Discussing the book of short stories "Searoad: Chronicles of Klatsand" with author Ursula Le Guin
BROADCAST: Nov. 22, 1991 | DURATION: 00:47:42
Transcript
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Ursula Le Guin "Foam women. Rain women. The foam women are billowy, rolling, tumbling, white and dirty white, and yellowish and dun, scudding, heaving, flying, broken. They lie at the longest reach of the waves. Rounded and curded, shaking and trembling, shivering hips and quivering buttocks. Torn by the stiff, piercing wind dispersed to nothing. Gone. The long wave breaks again, and they lie white and dirty white, yellowish and dun, billowing, trembling under the wind, flying, gone. 'Til the long wave breaks again. The rain women are very tall. Their heads are in the clouds. Their gait is the pace of the storm winds, swift and stately. They are tall presences of water and light walking the long sands against the darkness of the forest. They move northward, inland, upward to the hills. They enter the cliffs of the hills, unresisting, unresisted. Light into darkness, mist into forest, rain into earth."
Studs Terkel And that's Ursula Le Guin reading. I suppose you call this preface to a very unusual book. It's called "Searoad", and we'll come to that, and it's chronicles of a place called Klatsand. And the ope--these are short stories or vignettes you'd call them with a novella at the very end of it. And we know that Ursula Le Guin has won all sorts of awards for some of her science fiction writing, children's books, and poetry. But this is her attack on, I guess, realistic is the word, yet it's not realistic because there's a lyricism to the writing, but it's not science fiction.
Studs Terkel Realism.
Ursula Le Guin Actually, I've been doing it all my life. Lots of short stories in a couple of books, but nobody noticed before.
Studs Terkel Yeah. I'm thinking about what you just read. We're about to go into vignettes of this place called, I'll ask you about Klatsand and "Searoad", but what you just read has sort of a lyrical, poetic--foam women and rain women.
Ursula Le Guin Well, there's some images there that kind of kept turning up throughout the book. With these kind of--the nature images and the female images, and they kind of made a pattern through the book.
Studs Terkel And images of a place, too, where people are, and how they're affected by this place. There's the ocean. We're talking about the Northwest country, aren't we?
Ursula Le Guin It's the Oregon, northern Oregon coast. Yeah.
Studs Terkel And you called it "Searoad" because there is kind of a road, isn't there?
Ursula Le Guin It's like a lot of towns have a river road?
Studs Terkel Mmhmm.
Ursula Le Guin Some of those coast towns have a sea road. It's--this is kind of a--absolutely commonplace little, little town.
Studs Terkel A town called Klatsand. Klatsand.
Ursula Le Guin Klatsand. I made the name
Studs Terkel You made the name.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah.
Studs Terkel But nonetheless a town, the kind you would find somewhere up there.
Ursula Le Guin Oh, yeah, between Gearhart and Garibaldi, you'd find it.
Studs Terkel And so it starts, there are stories that all connect with this town. Now, there are men in the story, too, but it's the women. Now, I suppose to call you a feminist is saying something pretty obvious.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah.
Studs Terkel But the fact is, the women here are very strong in almost all these stories. The men are not quite that, as--
Ursula Le Guin Some of the women are strong. It's just that the stories, except for two of them, tend to be kind of woman-centered. I don't--yeah, and they--perhaps the women are more loners than we're used to seeing.
Studs Terkel Suppose we start with some of the stories. There is a connecting link and the connecting link of families, in some cases, intertwining relationship, but also the place. Klatsand. Describe it, because you speak of beginnings of it, too.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah, well, it was a sort of process of discovery. It started with this terrible, grotty little motel in the south end of town, which is one of those places where we've all spent a night, you know. And the woman running that motel was the character who came into my mind who wanted to tell her story. From that motel, it was kind of like I walked north.
Studs Terkel That's Rosemarie Tucket.
Ursula Le Guin That's Rosemarie. Yeah. You know, I like Rosemarie a lot. She comes back strong in another story later on, I found out more about her, you know. But it was this sort of process of discovering the town sort of street by street, house by house. And these people were there, I would get their voices. I would listen for voices. And then, of course, what I got fascinated with was the relationships among these people. A coast town is an interesting place because there are people who live there and work there year-round. There are people who have vacation houses who live there, maybe for a few weeks or a month or a summer, and then there are the one-day people. And so you get all these different people coming through. The towns are always full of strangers, and yet there, there's the permanent people, sometimes for generations. So you get this terrific mixture. That's where it's really different from a place like Winesburg. Ohio.
Studs Terkel "Winesburg, Ohio of Sherwood Anderson.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah, of which, you know, is a lovely book. But of course, part of the character of Winesburg, is, isn't it, that it's kind of closed? People live there because that's where they live. In a little coast town, people are likely to live there because they chose to live there. And want to.
Studs Terkel This is interesting, you see, you're describing a nomadic aspect on the part of some people.
Ursula Le Guin Just a bit, yeah.
Studs Terkel You say there are, there are a few who have lived there all their lives, that's their work. And these are like the "Winesburg, Ohio" people, they've lived there--but in a--what "Winesburg, Ohio" of Sherwood Anderson doesn't have, is these people who come in and out.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah.
Studs Terkel Who are there. There's also a class difference, too, in some of the cases, isn't there? They're some of the academically--
Ursula Le Guin Sure.
Studs Terkel These college people, as against the non-college people.
Ursula Le Guin These little Oregon coast towns are very middle-class. They are very white. The people who come--these are not fancy resorts. There are fancy resorts for the rich and the yuppies, but these towns are very much middle-class.
Studs Terkel Yeah.
Ursula Le Guin The people who live there and the people who come there, both.
Studs Terkel And even in those, you've got three there, three motels, and even these three motels have a slight class difference.
Ursula Le Guin Oh, yes, oh, yes.
Studs Terkel The one we open with is called "Ship Ahoy". That's the least, that's the most blue-collar.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah, somebody called it "the resort of last resort," which I sort
Studs Terkel And that's the one Rosemarie Tucket runs with her husband, who's, around and about, watches TV and stuff and he's tired. She's more the dominant one. That's one--
Ursula Le Guin Well, she's trying. He's kind of given up.
Studs Terkel [S]he's given up. And then there's the "Ship Ahoy". No--
Ursula Le Guin There's the "White
Studs Terkel The "White Gull".
Ursula Le Guin That's the really nice one, as people say.
Studs Terkel Run by the Berneses.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah.
Studs Terkel And then there's the "Hannah's Hideaway", which is not Hannah a woman, a guy named Hannah, long ago. And that's in the middle, in between.
Ursula Le Guin That's little cabins in the woods, so there's something a little bit queer about it, yeah.
Studs Terkel So we start with the "Ship Ahoy" the lowest, the hardest working one. And there is this woman. Her life's a hard one, but there's a guest, and one guest is this strange kid. This guy.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah, well, of course she has her imaginary friend. She makes up this because she's so lonesome and so defeated, because, you know, trying to--I talked to a woman who said, "I ran that motel for five years." You know, this is a real person.
Studs Terkel Yeah.
Ursula Le Guin She said, "And it's just as heartbreaking as you show it in the story," to try to, without enough money, to try to fix up a place and get it decent, you know, so people really wanted to stay there. She said, "It's just--it's just miserable."
Studs Terkel Yeah.
Ursula Le Guin It's just the hardest work there is. And then people come in and trash it.
Studs Terkel Yeah.
Ursula Le Guin You
Studs Terkel But here comes this kid, this young guy.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah.
Studs Terkel And there's something happens here, this kind of a, I don't [mean?] the word "epiphany" for her, but something happens that--
Ursula Le Guin Well, he's in great pain.
Studs Terkel Yeah.
Ursula Le Guin But she doesn't know why.
Studs Terkel Yeah.
Ursula Le Guin And she's way too shy to ask him.
Studs Terkel Yeah. But his brief sojourn, I assume it'll be brief, is that she's in the room. She lies down a lot, as people do when they work hard in a place to get some rest. One of the empty, one of the vacant rooms. My mother did that often, because we lived in the men's hotel [that she ran?]. And I remember her hitting the sack now and then. And so she'd like Rosemarie Tucket, and she hears this--At first, the guy seems omi--like an ominous figure, this stranger.
Studs Terkel And all you hear is someone crying. And that alone--it puts a connection to something else, doesn't it?
Ursula Le Guin Yeah.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah, yeah. It's--but she doesn't know what to do. She's--
Studs Terkel Yeah. That's the first story that--the reason people, some of the critics speak of "Winesburg, Ohio", Sherwood Anderson, I, I see what they mean. I, 'cause I felt, when I read that years and years ago, young--yes, a young guy, so it's years and years ago--is of the ache. You get that ache, if only a certain word were passed or something, and a sense you have that here. And, so, we come to another story, this is called "Hand, Cup, and Shell", and this young girl who's, who's going to do a paper on this famous teacher, Amory Inman. And she visits the family. Women, all women.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah, he's, he's dead. So.
Studs Terkel And you have--the widow.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah.
Studs Terkel She's gonna, got a little tape
Ursula Le Guin Got to interview the widow. Right.
Studs Terkel Okay. And there's--her daughter lives there, and her granddaughter is there. So, why don't you pick up that particular story?
Ursula Le Guin Okay.
Studs Terkel It's interesting.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah. Now the, so, the interviewer is talking to the grandmother who is--and getting her to reminisce. So she says, "I went to school in Ultimate Till High School."
Studs Terkel This is the grandmother telling--
Ursula Le Guin Yeah, this is telling this little young
Studs Terkel
Ursula Le Guin "Foam women. Rain women. The foam women are billowy, rolling, tumbling, white and dirty white, and yellowish and dun, scudding, heaving, flying, broken. They lie at the longest reach of the waves. Rounded and curded, shaking and trembling, shivering hips and quivering buttocks. Torn by the stiff, piercing wind dispersed to nothing. Gone. The long wave breaks again, and they lie white and dirty white, yellowish and dun, billowing, trembling under the wind, flying, gone. 'Til the long wave breaks again. The rain women are very tall. Their heads are in the clouds. Their gait is the pace of the storm winds, swift and stately. They are tall presences of water and light walking the long sands against the darkness of the forest. They move northward, inland, upward to the hills. They enter the cliffs of the hills, unresisting, unresisted. Light into darkness, mist into forest, rain into earth." And that's Ursula Le Guin reading. I suppose you call this preface to a very unusual book. It's called "Searoad", and we'll come to that, and it's chronicles of a place called Klatsand. And the ope--these are short stories or vignettes you'd call them with a novella at the very end of it. And we know that Ursula Le Guin has won all sorts of awards for some of her science fiction writing, children's books, and poetry. But this is her attack on, I guess, realistic is the word, yet it's not realistic because there's a lyricism to the writing, but it's not science fiction. It's realism. Realism. Actually, I've been doing it all my life. Lots of short stories in a couple of books, but nobody noticed before. Yeah. I'm thinking about what you just read. We're about to go into vignettes of this place called, I'll ask you about Klatsand and "Searoad", but what you just read has sort of a lyrical, poetic--foam women and rain women. Well, there's some images there that kind of kept turning up throughout the book. With these kind of--the nature images and the female images, and they kind of made a pattern through the book. And images of a place, too, where people are, and how they're affected by this place. There's the ocean. We're talking about the Northwest country, aren't we? It's the Oregon, northern Oregon coast. Yeah. And you called it "Searoad" because there is kind of a road, isn't there? It's like a lot of towns have a river road? Mmhmm. Some of those coast towns have a sea road. It's--this is kind of a--absolutely commonplace little, little town. A town called Klatsand. Klatsand. I made the name up. You made the name. Yeah. But nonetheless a town, the kind you would find somewhere up there. Oh, yeah, between Gearhart and Garibaldi, you'd find it. And so it starts, there are stories that all connect with this town. Now, there are men in the story, too, but it's the women. Now, I suppose to call you a feminist is saying something pretty obvious. Yeah. But the fact is, the women here are very strong in almost all these stories. The men are not quite that, as-- Some of the women are strong. It's just that the stories, except for two of them, tend to be kind of woman-centered. I don't--yeah, and they--perhaps the women are more loners than we're used to seeing. Suppose we start with some of the stories. There is a connecting link and the connecting link of families, in some cases, intertwining relationship, but also the place. Klatsand. Describe it, because you speak of beginnings of it, too. Yeah, well, it was a sort of process of discovery. It started with this terrible, grotty little motel in the south end of town, which is one of those places where we've all spent a night, you know. And the woman running that motel was the character who came into my mind who wanted to tell her story. From that motel, it was kind of like I walked north. That's Rosemarie Tucket. That's Rosemarie. Yeah. You know, I like Rosemarie a lot. She comes back strong in another story later on, I found out more about her, you know. But it was this sort of process of discovering the town sort of street by street, house by house. And these people were there, I would get their voices. I would listen for voices. And then, of course, what I got fascinated with was the relationships among these people. A coast town is an interesting place because there are people who live there and work there year-round. There are people who have vacation houses who live there, maybe for a few weeks or a month or a summer, and then there are the one-day people. And so you get all these different people coming through. The towns are always full of strangers, and yet there, there's the permanent people, sometimes for generations. So you get this terrific mixture. That's where it's really different from a place like Winesburg. Ohio. "Winesburg, Ohio of Sherwood Anderson. Yeah, of which, you know, is a lovely book. But of course, part of the character of Winesburg, is, isn't it, that it's kind of closed? People live there because that's where they live. In a little coast town, people are likely to live there because they chose to live there. And want to. This is interesting, you see, you're describing a nomadic aspect on the part of some people. Just a bit, yeah. You say there are, there are a few who have lived there all their lives, that's their work. And these are like the "Winesburg, Ohio" people, they've lived there--but in a--what "Winesburg, Ohio" of Sherwood Anderson doesn't have, is these people who come in and out. Yeah. Who are there. There's also a class difference, too, in some of the cases, isn't there? They're some of the academically-- Sure. These college people, as against the non-college people. These little Oregon coast towns are very middle-class. They are very white. The people who come--these are not fancy resorts. There are fancy resorts for the rich and the yuppies, but these towns are very much middle-class. Yeah. The people who live there and the people who come there, both. And even in those, you've got three there, three motels, and even these three motels have a slight class difference. Oh, yes, oh, yes. The one we open with is called "Ship Ahoy". That's the least, that's the most blue-collar. Yeah, somebody called it "the resort of last resort," which I sort of And that's the one Rosemarie Tucket runs with her husband, who's, around and about, watches TV and stuff and he's tired. She's more the dominant one. That's one-- Well, she's trying. He's kind of given up. [S]he's given up. And then there's the "Ship Ahoy". No-- There's the "White The "White Gull". That's the really nice one, as people say. Run by the Berneses. Yeah. And then there's the "Hannah's Hideaway", which is not Hannah a woman, a guy named Hannah, long ago. And that's in the middle, in between. That's little cabins in the woods, so there's something a little bit queer about it, yeah. So we start with the "Ship Ahoy" the lowest, the hardest working one. And there is this woman. Her life's a hard one, but there's a guest, and one guest is this strange kid. This guy. Yeah, well, of course she has her imaginary friend. She makes up this because she's so lonesome and so defeated, because, you know, trying to--I talked to a woman who said, "I ran that motel for five years." You know, this is a real person. Yeah. She said, "And it's just as heartbreaking as you show it in the story," to try to, without enough money, to try to fix up a place and get it decent, you know, so people really wanted to stay there. She said, "It's just--it's just miserable." Yeah. It's just the hardest work there is. And then people come in and trash it. Yeah. You But here comes this kid, this young guy. Yeah. And there's something happens here, this kind of a, I don't [mean?] the word "epiphany" for her, but something happens that-- Well, he's in great pain. Yeah. But she doesn't know why. Yeah. And she's way too shy to ask him. Yeah. But his brief sojourn, I assume it'll be brief, is that she's in the room. She lies down a lot, as people do when they work hard in a place to get some rest. One of the empty, one of the vacant rooms. My mother did that often, because we lived in the men's hotel [that she ran?]. And I remember her hitting the sack now and then. And so she'd like Rosemarie Tucket, and she hears this--At first, the guy seems omi--like an ominous figure, this stranger. Kind of punk. Yeah. And all you hear is someone crying. And that alone--it puts a connection to something else, doesn't it? Yeah. As I read it. Yeah, yeah. It's--but she doesn't know what to do. She's-- Yeah. That's the first story that--the reason people, some of the critics speak of "Winesburg, Ohio", Sherwood Anderson, I, I see what they mean. I, 'cause I felt, when I read that years and years ago, young--yes, a young guy, so it's years and years ago--is of the ache. You get that ache, if only a certain word were passed or something, and a sense you have that here. And, so, we come to another story, this is called "Hand, Cup, and Shell", and this young girl who's, who's going to do a paper on this famous teacher, Amory Inman. And she visits the family. Women, all women. Yeah, he's, he's dead. So. And you have--the widow. Yeah. She's gonna, got a little tape recorder. Got to interview the widow. Right. Okay. And there's--her daughter lives there, and her granddaughter is there. So, why don't you pick up that particular story? Okay. It's interesting. Yeah. Now the, so, the interviewer is talking to the grandmother who is--and getting her to reminisce. So she says, "I went to school in Ultimate Till High School." This is the grandmother telling-- Yeah, this is telling this little young Talk Yeah.
Studs Terkel The kid wants to know about her husband, really.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah, well, except that the kid's supposed to ask about her husband, but she gets interested in the old woman, so she keeps her going.
Ursula Le Guin So Grandma gets going. "'Then I came to live with Aunt Josie in Portland and I went to old Lincoln High. The nearest high school to Ultimate was 30 miles on logging roads and anyhow, wasn't good enough for Father. He was afraid I'd grow up to be a roughneck or marry one.' So Sheppard clicked on her little machine."
Ursula Le Guin Yeah, the interviewer. "And Rita," that's Grandma, "Rita thought, 'But what did Mother think? Did she want to send me away at age 13 to live in the city with her sister-in-law?' The question opened on a blank area that she gazed into fascinated. 'I know what father wanted. But why don't I know what she wanted? Did she cry? No, of course not. Did I? I don't think so. I can't even remember talking about it with Mother. We made my clothes that summer. That's when she taught me how to cut out a pattern. And we came up to Portland the first time and we stayed in the old Multnomah Hotel and we bought shoes for me for school and oyster silk ones for dressing up. That little undercut heel and one strap. I wish they still made those. I was already wearing Mother's size. And we ate lunch in that restaurant. Cut-glass water goblets, the two of us. Where was Father? But I never even wondered what she thought. I never knew. I never know what Mag really thinks, either.'" Mag is her daughter. "'They don't say. Rocks. Look at Mag's mouth, just like Mother's mouth, like a seam in a rock. Why did Mag go into teaching? Talk, talk talk all day when she really hates talking. Although she never was quite as gruff as Gret is. But that's 'cause Amory wouldn't have stood for it. But why didn't Mother and I say anything to each other? She was so stoical. Rock. And then I was happy in Portland, and there she was in Ultimate. Oh, yes, I loved it, she answered Sue Shepherd. The twenties were a nice time to be a teenager. We really were very spoiled. Not like now, poor things. It's terribly hard to be 13 or 14 now, isn't it? We went to dancing school. They've got AIDS and the atomic bomb. My granddaughter's twice as old as I was at 18. In some ways. She's amazingly young for her age in others. It's so complicated. After all, think of Juliet. It's never really simple, is it? But I think I had a very nice, innocent time in high school and right on into college 'til the crash. The mill closed in '32, my second year. And, actually, we went right on having a good time, but it was terribly depressing for my parents and my brothers. The mill shut right down and they all came up to Portland looking for work. Everybody did. And then I left school after my junior year because I'd got a summer job bookkeeping in the university accounting office, and they wanted me to stay on, and so I did, since everybody else in the family was out of work. Except Mother finally got a job in a bakery, nights. It was terrible for men, the Depression, you know? It killed my father. He looked and looked for work and he couldn't find anything. And there I was, doing what he was qualified to do, only of course, at a very low level, and terrible pay. $60 a month. Can you imagine?' 'A week?' 'No, a month. But still I was making it, and men of his generation were brought up to be depended on, which is a wonderful thing. But then they weren't allowed ever not to be depended on when they had to depend on other people, which everybody actually does. It was terribly unrealistic, I think a real, what do you call it? Double time?' 'Double bind,' said young Sue. Sharp as tacks, clicketing almost inaudibly away on her little lap computer while the tape recorder tape went silently round and round, recording Rita's every maunder and meander. Rita sighed. 'I'm sure that's why he died so young,' she said. He was only 50.'"
Studs Terkel And you can pick it right up there, too. But Mother hadn't died young. She keeps talking. This girl got more than she bargained for.
Ursula Le Guin Except she--now, this she's thinking. She doesn't say
Studs Terkel No, now Rita, the widow of this respected--and we find out he's less than who he really was--but this respected educator, Amory Inman, this is the widow, the old woman, is saying, "But Mother hadn't"--and now she's thinking this--
Ursula Le Guin Yeah, she's thinking. Yeah,
Studs Terkel Not talking to the girl. "Mother hadn't died young. The husband had, and her elder son drifted off to Texas to be swallowed alive, so far as Mother was concerned by a jealous wife. And her younger son had poured whiskey on a diabetes and died at 31. Men." And here's the part. Now we come to Ursula Le Guin: "Men did seem to be so fragile. What had kept Margaret Jamerson Holtz going"--That's her mother.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah.
Studs Terkel "Her independence? But she had been brought up to be dependent, hadn't she? Anyway, nobody could keep going long on mere independence when they tried to end up, they ended up pushing shopping carts full of stuff and sleeping in doorways." And, so, now we got something, don't we, about the necessary, about these guys? Talking about the male of the species now. Who are not quite that strong.
Ursula Le Guin Or they're--they can't be as strong as they're supposed to be. That's part of it, right? They're supposed to be strong for everybody. And it doesn't work that way. Or that's what Rita thinks. You know, nobody can do it alone.
Studs Terkel Ursula Le Guin and her writings catch you, by the way, they creep up on you. And again I thought of Sherwood Anderson and those stories, though, as you say, the towns socially are wholly different, but that same--I use the word ache, and longing is there, for something not quite graspable. And the word not said, and this is "Searoad: Chronicles of Klatsand", by Ursula K. Le Guin, the "K" for Kroeber, your father being a very distinguished anthropologist whose works are used in many schools. Harper and Collins. Ursula Le Guin and her collection. I suppose you say these are short stories, though there's a novella at the end.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah, I call it a mini-novel because it took me two years to write those
Ursula Le Guin Mini!
Studs Terkel Oh, mini-novel. I thought a mean novel.
Ursula Le Guin No, no, no, not mean. It just took so long to write it, I think of it as a novel.
Studs Terkel Yeah.
Ursula Le Guin Short as it is.
Studs Terkel Well, because the--because they are connected. That is, that what connects these short stories or these vignettes, they [unintelligible], is that--
Ursula Le Guin They're stories, yeah.
Studs Terkel They
Ursula Le Guin They are stories. They have,
Studs Terkel They're stories and the last part is a novella dealing with the four generations of women who the great-grandmother was one of the founders, early settlers in the town. And again, that there was survival. There's a story called, "Geezers". And this is one that affects me very much of a certain age. Geezers. It's about a guy, a vigorous guy. He's in his fifties. I would think of him as older, naturally, and he could be, but vigorous, comes to a town. How's--he comes from Portland, around there
Ursula Le Guin He comes from Salem, that which is--
Studs Terkel Salem.
Ursula Le Guin The state capital.
Studs Terkel Yeah.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah, he's a bureaucrat.
Studs Terkel Yeah.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah.
Studs Terkel And he's doing pretty good, he wants to come for a rest of some sort.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah.
Studs Terkel And as he comes to this town, this is Klatsand again, of course, there's a gathering, as we know, many tours of people.
Ursula Le Guin Beca--of course, he comes to the nice motel, right?
Studs Terkel He goes to the "White Gull."
Ursula Le Guin Yeah,
Studs Terkel It's a nicer--that's run by a couple called Bernese.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah.
Studs Terkel And they're a little different, it's a--and he's gonna have a pretty good [dinner?], he feels pretty good, but--and so he also notices a bus there that is a big tip. Why don't you pick it up?
Ursula Le Guin Well, the sightseeing seniors of--I can't remember the--Cedar Wood or something.
Studs Terkel Yeah.
Ursula Le Guin Are there having one of these big overnight outings that senior centers do.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah. Now, actually, this story is autobiographical.
Studs Terkel You mean it's you?
Ursula Le Guin It's me. Warren is me. I just--
Studs Terkel Sure could be me. Yeah.
Ursula Le Guin I just switched genders there because I spent one day in the town of Cannon Beach, Oregon, always getting mixed up with a bunch of sightseeing seniors and always being--everybody assumed that I was with them, and I found I was so indignant. I was older than Warren, too. I was 58 when this happened. And I thought, "What am I so mad about? Why don't I want to be a senior?" You know?
Studs Terkel You got something. It's the group, and it's the sightseeing seniors of Cedar Wood, a Christian community. And this happens very often. We know that as older people again, let's go on a tour. It could be part of a community village or somewhere from St. Petersburg, Florida, wherever it might be, and they go on a tour, and they're there. And so they're pretty much taken over--it's a small city to begin with, small
Ursula Le Guin It's
Ursula Le Guin They're everywhere.
Studs Terkel Warren, this guy's got gray hair. He's mistaken for one of them!
Studs Terkel And he's mad. And I could--I think of this very much, I mean, and--but it's none--at the first he's not, he sees them. He gets a kick out of them. The woman who says, "How you doing? You like to join us?" says a nice, gentle, nice old lady. He's at--oh, he's in this restaurant seated by himself, and there are a bunch of them, they're having, and they're laughing and talking about fishing and a joke. "You like to join us? We just--we're terribly noisy." "Oh, no, thanks so much," he says, "with his fundraising smile." I like that. That's what he did, I take it.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah.
Studs Terkel "I'm just enjoying listening to you all." And he feels pretty good here. He says, "'These are the salt of the earth', he says to himself as the salmon arrives. 'These are Americans.'" And then bit by bit, he's mistaken by the village, the merchants, though they--shopkeepers [around?]. And they all--at first there they greet him, the people going by, the older people, "Morning," "Morning." And he notices that, and he doesn't like the idea of these young people coming by, now there is something very
Ursula Le Guin They keep telling him, your group is somewhere or other, you know, and it's not his group.
Studs Terkel Yeah. But aside from that, there are a couple of joggers, there's a young couple jogging.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah.
Studs Terkel Now, he's going to do a little jogging herself, though it's a little difficult, but what gets me about that part is they don't notice him. And I notice this on buses and everything else. My hair is gray and going. That the young couple was, am I--not that my ego is hurt. Nothing's--I'm not there--
Studs Terkel And suddenly you realize--no, I'm talking now outside the story.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I know.
Studs Terkel You know, there's an anti-old feeling. Not about, by these youngs, not their fault. We get it from the commercials. Remember that one about ugly age freckles? They wrote a commercial about that.
Ursula Le Guin Oh, yes, for years.
Studs Terkel And it was called "ugly age," so age is equivalent, is age is equated with ugliness. Ugly age, or Grecian Formula? Because they--to make your hair black. What's wrong with the gray? See. What's wrong with it is, the guy's not gonna get a job.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah, that's one of the things that's wrong with
Studs Terkel And so he's a little sore about this couple passing him by, as I am continuously, but we've got to get the last--but you don't mind if I read this stuff, 'cause this is my story. "And toward the very end"--oh, he went to a restaurant and a woman says, "You're in the wrong restaurant." He says, "No, I'm not!" of course she assumed he was with the whole group of seniors who went to one of those special low-cal food restaurants. He, so he deliberately orders scrambled eggs and bacon, by God, high-cal. And home fries! And at the very end, he goes this drugstore to buy something, and the girl behind the counter, again, the group is still in town, the old people. And this vigorous guy, he's still on his own, is getting more irritated. "The girl behind the counter in the small drugs and souvenirs, postcards, taffy shop was beautiful; dark-haired, redhead, luminous. He didn't speak. He was aware of her presence. He looked over the terrible terrycloth hats by the door" and then goes along, and at last he brought his selection to the counter of some sort of sun block as to avoid sunburn, I take it.
Ursula Le Guin Mm-hmm.
Studs Terkel And he's--goes to the girl at the desk. And she said, "'You people are really having a time of it. I think it's just wonderful.' Warren's heart seemed to drop or sink physically an inch or more inside his chest. 'I work in Salem,' he said. The emphasis 'I work in Salem' sounded strange. "This is a nice town,' he said. She knew something was amiss, but didn't know what. 'It's real quiet,' she says. 'And four makes 10.'" Giving me--"'Have a nice day. Take care.' 'I'm only 52!' Warren cried out to--in despair, in despairing silence."
Studs Terkel But at the very end, he finally accepts, doesn't he? When he goes to the motel.
Ursula Le Guin He kind of gives in.
Studs Terkel Yeah, where they are. And the little old lady who said, "Will you join us?" He's making small talk
Ursula Le Guin Well, when he sees the kids skateboarding and he realizes even the kids have this age, hierarchy of age--the older kids and the younger kids won't skateboard together, you know--
Studs Terkel Oh,
Ursula Le Guin He kind of--I guess he sort of gets, he feels defeated.
Studs Terkel Yeah, so that's what that--he feels through them, through the hierarchy of kids, he suddenly recognized he was part of a hierarchy of older. So he finally, "Oh, let it go." We're talking to Ursula Le Guin, we're just touching on some of the short stories in the book "Searoad", this collection. Chronicles, 'cause they're chronicles in a way. And the town is a connecting link.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah.
Studs Terkel Klatsand. There are many such towns, or a number of such in
Ursula Le Guin Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's a kind of typical town. Yeah.
Studs Terkel But the nomadic aspect attracts me. There's also, [ergo?]--"Winesburg, Ohio", written in the '20s, "Winesburg, Ohio". This is now the '90s, and so that didn't have the nomadic America
Ursula Le Guin Right. We weren't moving around so fast then.
Ursula Le Guin That may be partly why this town, a town like this, does fascinate me, with the people coming through. The ones who come through, the ones who stay, the ones who move on.
Studs Terkel Yeah. And Harper Collins, the publisher. Ursula Le Guin and "Searoad". Your name has always been associated, say with, poet--with science fiction primarily, of which you won every award in the book, and some excellent children's works and poetry. So that was more or less your world primarily, was it not?
Ursula Le Guin Well, that was the label they stuck on me, Studs. I just write what I write.
Studs Terkel Yeah.
Ursula Le Guin And they stick labels on it. And one of the labels is science fiction.
Studs Terkel Yeah.
Ursula Le Guin But, pretty much I have always written just what I, what I do and I do write science fiction, I do write fantasy, I do write realism. I move around among
Studs Terkel Now these stories, in a sense, have a theme, to me: reconciliation.
Ursula Le Guin Hmm.
Studs Terkel One way or another, healing, I suppose. In the case of this old geezer, who's not old, Warren, it's "Okay, let it--" is acceptance, and in the case of the woman running that motel would hear the sound of that cry, the kid--"Hey, wait, there's somebody else here's who's, who's bearing a little cross here of his own." Yeah. And so, "In and Out", this story "In and Out", and this is about Jilly and her mother.
Ursula Le Guin There are a lot of recognitions take place. People recognize something in another soul that's in their own. But they can't always do much about it. There's a lot of--I realized reading some of the stories--in several of them, people don't know what to do. They know something ought to be done and they don't know how to do it. You know.
Studs Terkel Yeah. You're not offering any solution here, you just--
Ursula Le Guin No.
Ursula Le Guin No.
Studs Terkel Set it up. Well, in this one, "In and Out", she's--doesn't work in a big town. She may have been in Portland, I suppose. She came to Klatsand to be with her mother who is incurably
Ursula Le Guin Is dying of cancer, right? Yeah.
Studs Terkel And there's a friend named Kay.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah.
Studs Terkel Who comes to visit and help
Ursula Le Guin One of the, now, there's another element of these towns are retired people. Retired people move to small coast towns to end their lives. And there's lots of older people in these towns. Living there.
Studs Terkel Yeah, that's it. And Kay has suffered some--well, you don't know quite know what. They speak of Sarah's room. She and her husband Jack, who don't communicate much, they do, but not much. I mean, they're not demonstrative.
Ursula Le Guin No, no. They're solid,
Studs Terkel But there's something missing there. She's the one who sits with Jilly's mother.
Ursula Le Guin She's lost her daughter to cancer, to
Studs Terkel Yeah, But we don't
Ursula Le Guin It's never said. Yeah.
Studs Terkel 'Til the very end. The dying mother with whom she sits, not her mother, but Jilly's mother, suddenly is angry, you see, and can a dying person express love is one of the questions you ask, but there's an anger. But what interests me about that is, the use of the word "body." You see, she--Kay is getting tired of those rock songs, all those songs which--
Ursula Le Guin No, no. Country/Western.
Studs Terkel Country/Western.
Ursula Le Guin "Ah love yuh body."
Studs Terkel And she says "body is what?'
Ursula Le Guin "What do you mean body? Is it all--?" And she's troubled by this sexual aspect. You know, and she says, "Well, but that's not all there is to a body," you know, but she can't put it together.
Studs Terkel Yeah. The body is also the mother of her friend who's dying.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah.
Studs Terkel And, so, that comes into the story, [unintelligible]--let's see, as we got that here. Page 55. Perhaps, should we--her mother.
Ursula Le Guin That's where she wants her daughter to come to her, and the daughter doesn't come. Is that the bit you wanted?
Studs Terkel Yeah, something like that, or unless there's something you want to hit more to it.
Ursula Le Guin It's actually when Kay is sitting with the dying woman.
Studs Terkel That's the one I want. Yeah.
Ursula Le Guin And the dying woman says, "'Where's Jilly?'" That's her daughter.
Studs Terkel Yeah.
Ursula Le Guin "'Having a nap,' Kay said in a murmur, knowing Joyce was less than half awake. 'She never comes.' 'Oh, now, now,' Kay soothed, cajoling, dismissing. Joyce slipped further back into sleep."
Studs Terkel Joyce is the mother who's dying.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah. "Did she love her daughter? Kate watched her bony, swollen hand lying on the blanket. Can you love people when you're dying?" And then you see the voice that speaks next is her daughter's voice, her dead daughter's voice. "Why did you have me if this was going to happen?" That's a question that Kay's daughter must have asked her. She'd only been 14. So they're--all these voices are kind of coming together. Present and past.
Studs Terkel Yeah. At the very end, you know, as Joyce is in bed breathing heavily, the dying mother, she looks at Kay, the woman sitting with her, whose daughter Sarah, 14 year old girl, he looked [with?] one brief gaze full of hate. "Don't come here with your dead daughter!" and all of a sudden explodes. She didn't say it, but she's thinking that. And suddenly you raise something's crazy here about life and death. That's not quite the way we think it might be. There's a good deal of anger here.
Ursula Le Guin The anger of the dying. Yeah.
Studs Terkel But at the very end there's kind of a--it isn't redemption, that isn't the word. We're getting--the very end Kay puts her hand on the shoulder of her friend, whose mother is dying. She says, "It's hard, Jilly, isn't it?" She says, "Hard work?" Jilly said smiling, turned to go back inside. "Do some sculpting." Or whatever she was doing
Ursula Le Guin Jilly is a sweetie. I really like Jilly.
Studs Terkel Jilly the daughter. That deals with survival, too, doesn't it? And kind of transcendence as well. You know, we've gotta do one about the old guy, Bill Weissler. Now in that town lives this guy, a reclusive sort of guy, shy sort of guy, but who happens to be gifted with his hands, he's a sculptor, he's, he's a potter.
Studs Terkel He's a potter. Now this guy, Bill Weissler, is [quiet? quite?]--was having a rough time until one day a hippie entrepreneur as you call him, Conrad, discovers him. And looks like this guy is great. And he's able to sell his stuff, right? At this open market in Portland. I know there is this open market in Portland. Is it called Pike's Market?
Ursula Le Guin That's in Seattle.
Studs Terkel Seattle.
Ursula Le Guin Portland is the Saturday market. Yeah. Same, same, same kind of deal. Yeah.
Studs Terkel But--why don't you tell a little about Weissler? And his credo, what comes out of this one?
Ursula Le Guin Well, it's kind of hard to talk about Bill, because Bill himself is quite inarticulate. He--and he's--the guy is, he runs scared because he knows that he has some kind of episodes. He calls it "falling black," and I don't know whether, you know, whether he's epileptic or what he's got. But there's something that when he gets really stressed, he can't cope, and he blacks out. And this--he runs scared all the time of this happening. So he tries to live real quiet and keep his head down, right? And so it's really stressful for him to talk to people. And [unintelligible]--
Studs Terkel I mean he's bringing his stuff to Conrad and is doing pretty well.
Ursula Le Guin Conrad is doing fine and Bill's got something like $18,000 in the bank, which he can't even believe,
Studs Terkel That's what I mean, he's doing o--this guy's--is selling his stuff to people, buying it for their houses and to display his pottery, right? It's sort of Crate & Barrel type stuff, we call it here, you know, a pretty good place. And--but Bill is also a very conscientious craftsman. Isn't he?
Studs Terkel And so he marks some of the stuff that has a slight flaw in it. Seconds.
Ursula Le Guin It's like his work is his sanity, almost. And so when he's got a flawed piece, he marks it with a little orange tape, and he sees his entrepreneur flicking that tape off one of his big pots.
Studs Terkel You know, he marks it "seconds."
Ursula Le Guin Yeah.
Ursula Le Guin That means it's second, it's flawed. Yeah. It'll sell for, like, a third less than, yeah. Potters do that a lot, you know. There's usually a second shelf in a potting shop. So when he sees Conrad do that, Bill says, "That's a second." And Conrad says, "Well, what was wrong with it?" And then he sees a little flaw in the glaze, and he says, "That don't matter." And Bill says, "It's a second." And Conrad says, "It's nothing. It's sound, isn't it? It'll sell as a first. They don't notice, Bill, they don't care." So he's selling these flawed pieces for the same price as the good ones. And Bill just can't handle this. He says, "This is wrong." But he's so unsure of himself that he thinks maybe he's crazy for thinking it's wrong. He has to get somebody to tell him that it's wrong. You know, he's got to get somebody to back him up.
Studs Terkel But the big thing is, he can't get over the fact this guy who's good to him, by
Ursula Le Guin Yeah, who's been really
Studs Terkel Is doing a thing like this. There is a thing called craftsmanship, and he's a craftsman, and you don't say that's--you gotta put down it's defective.
Ursula Le Guin It's not the same as a perfect piece. Right.
Studs Terkel Do you know there's a story by B. Traven, you know the mysterious B. Traven, of "Treasure of Sierra Madre", and it's called "Assembly Line". It's about this American businessman goes down to Mexico and he comes across this little Mexican guy who's a master at making little baskets with all sorts of wood in it, and it's unbelievable, and he's going to get this guy to make him a thousand, and I forget what the guy charged him, how many pesos for a basket, "Suppose you make me a thousand?" The guy said, "A thousand!" My God. And he says, and he's going to charge him, then the little old guy says he's going to charge him more for each one if it's a thousand than if it's for one. And the guy goes crazy, "Why so?" He explains why: the art of making; if he made 1,000 he'd have to hire his cousins and nephews and nieces, and take them away from their work. But this is not his craftsmanship, so therefore, he has to charge more for what he loses. So in a way this is not too removed.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah, it's the same kind of attitude. Absolutely.
Studs Terkel But also it deals with today and now, too, doesn't it? With a certain kind of attitude toward--?
Ursula Le Guin Well, it's like what's happened to Conrad, who obviously started as a pretty neat guy and something has kind of, he's kind of sold out along the line. That kind of, the success has got to Conrad.
Studs Terkel Yeah. We have to do a story. That's a key one, I think. And that's the one called "Quoits". A story called "Quoits". And we're coming to, we're talking there's, and there's several more, but we have to get that one in. We're talking to Ursula Le Guin, and it's her collection of short stories with a novella at the end, all connected with this town called Klatsand, and "Searoad" is the name of the book and the collection. Subtitled "Chronicles of Klatsand" and Harper Collins the publishers. We come to the story called "Quoits", and there are two middle-aged women, one of--they've lived together for a good number of years, these two women and one has died. Barbara. Shirley is left alone, and Barbara's grown kids come to visit. Right? Why don't you pick it up? The idea of it, the story.
Ursula Le Guin I guess one of the things that story is about is there's a part where Shirley gets really angry because, Barbara's daughter calls them "lovers," she and Shirley, and she doesn't like the word "lover." She says, "Lover doesn't mean love. It means sex, an affair, a liaison, it's a dirty, sniggering, sniveling word. I never was Barbara's lover. Spare me that." And so the daughter says, "Well, friend?" And Shirley says, "Spare me the euphemisms, too." And what she's saying is that there is no, we don't have the right words for relationships between people anymore. We just--families are not what the Bush administration says they are. They haven't been for decades. The mama and papa and two kids, and Papa works, Mama doesn't. What is that? Seven percent of American families now? Seven percent? We have every other kind of family in the book. We have these relationships between men, between women, between three or four different people and their children, you know, and we don't have any words. And this is really, this is bad. This is, this is painful.
Studs Terkel So this is what we're talking about. Here is a couple of elderly women who lived together for many years. The fact that they may be lesbian is of secondary importance.
Ursula Le Guin They loved each other. That's what's important. Yeah.
Studs Terkel They loved each other and friend is the word, friend I suppose is the closest one she says, but you--they can't find [the right words?] because the daughter, is a pretty enlightened girl. You know, the daughter is not looking upon this in any condemnatory way at all, the daughter of the woman who died.
Ursula Le Guin Both the children have sort of educated themselves into being, yeah--
Studs Terkel Because they're talking about the obituary.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah.
Studs Terkel About Barb that left out any mention of Shirley! You see? Say what, survived, said "survived by a son in Portland, a daughter in Salem, herself and two grandsons. Jesus H, come on! And Shirley stalled", Shirley, the friend of the woman who died, "trying to see what was tasteless or aberrant. What about you, the daughter [unintelligible]. Why can't they say it?' 'Say what?' 'Survived by her lover, Shirley Bauer.' Because I'm not. I never was,'" she said. Why don't you read the rest,
Ursula Le Guin Yeah, that's, that's--
Studs Terkel Why don't you read that.
Ursula Le Guin "Shirley stood up, feeling the awful electricity gather in her veins. I wasn't her lover. She wasn't my lover. I hate, we hated, we hated that, that stupid word, "my lover." It doesn't mean love. It only means sex. An affair, a liaison. It's a dirty, sniggering, sniveling word. I never was Barbara's lover. Spare me that. So Jen says, "Friend?" And Shirley says, "Spare me the euphemisms, too." "Well," Jen said. And she found no word to say, and Shirley watches her. "You see?" says Shirley. There aren't any words that mean anything, for us, for any of it. We can't say who we are. Even men can't anymore. Did the papers say she was survived by her ex-husband? What about the man she lived with before she met your father? What's his label? We don't have words for what we do. Wife, husband, lover, ex-, post-, step-. It's all leftovers. Words from some other civilization. Nothing to do with us. Nothing means anything but the proper names. You can say Barbara was survived by Shirley. That's all you can say."
Studs Terkel Yeah, and it goes on, and of course, her discovery. This is good. The discovery of herself, too. She more or less was--the word "crouch" here is used. I mean, she more or less was--she wasn't the stronger of the two, you gather. The
Studs Terkel You couldn't tell that.
Ursula Le Guin It's just--of course, she lost her friend so suddenly. It kind of--this was obviously a fairly unexpected death, and it leaves her in this kind of totally stunned position. I don't know which was the strong
Studs Terkel You know, what you do here is very interesting. You take some of the lyrics of the ballad "Barbara Allen", and you do something with it. And I think this is--I like that. In fact, I might even use "Barbara Allen" to end our program, which might not be a bad idea. You're speaking of the two women, the this--you always bring up the land, don't you? Throughout, you have the landscape and the humans throughout. "The thistle had tangled its tough roots with those of a rose," and here's the phrase you use: "Out of her grave there grew a rose, out of hers a briar." I mean, out of her grave, out of hers. And, of course, the line is "out of his grave, there grew a red rose, and out of hers, a briar." The his and her is her and her. But it's done, you do it rather subtly here.
Ursula Le Guin Drove the copy editor crazy.
Studs Terkel Oh, it did? Oh, the copy editor didn't know what was--copy editor thought you made a mistake, didn't you?
Ursula Le Guin That's
Studs Terkel You made a mistake. And you said, "No, I didn't make any mistake. That is her and her." The copy editor's a man or woman? Copy editor?
Studs Terkel Yeah, the copy editor's, "Oh!"
Studs Terkel I'm just doing--"and then they twined into a true lover's knot for all"--oh, here's one! They try--and this is your working around the
Ursula Le Guin No, now that's the, that's the way I know
Studs Terkel "For all men to admire?"
Ursula Le Guin Uh-huh.
Studs Terkel Was that in, "all men to admire?" I don't feel all to admire, yeah.
Studs Terkel Well, I thought perhaps we'd end this program, we'd just play "Barbara Allen", I think,
Studs Terkel Just about rec--'cause that deals with a certain kind of ache again. The word never said. So as you do these stories--oh, perhaps we have time even to talk about--another one, "Crosswords". It's about this waitress. She--a lot of this deals with coming to terms with--
Ursula Le Guin Yeah.
Studs Terkel The other person, doesn't it?
Ursula Le Guin Yeah, just trying to--this one, she's trying to come to terms with her mother, whom she really hasn't seen since she was, what, 18 or something, just once or twice. And the fact that there was some abuse both in her generation and in her mother's generation. And she just--and she has these kind of, like, pieces, these definitions, but, of her crossword puzzle, but she can't quite make sense out of it. So she--and she's got a daughter of her own.
Studs Terkel She's working somewhere as a waitress, you know, and she's a veteran waitress. I notice that you have a number of, good number of the people doing the work that is taken for granted very often. And it's when she, when she has this talk with her colleague, this Black waitress who has a certain insight into what she's thinking.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah.
Studs Terkel She realized one [summer?] she comes out one day from the john somewhere, and the Black woman says, "I saw this old woman."
Ursula Le Guin She sees her as her mother for a moment.
Studs Terkel She saw this girl?
Ursula Le Guin Yeah. This--Yeah.
Studs Terkel As her mother. She sensed something there.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah.
Studs Terkel She talked to her--did she speak to her about her mother on occasion?
Ursula Le Guin Not really. She just--She just, you know, she just tells her then, "I'm carrying my mother around with me." And Terena says, "We have that to do."
Studs Terkel Yeah. And then she recognized
Ursula Le Guin And then she kind of figures out what's going on in her own
Studs Terkel She never quite knew her mother. So this is when she calls her daughter.
Ursula Le Guin That's
Studs Terkel [unintelligible] the town.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah. That's, by the way, that's the pretty redhead that talks to Warren. That's--
Studs Terkel Oh, that redhead.
Ursula Le Guin That's Ailie's daughter.
Studs Terkel That's her daughter. Yeah, now it connects. Warren in "Geezers" goes in that drugstore, there's a store of sundries to buy that--oh, so that's the daughter
Ursula Le Guin Mmhmm, yeah. So there's a lot of
Studs Terkel So you have a sort of a circus--there's sort of circular, isn't it? In a way.
Ursula Le Guin It keeps twining in. Yeah.
Studs Terkel You know Meridel Le Sueur?
Ursula Le Guin Yeah.
Studs Terkel Meridel.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah.
Studs Terkel I thought you might have, see, of course Meridel always--
Ursula Le Guin I mean, I know her work. Yeah.
Studs Terkel But Meridel speaks of circular writing.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah.
Studs Terkel Circular. Among, among women writers.
Ursula Le Guin These networks that women seem to be fascinated with writing about networks of people, and where the links come, and where they break. And so on. Instead of writing about this sort of lone man facing adventure, we write about these complicated networks that form over generations sometimes.
Studs Terkel And so that leads to something else, to you and your community, Klatsand and beginnings. Indians, you see. Just as Meridel and you speak of the circular thing and a network and a community. It's the Indian idea.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah.
Ursula Le Guin It is. You mean it's similar to the way the Indians think of--what? Community is. Yeah. Absolutely. That's a very important idea to
Studs Terkel In fact, in your story, the very beginning in that novella toward the end
Ursula Le Guin It begins and ends with--
Studs Terkel The very first one.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah.
Studs Terkel Fannie's a, an Indian touch to her.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah.
Studs Terkel At the early part--
Ursula Le Guin She speaks to the last remaining member of that--of the community that was there before the white community. Those communities are completely broken. There are no survivors of most of those Oregon Coast towns. They were wiped out mostly by our diseases.
Studs Terkel Wiped out by what?
Ursula Le Guin Smallpox--
Studs Terkel The white diseases.
Ursula Le Guin White diseases.
Ursula Le Guin TB, venereal disease. They were wiped out, a lot of them before we really even got out to Oregon. And then we took care of the rest of them one way or in another. But yes, there is--there was--there were communities there before the one I'm talking about, and that haunts me. That haunts anybody who lives out west, I think.
Studs Terkel Yeah. Well, this is a--I suppose the word "haunted" might be an adjective to use to describe the stories. The people. There's a haunted quality about these stories, too, isn't there? To some extent.
Ursula Le Guin Well, I guess--these are very ordinary people. But ordinary people are so strange. They lead such strange, complicated lives.
Studs Terkel Ordinary people are so extraordinary.
Ursula Le Guin Yeah, they sure are. And that's, that's the fun of it for me.
Studs Terkel That's what this is about, these stories, and that's why the reading is so good of Ursula K. Le Guin. "Searoad" is the name of the collection, "Searoad" being that road separating the town of Klatsand from the Ocean. "Chronicles of Klatsand", Harper Row the publishers, and let's end with that song. Why not? "Barbara Allen". Ursula Le Guin. Thank you very much. Thank
