Book Report: The Lathe of Heaven

66. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven (1971) (12/26/21)

A complex, super-imaginative story about agency and morality. Set initially in a grossly overpopulated,  climate-changed Portland, Oregon (in 2002!), it concerns mild-mannered George Orr, who has a unique gift: his dreams reconfigure reality retroactively, such that something he dreams today will change the world six months or two years ago, with those around him none the wiser. He doesn't like it, and tries to stifle his dreams with drugs bought on borrowed "pharm cards." When he's caught, the authorities order him for Voluntary Therapeutic Treatment with a Dr. Haber. Haber, who has been experimenting with a biofeedback/EEG machine called the Augmentor, sees an opportunity.

As the story progresses, Haber suggests seemingly positive attributes of the world they live in that George should dream into being—peace on earth, no more racial strife, an easing of overpopulation. Each time, there are unintended consequences. (Of course. Does humanity never learn?) Each time, too, George is able to remember the former state of reality, though others around him can't—or in the case of one Heather Lalache, a lawyer he hires to try to stop the treatment (and an eventual love interest), can just barely, validating that he is not, in fact, insane, as he sometimes fears.  Ultimately, Haber seeks to wrest control of "effective dreaming" from George, with truly disastrous consequences. (When Le Guin does disaster, she doesn't fool around.) There are aliens (remember peace on earth?) who look like nine-foot-tall green sea turtles. 

It's an imaginative tour de force, but serious as well. She is asking profound questions about right and wrong, acceptance and action. Many of the chapter epigraphs quote the fourth-century B.C. philosopher Chuang Tse/Zhuan Zhou, who wrote one of the foundational texts of Taoism. The novel's title comes from one such quote: "Those whom heaven helps we call the sons of heaven. They do not learn this by learning. They do not work it by working. They do not reason it by using reason. To let understanding stop at what cannot be understood is a high attainment. Those who cannot do it will be destroyed by the lathe of heaven."

I have not read much Le Guin, but whenever I do read her, I'm very impressed with her storytelling abilities and her beautiful writing. This was no exception. 

Here's a passage from fairly early on:

     "I can answer your questions, and I do. . . . But anyway: look. You can't go on changing things, trying to run things."
     "You speak as if that were some kind of general moral imperative." [Haber] looked at Orr with his genial, reflective smile, stroking his beard. "But in fact, isn't that man's very purpose on earth—to do things, change things, run things, make a better world?"
     "No!"
     "What is his purpose, then?"
     "I don't know. Things don't have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What's the function of a galaxy? I don't know if our life has a purpose and I don't see that it matters. What does matter is that we're a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass."
     There was a slight pause, and when Haber answered his tone was no longer genial, reassuring, or encouraging. It was quite neutral and verged, just detectably, on contempt.
     "You're of a peculiarly passive outlook for a man brought up in the Judeo-Christian-Rationalist West. A sort of natural Buddhist. Have you ever studied the Eastern mysticisms, George?" The last question, with its obvious answer, was an open sneer.
     "No. I don't know anything about them. I do know that it's wrong to force the pattern of things. It won't do. It's been our mistake for a hundred years. Don't you—don't you see what happened yesterday?"
     The opaque, dark eyes met his, straight on.
     "What happened yesterday, George?"

Sinister, a bit? As George concludes his thoughts, just before he's about to go under, he observes, "The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end?"