Ursula Le Guin Conference in Paris

Well, this one's in the books -- there's a few panels today, but they're in French, so that counts me out. Just completed two days of the The Legacies of Ursula K. Le Guin: Science, Fiction and Ethics for the Anthropocene conference here in Paris, the City of Light, and it was pretty awesome, as one might suspect. I'll write up a full conference report for Fafnir later, but here are some preliminary impressions.

There was initially some trouble with acoustics -- we were in an old, domed, converted anatomy theater at the Institut du monde anglophone where the echoes were awful, and, until we learned how to deal with them, the first few presentations were unfortunately simply unintelligible. Similarly, the hard wooden benches and tables were extremely uncomfortable, but maybe that's just European? 

Anyway, though, once we worked out the echoes, many of the papers were fascinating, and it really hit home that I'm missing a big chunk of Le Guin's career by not ever having read Always Coming Home. (Apparently, from discussions, I'm not the only one for whom that "novel" constitutes a gap.) My own panel went swimmingly well -- two presentations on The Dispossessed, including mine, and another on The Lathe of Heaven, which made me wish I had re-read that novel in preparation for the talk. Our Q&A were also lively, and get this -- my presentation was on Le Guin and Leo Strauss's reading of Plato, and someone in the audience was actually a huge Strauss fan. So huge, in fact, that he even named one of his children Leo.***

Afterwards, we all had drinks at a local cafe, and had a huge conference dinner (paid for by the conference) at a restaurant called La Petit Prince. Wonderful food, and I talked to a ton of interesting folk. Got home sometime after midnight.

Oh, and Julie Phillips (Le Guin's biographer, and also a keynote speaker) led a small excursion to the hotel, called Hotel de Seine, where Le Guin stayed during her Fullbright year here in Paris. She also met her future husband Charles Le Guin here. Phillips's keynote, of course, discussed Le Guin's Parisian year; Brian Attebery's keynote discussed Always Coming Home as a linchpin of Le Guin's career.

Granted that a conference report doesn't count for anything on one's c.v., but I'm quite looking forward to writing this one!

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*** Incidentally, Strauss is big among American political scientists, China, and . . .  well, France itself. In fact, I was walking past a book shop on the way to the conference where I saw a French monograph on Strauss in the book shop window. Basically floored me. Amazing that an academic book got such a bookstore placement, and even more amazing that it was a technical work on Strauss, of all people.

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