The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction

A short essay that gave me a few more nails to put in the Joseph Campbell coffin. Sometimes you just gotta kill your early heroes. Sometimes you gotta replace the ultimately selfish "follow your bliss" crap with something closer to following your usefulness, like a bag. This essay also clarifies Le Guin's understanding of her own craft. After all, her craft is "full of beginnings without ends, of initiations, of losses, of transformations and translations, and far more tricks than conflicts, far fewer triumphs than snares and delusions; full of space ships that get stuck, missions that fail, and people who don’t understand. I said it was hard to make a gripping tale of how we wrested the wild oats from their husks, I didn’t say it was impossible."

It's online. I found it at the anarchist library. Just search the title.

I've read the original edition from The Anarchist Library (hence no Donna Haraway introduction or Lee Bull illustrations).

However, that's more than what you need to realise how the patriarchy (or whatever you want to identify as the main issue) has infected literally anything. Also the way we see, use and absorb storytelling.

Like, I've possibly thought about all of those issues listed in this tiny book already, but the way Le Guin just put them altogether while also offering a constructive alternative is enlightening.