“A wild mixture of Italo Calvino . . . Grace Paley . . . Fay Weldon . . . and Jorge Luis Borges . . . but no. . . . She isn’t like anybody.”

Wed 29 Jan 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

I was going through Ursula K. Le Guin’s Words Are My Matter the other day and was caught (again) by this lovely dartboard-throwing description of Carol Emshwiller’s writing in Le Guin’s review of Ledoyt:

Most reviewers prefer pigeons that fit in holes and rabbits that redux. Emshwiller’s like a wild mixture of Italo Calvino (intellectual games) and Grace Paley (perfect honesty) and Fay Weldon (outrageous wit) and Jorge Luis Borges (pure luminosity), but no—her voice is perfectly her own. She isn’t like anybody. She’s different.
Before I get to Ledoyt (which is different) I want to talk a little about the other Emshwiller books (which are all different).

I had a half memory that it was online and ta da here it is on Strange Horizons along with a couple of extra footnotes.