Ursula K. LeGuin - Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences

PRAISE FOR URSULA K. LE GUIN AND BUFFALO GALS AND OTHER ANIMAL PRESENCES "Ursula Le Guin, one of the most significant science fiction writers of the past two decades, charms the reader with some glimpses of greatness . . . this disarmingly informal volume of short fiction ... is like a visit with one of America's most brilliant writers."

-- Santa Barbara News-Press

"Refreshing . . . these stories are a strong tonic for many modern

spiritual ills."

-- Santa Cruz Sentinel

"A delightful collection . . . designed to shatter your world view."

-- Riverside Press Enterprise

"How wonderful to be in the hands of an accomplished storyteller like Ursula K. Le Guin, whose work shares in that imaginative transformation of the world sometimes called magical realism, science fiction, or fantasy."

-- Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Ursula Le Guin . . . transcends genre and delivers a delightful collection of works. . . . The effect is a disturbing and delicious disorientation that makes us resee ourselves and our relationship to the world. What she does with craft and good humor will both

entertain and educate."

-- Santa Barbara

URSULA K. LE GUIN is an outstanding American writer whose works include science fiction, fantasy, young adult fiction, children's books, essays and poems. She has received numerous awards including the Nebula, Hugo, Kafka, and National Book Awards. Among her best known novels are The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, Earthsea (a Trilogy), and Always Coming Home.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

"Come Into Animal Presences" Denise Leyertoy, Poems 1960-1967, © 1961 by Denise Levertov Goodman; reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. Excerpt from "Original Sin" © 1948 by Robinson Jeffers; reprinted from Selected Poems by permission of Random House, Inc. "Elegy" by Rainer Maria Rilke is the translation of Ursula K. Le Guin. "Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight" © 1987 by Ursula K. Le Guin; first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction Nov. 1987. "The Basalt" © 1982 by Ursula K. Le Guin; first appeared in Open Places 33 Spring 1982. "Mount St. Helens/Omphalos" © 1975 by

Ursula K. Le Guin; first appeared in Wild Angels by Ursula K. Le Guin, Capra Press, 1975. "The Wife's Story” © 1982 by Ursula K. Le Guin; first appeared in Compass Rose by Ursula K. Le Guin, Harper & Row,

1982. "Mazes" © 1975 by Ursula K. Le Guin; first appeared in Epoch, edited by Robert Silverberg and Roger Elwood. "Torrey Pines Reserve" © 1981 by Ursula K. Le Guin; first appeared in Hard Words by Ursula K. Le Guin, Harper & Row, 1981. "Lewis and Clark and After" © 1987 by Ursula K. Le Guin; first appeared in The Seattle Review, Summer 1987. "Xmas Over" © 1984 by Ursula K. Le Guin; first appeared in Clinton Street Quarterly, 1984. "The Direction of the Road" © 1974 by Ursula K. Le Guin; first appeared in Orbit 14, edited by Damon Knight. "Vaster Than Empires and More Slow" © 1971 by Ursula K. Le Guin; first appeared in New Directions 1, edited by Robert Silverberg. "For Ted" © 1975 by Ursula K. Le Guin; first appeared in Wild Angels by Ursula K. Le Guin, Capra Press, 1975. "Totem" © 1981 by Ursula K. Le Guin; first appeared in Hard Words by Ursula K. Le Guin, Harper & Row, 1981. "Winter Downs"

© 1981 by Ursula K. Le Guin; first appeared in Hard Words by Ursula K. Le Guin, Harper & Row, 1981. "The White Donkey" © 1980 by Ursula K. Le Guin; first appeared in TriQuarterh, Fall 1980. "Horse Camp" © 1986 by Ursula K. Le Guin; first appeared in The New Yorker, August 25, 1986. "Shrodinger's Cat" © 1974 by Ursula K. Le Guin; first appeared in Universe 5, edited by Terry Carr. "The Author of the Acacia Seeds and Other Extracts From the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics" © 1974 by Ursula K. Le Guin; first appeared in Fellowship of the Stars, edited by Terry Carr. "May's Lion" © 1983 by Ursula K. Le Guin; first appeared in The Little Magazine, Volume 14, combined Numbers I & 2.

"She Unnames Them" © 1985 by Ursula K. Le Guin; first appeared in The New Yorker, January 21, 1985. Copyright © 1987 by Ursula K. Le Guin

All rights reserved. For information address Capra Press, P.O. Box 2068, Santa Barbara, California 93120.

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Buffalo gals and other animal presences / by Ursula K. Le Guin. p. cm.

ISBN 0-452-26139-2 (pbk.)

1. Animals -- Literary collections. I. Title.

[PS3562.E42B8 1988] 88-15583 813'.54 -- dc!9

CIP Design and typography by Jim Cook (Santa Barbara, California).

First Plume Printing, September, 1988 123456789

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Contents

Totem

134

Buffalo

Gals

Introduction

ALTHOUGH I WHINED and tried to hide under the rug my inexorable publisher demanded an introduction for this book of my stories and poems about animals. Having done introductions before, I have found that many readers loathe them, reviewers sneer at them, and critics dismiss them; and then they all tell me so. As for myself I rather like introductions, but generally read them after reading what they were

supposed to introduce me to. Read as extra-ductions, they are often interesting and useful. But that won't do. Ductions must be intro, and come first, like salad in restaurants, a lot of cardboard lettuce with bits of red wooden cabbage soaked in dressing so that you're disabled for the entree.

The kind of introduction that conies naturally is oral. Reading aloud to an audience, one often talks a little about what one is going to read; and so for each section of this book I have tried to write down the kind of thing I might say about the pieces if I were performing them.

As for the book as a whole: first of all I am grateful to my inexorable publisher for having the idea of doing such a collection, and for asking me to write a long new story for it It was his request that gave me the story "Buffalo Gals." Three other stories have not been printed in book form before, and twelve of the poems have not been printed anywhere till now. They are not all exactly about animals. In fact this is a sort of Twenty Questions anthology -9

10 JT BUFFALO GALS

animal, vegetable, or mineral? But the animals, naturally, are more active. And more talkative.

What about talking animals, anyhow?

In his literary biography of Rudyard Kipling so sympathetic and perceptive a reader/writer as Angus Wilson dismisses the Jungle Books as schoolboy stories with animal costumes, and has no truck at all with the fust So Stories. As I think the Jungle Books, along with the other "children's story," Kim, are Kipling's finest work, and consider the fust So Stories a unique and miraculous interaction of prose with poetry with graphics, of adult mind with child mind, and of written with oral literature -- a shining intersection among endless dreary one-way streets -- so Wilson's dismissal of them was something I needed to understand. Not that it was anything unusual. Critical terror of Kiddilit is common. People to whom sophistication is a positive intellectual value shun anything "written for children"; if you want to clear the room of derrideans, mention Beatrix Potter without sneering. With the agreed exception of Alice in Wonderland, books for children are to be mentioned only dismissively or jocosely by the adult male critic. Just as Angus Wilson used to dismiss Virginia Woolf uncomfortably, jocosely, as a lady novelist, though he finally and creditably admitted that he might have missed something there... In literature as in "real life," women, children, and animals are the obscure matter upon which Civilization erects itself, phallologically. That they are Other is (vide Lacan etal.} the foundation of language, the Father Tongue. If Man vs. Nature is the name of the game, no wonder the team players kick out all these non-men who won't learn the rules and run around the cricket pitch squeaking and barking and chattering! But then, who are the Bandar-Log? Why do animals in kids' books talk? Why do animals in myths talk? How come the prince eats a burned fish-scale