We figure out the Kesh by seeing what they are not. It help that 'Stone Telling' is about a Kesh who goes outside the valley Le Guin correctly grasps that contrast is a strong way to reveal how something is constructed. The specificity of 'Stone Telling' brings some of the anthropological details to life, keeps them from being abstractions, but also by the time you get to the final chunk of 'Stone Telling,' you understand it a lot better because of all the other material about the Kesh you've read. But as you read further into the book, moving back and forth between different kinds of texts, they start to reinforce one another. The first part is tough going, because you're thrown into this alien culture with pretty much no explanation.

I particularly liked how it was structured: most of the biographies are short, but there's one long one, 'Stone Telling,' that's distributed in three chunks across the whole book. At first I admired it more than I liked it, but as I went on, I got into it more and more. What we get are a mixture of texts: notes by Pandora on Kesh culture and language, Kesh poetry and song and myth, Kesh biography and memoir, short interviews with particular Kesh, and a partial Kesh novel. The book is odd and tough to get into at first: Pandora, an anthropologist from our time, is doing a study of the Kesh, a civilization in the postapocalyptic Napa Valley.

Always Coming Home: Author's Expanded EditionĪlways Coming Home is a critical utopia by Le Guin from 1985, here collected in a beautiful Library of America edition with many supplemental materials (I own all four LoA Le Guins, but this is the first I've read).

Always coming home ursula