"I'm very ambivalent about Le Guin; obviously, she's a wonderfully inventive writer, but her lack of awareness about a lot of political and historical issues just exasperates me. If I read her fiction I usually have to forget a lot I know about people and the dynamics of behavior. And sometimes her moralizing about everything strikes me as not humanist at all. But I'm jealous of her, so all of this is suspect...She's a charming person, incredibly witty and very brilliant. But there are times I'd like to shake her down to her toes until the loose change comes out. I don't think she really knows how political, communal, people processes actually work. Delany, on the other hand, clearly does, and he's applied this awareness to his public criticisms of The Dispossessed...it's clear from what Le Guin writes that she isn't in touch with a lot of political realities, which causes her fiction to fall apart. It's obviously a conscientious thing on her part-no one can doubt her sincerity or genuine concern-but I wish she'd just let go of it and write selfishly about things she enjoys. Because when she does that, she's absolutely splendid. The darkness box, animal languages, and so on. Superb. She has such a remarkable feel for the little details-the stories, the buildings, the language, the histories, the clothing and food, the fiction, the proverbs, the whole self-reflection of cultures."