I generally agree with what Le Guin is saying, but I also feel like some writers have a tendency to go, "Evil is banal and pain is boring," and then just stop there. I have a very limited amount of appreciation for that kind of thing, personally. My favorite stories are the ones that manage to convey the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain, while also conveying things like beauty, tenderness, and compassion with the same nuance and complexity.

And there are also some really marvelous stories that don't aim for quite that same level of emotional realism, and IMO that's completely fine. There's room for all sorts of fiction in the world, and at the end of the day I think just about every approach has the capacity to be executed well.