Commodifying Dragons

Ursula K. Le Guin and Fantasy Fiction as an Intrinsic Good

I’ve known about Ursula K. Le Guin for a while now, but I’ve only recently got around to reading her stuff. I’ve been trapped by C.S. Lewis, Philip K. Dick, and Frank Herbert for the past five years or so and they’ve only just released me. Jared Henderson, of

Walking Away

here on Substack, has been commending her for a while now and I’ve grabbed her major SF and fantasy works because of him and Philip Chase, but I have a very, very long reading list spanning way too many genres and she always got pushed back down it. But recently I read a fantastic piece, again here on Substack, from Clifford Stumme of

Past the Dragon

which was an analysis of Star Wars as Fantasy instead of SF utilizing Le Guinian concepts and definitions and it was the final push I needed to start reading her.

So I grabbed The Language of the Night: Essays on Writing, Science Fiction, and Fantasy, the book that Clifford used for his Star Wars piece, and I’m absolutely loving it. I’ve had this theory that many good philosophers took refuge in SF and Fantasy while the academy became more and more obsessed with logic and linguistic analysis starting in the early 20^th century and continuing on to this day. Le Guin is another confirmation. She is a first-rate philosophical mind who pitches her philosophy through story—she literally says as much in her philosophical essays on SF and Fantasy. So big thanks to Jared and Clifford for helping me finally take up and read her stuff!

But while I’ve found Le Guin edifying and encouraging thus far, I’ve also found her stuff to be pretty challenging, not comprehension wise, though she is an erudite analyst, but her stuff is more psychologically challenging and punchy that I was ready for. She has this great essay called “Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?” written in 1974 wherein she analyses why it is that American men eschew reading Fantasy fiction. She gives three main reasons for why this is the case, or at least why it was the case in 1974:

(i) A secularized Puritanism which doesn’t value pleasure for pleasure sake and hence rules out Fantasy for fun.

(ii) A businessman’s value system which finds no profit to be gained by reading fantasy, save the profit to be had by English professors who teach the stuff.

(iii) Masculine mores which reject imagination and its products as being childish and feminine.

Now I don’t know where ‘we’ Americans are as a culture today when it comes to reading fantasy and SF. It seems to me that we are so splintered as a people that it’d be hard to even come up with the right kinds of categories needed to begin asking the question of ‘us’ today. But I can speak for myself, and I find each of Le Guin’s reasons in my own intellectual history, two of which continue to linger and wreak havoc.

I read fantasy as a child but gave it up in high school because it didn’t fit with the picture of masculinity I chose to idolize—I was a wrestler obsessed with the IFBB pro bodybuilding circuit and I forgot that the only reason I wanted stupid big muscles in the first place was to look like Conan, Odysseus, and Batman (of the Animated Series Batman, of course).

I made it to a division 1 wrestling program in college and started off my first two seasons as a small heavyweight (230lbs freshman year, 250lbs sophomore year (the weight class caps at 285lbs.)). My junior and senior seasons I dropped down to the 197lbs weight class (I chose not to take my 5^th year, my redshirt senior season due to a pretty gnarly stomach ulcer and my joints giving out). During my time cutting 57lbs, I found much needed escape in returning to the Conan stories of my youth. The choice was pretty simple, I could sit around fantasizing about buffalo wild wings until my will was broken or I could evade my cravings and kill time by reading fantasy stories.

So I got over Le Guin’s (iii), reading fantasy isn’t just for kids and it wasn’t so feminine that a college wrestler couldn’t benefit from it, but I was still stuck at (i). My intentions were still mercenary, I still viewed reading fantasy as an instrumental good and not an intrinsic good, that is as a good for something but not as a good in and of itself. In fact, I still struggle with (i) to this day and in my cognitive framework, it’s closely related to (ii). Is there really any time to just enjoy something for enjoyment sake? Oughtn’t I be working? Striving? Seeking to provide for my family? Shouldn’t I be creating YouTube videos, writing Substack pieces, posting on socials, or crafting my own SF and Fantasy stories and putting them behind a paywall? There’s no time for intrinsic goods when one’s analytics are trending down!

Instead of facing my anxiety and conflicting thoughts around the intrinsic value of reading Fantasy, I chose to take the coward’s way out and instumentalize my desired reading list. I wanted to read much more SF and Fantasy, but after 11 semesters of graduate theology and philosophy programs, I’d feel guilty for “just reading for enjoyment”, so I made a YouTube channel called Truth Suffers (a reference to a Frank Herbert proverb from Dune Messiah, “Truth suffers from too much analysis”) where I’ll analyze SF and Fantasy stories. Now I don’t have to worry about whether or not it’s “okay” to read for fun because I can justify all my reading, fiction or otherwise—it’s all being commodified!

Was this a wise move? Well, I’ve read and listened to more SF this year than in the past 7 years combined, so that’s a major plus. But picking my ‘to be read’ list based on what I think will do well on Substack and YouTube is pretty gross. I’m still negotiating the list and evaluating this mentality. Some things that I want to read but don’t think will do well on YouTube can be chalked up to research for my own SF novel that I’m currently outlining—but after reading Le Guin’s essay, I’m feeling much more freedom to throw off (i) and (ii) and any other justificatory inclination and to start viewing the reading of SF and Fantasy as an intrinsic good in and of itself. Screw my inner secular Puritan and late-stage Capitalist!

So, I guess this is kind of a confession post. I don’t have it all figured out, I constantly need to reevaluate my life choices and change my mind when faced with new evidence or good arguments. Le Guin’s essay has helped me face the facts of instumentalizing and commodifying my speculative fiction reading list.

So what now? Well, I do actually enjoy analyzing speculative fiction stories and creating content to share my thoughts with others. Creating reading goals and assignments for myself does help me read more stories than I would otherwise. But I think I’m going to start a “just for fun” to be read list comprised of books I want to read, well, just for fun. I’m still coming down off an intense graduate school experience and learning to set up healthy habits for the rest of my life. I think this is going to be one that helps me flourish, but we’ll see. Old habits die hard, however, so if you’re thinking about reading some of Le Guin’s essays, grab the book from my affiliate link here to support my work 😅: The Language of the Night