I Love Escapism

Ursula K. Le Guin points out: As for the charge of escapism, what does “escape” mean?  Escape from real life, responsibility, order, duty, piety, is what the charge implies.  But nobody, except the most criminally irresponsible or pitifully incompetent, escapes to jail.  The direction of escape is toward freedom.  So what is “escapism” an accusation of?... Upholders and defenders of a status quo, political, social, economic, religious, or literary, may denigrate or diabolize or dismiss imaginative literature, because it is — more than any other kind of writing — subversive by nature. It has proved, over many centuries, a useful instrument of resistance to oppression.