Authors like LeGuin are perpetually being asked to "talk about their work," and since that is tantamount to recounting the cute things your cat did last week, authors respond—as LeGuin largely does [in The Language of the Night]—with criticism. Of these intelligent and novelistically graceful essays, the weakest seem to me those in which the author tiredly repeats the obvious, usually at the prodding of a publisher, and the best of the pieces written spontaneously and affectionately for fan magazines. At times LeGuin's teacherly generosity keeps her at too elementary a level; "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie," for example, is a model of how to do this sort of thing well, but it's also something a fine mind ought not to do so often. There are some thoughtless or derivative remarks as is inevitable in a collection of largely occasional pieces, e.g. LeGuin's traditional walloping of...