Over the weekend, in a single sitting, I read The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin. It's a slim book, just under forty pages—shorter than your average New Yorker article, I'd guess, but it comes bound in a cover and is preceded by an introduction and so it is a book. And, I would argue, it is a book that contains—yes in just under 40 pages—an entire philosophy of being.
What do you imagine were the earliest inventions? Google reports the earliest discovered tools were made of stone, wood, and bone and likely used for hunting, gathering, and processing food. Culturally, when we imagine prehistoric man and his tools, we think of a spear or a club—a weapon. The Carrier Bag Theory counters this narrative. Le Guin supposes the earliest invention had to have been a container of some kind, something to carry and store food. "With or before the tool that brings energy outward, we made the tool that brings energy home." The book is full of startling observations like this one.
LeGuin goes on to compare the cultural narrative of man + weapon to the narrative that dominates most stories: The Hero's Journey. And she argues it is time for a different sort of story, a story that is a container. "A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us." If we change the way we tell stories, she writes, the narratives we play out as humans are also likely to change. We don't have to keep telling the same stories over and over again, we don't have to keep repeating our mistakes. In fact, she argues, this change is deeply necessary to our survival. We can't continue to center violence in our narratives. So how can we seek another kind of story?
Do you see what I mean about this book containing an entire philosophy of being? It is full of wisdom and humor and candor. If you've read Le Guin before, I think the philosophy of her novels will shine through here, and if you haven't, this little book could spark an obsession. I know it has for me.
Emma Kaas co-owns the Norwich Bookstore with her husband, Sam Kaas. When she’s not at the bookstore, you’ll most likely find her reading books, baking bread, tinkering with spreadsheets, or pulling tarot cards.
