The Wave in the Mind: Talks and essays on the writer, the reader, and the imagination by Ursula K. Le Guin is a book I picked up as soon as I heard about it, but well after the author's death.
Started: 8/15/2020
Completed: 8/18/2020
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody
Words for which I sought help:
didactic -- intended to teach, particularly in having moral instruction as an alternative motive (in its used in this book, it appears that there was no moral instruction intended--the lesson was about the nature of poetry's mechanics in contrast to prose)
Review:
This was not the book I was expecting, but I am glad to have read it. I have experienced the pacing of a novel, but I have not thought about it until reading this book. I know that writers agonize over word choice, sentence structure, etc. I have not had a coherent explanation for why this causes writers so much pause. Is it critical to say, "onward" or "forward?" Maybe it might be an issue with the patois of a given speaker or the environment in which something is said (a cowboy on the trail in the midwest might reasonably say "onward," but an English lord in India might be more inclined to say "forward"), but beyond that it has mystified me. Le Guin explains that "onward" is likely not stressed in either syllable, or stressed in both ("onward" or "ONWARD"). "Forward," however is stressed in one or the other "FORward" or "forWARD." In the former, it is usually elongated "FOOOORward." This kind of stressing effects the pacing of the sentence. That is part of the agony. Part of the effort to bring forward a cohesive whole.
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