The wave in the mind : talks and essays on the writer, the reader, and the imagination

From what I remember, Ursula K. LeGuin's collection of essays Dancing at the Edge of the World included a fascinating collection of insights about writing, life, etc. It was where I first learned that LeGuin was the daughter of the anthropologist involved with Ishi. (Look it up. Read the book Ishi

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in Two Worlds. You won't be disappointed.) And it was where I was first introduced to LeGuin's non-fiction/essays.

It was that memory that sent me to buy this book as soon as I knew it existed.

And, unless my memory is playing false with me, this collection just isn't quite so good.

Don't get me wrong – there is much to recommend in this book. Going right to that whole "Ishi" thing (and my first degree was in anthropology, so why shouldn't I) there is a very nice piece called "Indian Uncles" which uses Ishi as a springboard (she disappoints her listeners by explaining she has no memories of Ishi because he died before she was born) to talk about the other native Americans introduced to her through her father's work as an anthropologist. It is skilled in that it speaks about the times, about people in general, and about LeGuin in particular. That is what good writing should do.

And that quality of writing is evident throughout the book in that her explorations of herself, literature, writing, and other general topics speaks about more than just those topics.

I think my problem is that many of these writings came across as rambling rather than focused. This may be because so many are lectures adapted to essay or, potentially more problematic, various writings and musings (many never published before) that have been adapted and cobbled together to provide the content.

In general, there is a little too much repetition and a little too little focus.

However, I should add that the book succeeds in relation to another one of measures of a books success – the number of dog-eared pages. There are enough of these pages that it is quickly obvious I found material I wanted to remember.

Again, it is not that this is a bad book, it is just not as good as I recall the previous book being. Unfair to hold a book up against the memory of a book? Perhaps. But whether that memory drove my final assessment or not, I just didn't find this book as engaging as I thought it would. And therein lies the ultimate problem.

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