Comment by dtgriscom

18 days ago

Although I love most of her fantasy works, I found 'The Dispossessed' to be too difficult for me. However, that's probably because her interests were broader than mine.

If you want some help then check out Mythgard Academy's course: https://mythgard.org/academy/dispossessed/

  • Thanks, but watching an eighteen-hour seminar on a book so that I can enjoy that book doesn't seem worth it to me. (Note that "to me"; I'm quite open to being a literary lightweight. My experience of AP English in high school was that it inoculated me against the great works of literature.)

    • I eventually dropped out of a PhD Lit program, but damn the AP English syllabus did everything it could do to dissuade me from enjoying literature.

      I feel you on not wanting to read stuff that can't be read without footnotes.

As a person actively organizing with anarchists and who has had a lot of long, fraught relationships leading to my late 40s, I found the Dispossessed to be relatable is ways I wouldn't have if I'd read it earlier in life.

I don't know if it's a difficult book, but I can see how it might land differently for me in different situations.