this book, things that I'm not so sure are really there, or even if they are, many aren't really
that original or specific to this story. So it does seem to me that the critics and commentators (Miéville included*) have wrapped this work in a sumptuous propaganda to extent that the original tale is obscured almost to the point of irrelevance.
This book didn't say all that stuff, but what it did do was open up a dialogue. It didn't break the ground, it just laid it bare, faults and all. And I think the faults are actually part of the book's success (in terms of gaining classic status). A truly ground-breaking novel may have alienated at least half the possible audience (at that time) and reduced its impact, but this flawed composition - arriving at the right time - got people talking about it, until eventually the book became the conversation and the conversation became the book.
In that perspective I see a similarity between
The Left Hand of Darkness and
The Three Musketeers: what the stories have become in the public view is now quite different to what was intended when written.
I have read
A Game of Thrones (just that first book), but aside from the winter setting (in part of it) I don't really see much else to relate the two ... maybe I need to read more of the books to see it? (I'd rather not.) But I guess most famous books might be said to influence what comes later, even if only by the simple fact of so many people having read them.
* How can one read Miéville's introduction and not be on the watch out for "The King was pregnant." when reading the book? To the extent that by the time it arrived it was anticlimactic. So it's pregnant, so what? That line, while undoubtedly (very mildly) amusing, doesn't arrive at a point where its terribly significant or surprising. If Miéville hadn't told me about I would hardly have noticed. And so the commentators affect how we view the book.