Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
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.
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I think this is spot-on. Being flawed made it both accessible and fun to dissect, both of which would augment its popularity with the common reader as opposed to just the critical and academic reader. It's a tough target; a book can't be just popular. Eventually the critics have to weigh in to label a book "classic."
I know I said this in
The Scarlet Pimpernel discussion, that I'd once read a comment by the poet Kenneth Rexroth that books followed a trajectory that went from popular to dated to classic (assuming they made it to classic status). I think
Left Hand while undoubtedly a classic, is also still on the cusp of dated; it hasn't got to the point where its assumptions have ceased to matter.
Having read nothing else by Le Guin (and unlikely to), I wonder to what extent she was good and to what extent she was lucky, in tune with (actually, slightly ahead of) the zeitgeist and benefiting from good timing. Certainly she's lucky in that the message was interesting enough to her contemporary readers that they were engaged with a text that current readers seem to find dull in execution for the first half of the book. That's where being classic gets people to push through.