What do You think about The Telling (2003)?
I'm going to use an arguably banal and trite metaphor here: that of a love affair. Okay, maybe not so arguable. It is a banal and trite metaphor. But that’s okay, I think, because the “relationship” many of us experience with our books and our authors is like a love affair, is it not? So forget that the metaphor is worn or hackneyed, because it’s apt, and it’s something to which many of you will relate, and it’s the best way I can think of to communicate how this book affected me.To be more precise, I am comparing my reading of The Telling to the beginning of a love affair ... to the first date. That’s how I see it, anyway ... my first date with UKL ... the first of many, I hope.UKL is the woman at the edge of my circle of friends. Not that she’s unpopular or lonely, mind you. She has a circle of her own. A rather large circle, from what I gather. It’s just that my circle only slightly overlaps her own. She is beautiful from a distance, and she certainly looks pretty enough up close, too. She always seems to be involved in conversation and everybody always has nice things to say about her. I have checked her out across the room at parties but never really had the motivation to introduce myself. On the one hand I’m always game for flirting with a pretty girl, but on the other hand I have plenty of friends and I’m not eager to spend the energy cultivating another relationship.Eventually, a friend of mine leads UKL over and introduces us, thinking we might hit it off, which in fact we do. At the end of the party we both play it cool, exchange phone numbers, and part on a hug. I let a few days pass before I make the call. For one thing, I want to keep playing it cool; that’s my style. But really, I’m afraid of getting involved in something right now. Life is plenty busy. A new relationship can be work, you know? And it’s always a risk. I like the known quantity. Still, I can’t stop thinking about the pretty girl that captured my attention so completely the other night, so I pull out the digits and dial. We agree to meet for drinks after work. Nothing too big. Nothing too committal. Something from which either of us could exit if we don’t have a good feeling about things.For me, The Telling began as drinks after work, and ended late that night with a reluctant parting and a lasting impression. There will, without a doubt, be a second date.As I read The Telling I discovered a rich imagination, a vibrant story teller, and a fair and thoughtful judge of character. UKL impressed me greatly. I thought at first that her writing reminded me of Herbert, but with a softness around the edges and woven through the words. But that was just a first impression; I quickly fell in love with UKL on her own merits and not because she was reminiscent of anyone else.The Telling is about “The Telling” – an ancient way of life among a remarkable people on a planet called Aka. The Telling is a religion, a philosophy, a cosmology, a sociology, and an economy tied and woven inseparably together. It is a bit utopian, really. But it has become fragmented, hidden, and perhaps a bit distorted. Our protagonist is a historian-anthropologist-sociologist from Earth named Sutty. She has come to Aka to learn from its people, and she must patiently peel back the concrete-and-steel surface imposed by the modern Corporation-State. The State has criminalized The Telling, seeing it as a threat to progress and, as you might guess, as a threat to its own authority. Sutty’s patience is rewarded in the end, but along the way her stamina is tested, her objectivity is challenged, and her beliefs are questioned. The Telling gives you ideas to contemplate in a story you can savor. Like I said, it left a lasting impression on me and there will be a second date with UKL.Pretty cheesy review, huh?
—Ian
This was not quite a 4 star read. If I had more options, it would be a 3.5 star read.The story is told through the eyes of Sutty, who is a linguist/historian for the Ekuman, who study and record the histories of the planets that contain societies. Sutty has been assigned to Aka, a planet that is trying to replicate the technology of Terra (Earth) and become engaged in commerce among the worlds. In training, Sutty learned the language but little else about the planet, because the files of the first team to visit the planet had been corrupted. When she arrives, however, she finds the language she learned is no longer spoken on the planet and has been banned. The capital city - Dovza - is not a pleasant place for her. There is no fresh food. The technology is shoddy. Books have been burned and banned. But then her supervisor offers her the opportunity to visit a city upriver, much closer to the mountains, where remnants of the planet's old ways are believed to still exist.Sutty reluctantly goes and finds more than she ever hoped for. She makes friends and becomes involved with the old traditions. She is worried that she is putting her new friends at risk while they see her presence as offering hope. As she learns more about the traditional ways, we learn more about her and her past on Terra. The culture wars of Aka bear a resemblance to the culture wars of the Terra when Sutty was there. While they do not have fundamentalist religion on Aka, they do have a rather fundamentalist society governed by the Corporation. The book ends on a hopeful note. I enjoyed it and look forward to reading more Le Guinn books.
—Linda
I have to confess first that I didn't finish The Telling. I quit about halfway through after struggling with what, to me, was an excruciatingly boring story that's barely a story at all, but really seems to be simply a vehicle for conveying ideas, and perhaps a moral message, about the preservation of culture and history. It's interesting to me that I read this book shortly after reading (and hating) A Canticle For Leibowitz because they seem so similar and yet opposite. Let's compare: In A Canticle for Leibowitz, a world-wide holocaust results in a violent mass rejection of technology and learning of all sorts, and human culture on Earth basically starts over from extremely simple pastoral roots. A monastery of Catholic monks struggles over a period of several centuries to preserve the knowledge of the past and wonders if humanity is doomed to a never-ending cycle of violence. Message: If we don't learn from the past and cherish that learning, we are doomed to repeat it. In The Telling, the scene seems to be very much the opposite. Earth has offered its neighboring planet, Aka, a technological development package, and the Akans, having gladly accepted the opportunity to leap-frog centuries of slow technological development, go about cheerfully and ruthlessly obliterating and even criminalizing their entire past history, language and culture in an effort to become "advanced." Sutty, an Earth observer, investigates the native culture of Aka and finds it still alive and being surreptitiously practiced in the outlying towns and villages. Message: I'm not quite sure, since I didn't finish it, but it seems to be a parable about the atrophy (and in some cases, suppression) of our own many rich cultural traditions here on Earth.In my mind, both books suffer from a problem that crops up a lot in science fiction, which I call Big Idea Syndrome. In SF, stories about fictional cultures are often used as ways to explore existential ideas and questions about ourselves and our culture and technology. Both these books focus on the tension between the pastoral and the technological, the spiritual and intellectual cost of what we call “progress,” and the danger of becoming unrooted from our past. They address these issues in very different ways, but they both suffer equally from the syndrome. The problem with Big Idea Syndrome is that no matter how important and worthwhile the ideas are, an idea by itself rarely makes a compelling story. You've got to add relatable characters and make interesting things happen to them, or the pages just don't turn.After quitting halfway through The Telling, I figured I ought to read a plot summary before I say anything about it. Usually, you can get a reasonably detailed plot summary of a novel just by reading its Wikipedia entry. However, Wikipedia's plot summary for The Telling is three sentences long and basically says, “Sutty experiences and tells of the conflicts there between the Corporation, a repressive State capitalist government, and the native people who resist.” As dull as that sounds, it makes the book seem more interesting than it actually is. Words like "conflicts" and "resistance" invoke images of open defiance, perhaps even fighting. No, Sutty's adventures are probably much more like what real anthropologists experience-- quietly observing the cultural rituals of the people around her and chronicling them. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but wow it makes for a dull novel.I think one's enjoyment of this book depends heavily on whether you have an inner historian-anthropologist, a sort of Indiana Jones whose secret treasures are forgotten texts, ancient languages, and little-known customs. But in this case, the true cultural treasures aren't hidden in tombs or temples-- they live in plain sight on the hearths of those who still practice them. Does it pass the Bechdel test? Yes, thank goodness, and it's the first book I've read in quite some time that does.
—Amber Dunten
