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The Visionary: The Life Story of Flicker of the Serpentine/Wonders Hidden : Audubon's Early Years
Book by Le Guin, Ursula K., Sanders, Scott
- GenresScience Fiction
122 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1984
About the author
Ursula K. Le Guin
1,052 books31.2k followersUrsula K. Le Guin published twenty-two novels, eleven volumes of short stories, four collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry and four of translation, and has received many awards: Hugo, Nebula, National Book Award, PEN-Malamud, etc. Her recent publications include the novel Lavinia, an essay collection, Cheek by Jowl, and The Wild Girls. She lived in Portland, Oregon.
She was known for her treatment of gender (The Left Hand of Darkness, The Matter of Seggri), political systems (The Telling, The Dispossessed) and difference/otherness in any other form. Her interest in non-Western philosophies was reflected in works such as "Solitude" and The Telling but even more interesting are her imagined societies, often mixing traits extracted from her profound knowledge of anthropology acquired from growing up with her father, the famous anthropologist, Alfred Kroeber. The Hainish Cycle reflects the anthropologist's experience of immersing themselves in new strange cultures since most of their main characters and narrators (Le Guin favoured the first-person narration) are envoys from a humanitarian organization, the Ekumen, sent to investigate or ally themselves with the people of a different world and learn their ways.
She was known for her treatment of gender (The Left Hand of Darkness, The Matter of Seggri), political systems (The Telling, The Dispossessed) and difference/otherness in any other form. Her interest in non-Western philosophies was reflected in works such as "Solitude" and The Telling but even more interesting are her imagined societies, often mixing traits extracted from her profound knowledge of anthropology acquired from growing up with her father, the famous anthropologist, Alfred Kroeber. The Hainish Cycle reflects the anthropologist's experience of immersing themselves in new strange cultures since most of their main characters and narrators (Le Guin favoured the first-person narration) are envoys from a humanitarian organization, the Ekumen, sent to investigate or ally themselves with the people of a different world and learn their ways.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 13, 2018
I'm no fan of Le Guin but this one is really imaginative.
Q:
So I keep that house now, with the daughter I never bore, the child of my first love, and with others of my family. Sometimes when I sweep the floor of that house, I see the dust in a shaft of sunlight, dancing in curves and spirals, flickering. (c)
Q:
My mother and aunt said that when I was learning to talk, I talked to people they could not see or hear, sometimes speaking in our language and sometimes saying words or names they did not know. (c)
Q:
f course I had it all backward, but there was nobody to help me get it straight. (c)
Q:
I did not like the work and was impatient with the illnesses and accidents of mortality, preferring the dangerous, dancing energies my father worked with. (c)
Q:
The way they went, silently, gripped at my heart. They were far from me, walking in sorrow. (c)
Q:
I felt like the wild swan. That was pure joy. (c)
Q:
I thought if I got drunk again, but a little less drunk, I might see the kind of people I used to see, when the ways were full of them and they kept my soul company. (c)
Q:
I did not want the world to be as it was. I had begun making up the world. (c)
Q:
It is hard to say to yourself that what you want to do is die. You keep hiding it behind other things, which you pretend to want. (c)
Q:
"I think I am ill."
"Why is that?"
"I want to dance and can't choose the dancing."
"The long-singing?"
"My voice is gone."
"The trances?"
"I'm afraid of them,"
"The journey?"
"I can't leave this house!" (c)
Q:
I was, until I got to the Ninth House; there was the hawk, but I was not. The hawk was; the still air was. Seeing with the hawk's eyes is being without self. Self is mortal. That is the House of Eternity. (c)
Q:
So of what the hawk's eyes saw, all I can here recall to words is this: It was the universe of power. It was the network, field, and lines of the energies of all the beings, stars, and galaxies of stars, worlds, animals, minds, nerves, dust, the lace and foam of vibration that is being itself, all interconnected, every part part of another part, and the whole part of each part, and so comprehensible to itself only as a whole, boundless and unclosed. (c)
Q:
I said, "But it will take years and years!"
He said, "You've been at it for a thousand years already. Gall said you were an old soul." (c)
Q:
The room was the universe of power. I was in my vision. It was not in me. (c)
Q:
So I keep that house now, with the daughter I never bore, the child of my first love, and with others of my family. Sometimes when I sweep the floor of that house, I see the dust in a shaft of sunlight, dancing in curves and spirals, flickering. (c)
Q:
My mother and aunt said that when I was learning to talk, I talked to people they could not see or hear, sometimes speaking in our language and sometimes saying words or names they did not know. (c)
Q:
f course I had it all backward, but there was nobody to help me get it straight. (c)
Q:
I did not like the work and was impatient with the illnesses and accidents of mortality, preferring the dangerous, dancing energies my father worked with. (c)
Q:
The way they went, silently, gripped at my heart. They were far from me, walking in sorrow. (c)
Q:
I felt like the wild swan. That was pure joy. (c)
Q:
I thought if I got drunk again, but a little less drunk, I might see the kind of people I used to see, when the ways were full of them and they kept my soul company. (c)
Q:
I did not want the world to be as it was. I had begun making up the world. (c)
Q:
It is hard to say to yourself that what you want to do is die. You keep hiding it behind other things, which you pretend to want. (c)
Q:
"I think I am ill."
"Why is that?"
"I want to dance and can't choose the dancing."
"The long-singing?"
"My voice is gone."
"The trances?"
"I'm afraid of them,"
"The journey?"
"I can't leave this house!" (c)
Q:
I was, until I got to the Ninth House; there was the hawk, but I was not. The hawk was; the still air was. Seeing with the hawk's eyes is being without self. Self is mortal. That is the House of Eternity. (c)
Q:
So of what the hawk's eyes saw, all I can here recall to words is this: It was the universe of power. It was the network, field, and lines of the energies of all the beings, stars, and galaxies of stars, worlds, animals, minds, nerves, dust, the lace and foam of vibration that is being itself, all interconnected, every part part of another part, and the whole part of each part, and so comprehensible to itself only as a whole, boundless and unclosed. (c)
Q:
I said, "But it will take years and years!"
He said, "You've been at it for a thousand years already. Gall said you were an old soul." (c)
Q:
The room was the universe of power. I was in my vision. It was not in me. (c)
July 1, 2017
Beautiful, very short. An imaginary autobiography.
March 4, 2024
The Capra Back-to-Back Series featured two shorter works by two different authors. From one side, you're reading Ursula K. LeGuin's The Visionary and then, if you flip the slim volume upside down and backwards, you're reading Scott R. Sanders' Wonders Hidden: Audubon's Early Years. Because I've been working my way through LeGuin's works, I stumbled across this strange amalgamation.
Leguin's contribution actually proves to be an early draft and an excerpt from her full-length novel, Always Coming Home, which would appear a few years later. That book functions as a piece of future anthropology, in which LeGuin chronicles the life and customs of a tribe called the Kesh, living in what we know as Northern California hundreds of years from now. The Visionary is one of several biographies or autobiographies embedded in that larger work. It tells of a woman who seems to be a powerful seer of some sort in the tribe, narrating her journey from childhood, into adolescence where she discovers her gifts, and further, well into adulthood. As a stand-alone piece it's OK. But as an introduction to the Kesh, and without further context, the tale falls a bit flat.
Wonders Hidden goes the other way in time, sharing an apocryphal history of the French naturalist John James Audubon. It begins with him as a child in Haiti, and then travels with him back across the ocean to France, where he witnesses the beginnings of the Revolution and considers shipping out to sea, like his father, a merchant sailor. Being largely unfamiliar with Audubon and his work, I was unsure how to feel or think about this brief piece of historical fiction. Does this provide us with new insight into Audubon? Or a revelatory new take on the famous figure? I don't know enough about the true history of Audubon to answer that.
Putting these two pieces together seems an odd choice. They don't really speak to each other, and have very little in common other than their length. It's almost as if the total here is less than the sum of the parts.
Leguin's contribution actually proves to be an early draft and an excerpt from her full-length novel, Always Coming Home, which would appear a few years later. That book functions as a piece of future anthropology, in which LeGuin chronicles the life and customs of a tribe called the Kesh, living in what we know as Northern California hundreds of years from now. The Visionary is one of several biographies or autobiographies embedded in that larger work. It tells of a woman who seems to be a powerful seer of some sort in the tribe, narrating her journey from childhood, into adolescence where she discovers her gifts, and further, well into adulthood. As a stand-alone piece it's OK. But as an introduction to the Kesh, and without further context, the tale falls a bit flat.
Wonders Hidden goes the other way in time, sharing an apocryphal history of the French naturalist John James Audubon. It begins with him as a child in Haiti, and then travels with him back across the ocean to France, where he witnesses the beginnings of the Revolution and considers shipping out to sea, like his father, a merchant sailor. Being largely unfamiliar with Audubon and his work, I was unsure how to feel or think about this brief piece of historical fiction. Does this provide us with new insight into Audubon? Or a revelatory new take on the famous figure? I don't know enough about the true history of Audubon to answer that.
Putting these two pieces together seems an odd choice. They don't really speak to each other, and have very little in common other than their length. It's almost as if the total here is less than the sum of the parts.
December 18, 2019
The ending to the Visionary is chilling and not something I saw coming—so credit for that.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 21, 2016
"Wonder's Hidden: Audubon's Early Years" is a short apocryphal autobiography of John James Audubon's early year by Scott Russell Sanders. It was an interesting project, imagining the character of a man known almost solely for his nature art.
"The Visionary: The Life Story of Flicker of the Serpentine" is a story of a futuristic village society in California. The protagonist is a powerful visionary who tries to find her place within her tight-knit culture.
"The Visionary: The Life Story of Flicker of the Serpentine" is a story of a futuristic village society in California. The protagonist is a powerful visionary who tries to find her place within her tight-knit culture.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews