Ursula K. Le Guin: "So much of fantasy and science fiction is just the art of suggestion"

Aos 83 anos, Ursula K. Le Guin é uma das grandes autoras contemporâneas do fantástico, tendo deixado ao longo das últimas décadas uma marca persistente tanto na ficção científica, com o seu Hainish Cycle, como na fantasia, com as histórias de Earthsea. O portal The Millions realizou uma interessante entrevista com a autora, que agora foi publicada online. Alguns excertos:

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TM: You read a story by Tolkien and you turn around and say I’m going to do my own version of this with the same archetypes.

UKLG: Being in science fiction was great because there was an open and free borrowing of vocabulary and ideas and so on. [It] was not plagiarism in the slightest. It was simply artists using the same material. I always compare it to the Baroque music period, where they’re all borrowing from each other like crazy and they’re all building the same house.

TM: When you’re writing about these made-up worlds, the Hainish worlds, Orsinia, or Earthsea, you are imagining all these small details, what the chairs or the doorknobs look like. But there are limitations to what you can imagine.There’s only so much you can know.

UKLG: It becomes an obsessive game.

TM: Are you ever aware of that when you’re writing?

UKLG: No, because after all in writing if you don’t have to mention the doorknob you don’t. I think one reason why most science-fiction movies are so lousy is that in them you do have to imagine the doorknob and you have to design it. And every single visual object has to be designed to tie in together. And then you get into a literalism which is a little bit soul-killing. But in writing you get away with murder. You just suggest something. So much of fantasy and science fiction is just the art of suggestion. You don’t really tell people that much, but they think you have because they imagine it.

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TM: When you write, how much of it is “doing not-doing,” the Taoist ideal? 

UKLG: Maybe, as I’ve gone on, what I’ve learned as a writer is that you do as little as possible. And part of it is leaving a lot of it up to the reader. And a lot of it is realizing you don’t have to do that much if you do the right thing. [Makes clicking sound] That’s enough. So my writing has tended to be shorter and more allusive than it used to be. I was re-reading The Lathe of Heaven — which I’m still fond of, which I still think is funny — but, boy would I cut it if I could. They talk too much. They explain things too much.

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Fonte: SF Signal