Samuel Delany

I have a copy of Dhalgren sitting on my bookshelf staring me down, but I have not tried it yet.

Er. Just noticed you were asking about NON-fiction. I haven't read any of that, sorry!

-F

I really want to read 1984, but I haven't seen it anywhere.

it's a beautiful book. it's like he took the ideas of the academic left (barthes/foucault and the gender studies crowd in particular), ideas we all love but constantly get to hear derided as vague or impractical, and used it as the starting point for visualizing a society in the future. and he playfully calls it "the sygn". and he posits a parallel society called "the family", vaguely egalitarian but very conservative, too. and he weaves the tension between these two societies into and around an affecting love story.

it's great, one of my favoritest books ever. it's got the mad world-building of dune, the same philosophical gravitas, but also delany's own particular ideas and stamp.

also, when I said 'Dhalgren' was his best I meant it as his best of the three works of fiction of his that i have read.

jordan- my jewels of aptor cover is one of those 'pulpy' fantasy ones. It doesn't put me off at all actually.

he does blur the lines between what you would think is fantasy and what you would recognize as sci-fi.

i guess the book is like an answer to "trouble on triton", except it posits a heterotopia that is far more advanced than "...triton"'s and one that delany is much less ambiguous.

plot-wise it's more like dhalgren in reverse: or dhalgren told from the point of view of the hippy girlfriend (what was her name?) but yeah, mentally twisted stranger comes to town and upsets everything, for sure.

Delany is a good choice for this comparison, but Gene Wolfe may be an even better one. Wolfe has mentioned his debt to and respect for Borges in interviews, has stories which are homages to him, and seems to have modeled a character after him (Ultan the Librarian).

Have you read the Neveryona books, where he mixes pomo crit and sword and sorcery?

Nonfiction: It's all good. "Times Square Red, Times Square Blue" is fantastic, his autobiographical writing is fantastic (start with "The Motion of Light in Water", a lot of his crit is keen. After you're more familiar with him, his book of letters, "1984", is quite good too, as is his memoire of living in a commune in the late 60s, "Heavenly Breakfast".

I'm almost done with Dark Reflections and I really like it. It's laid-back, unassuming, pseudo-autobiography, but really nicely written.

It is next on my funtime reading list, but that probably means I won't start it for a few weeks.

I've never read Delany, barring a couple of short stories, but I picked up a copy of "Neveryóna" at a used books sale today, thinking it was the first in the series. Should I hold out and get the first short story collection first, or is this quite alright as a starting-point? Or should all four(?) books be read in the order of release?
The titles of the chapters in this one are great! Makes it look like Montaigne of Middle-Earth. The cover art is hilarious as well, being basically the worst-of-the-worst of mid-80s fantasy paperbacks. Very shiny buttocks on the hero.
Ah: http://facstaff.uww.edu/herriotj/books/bookpics/neveryona.jpg (there's a castle-in-the-sky and dragon on the back of the cover, don't you worry)

Read the biog, really some incredible stuff in that. Great cover.

Picked up "Mad Man" last week on the cheap. Give that a go soon.

Neveryóna is book two, I believe, so you might as well read the first book first. It's a stand-alone novel, but it's nice to fit it into the context of the first book.

I recently bought Dhalgren and Stars in my pocket like grains of sand. Which one do I read first?

Dhalgren is the better and more important book, but Stars is pretty good too. I'd say read Stars as an appetizer, and if you haven't read Delany before, as an introduction to his prose style. It's too bad the sequel to Stars isn't going to happen.

im reading a book of short stories by this guy and hes hella easy to find v cheap

man when i clicked on this i was so afraid it was going to be a r.i.p. revive

btw i read 'dhalgren' first, and then 'stars...' after i was convinced and wanted more.

Just bought Dhalgren--am both looking forward to it, and intimidated by the size

Thanks to all for the quick replies! I haven't read Delany before but I think I am going to try Dhalgren first. I am pretty hyped to be honest.

I read it (Dhalgren) about 6-7 times during the 80s. I need to reread Stars and the Neveryon books next. I started rereading Nova a couple of months ago and thought it had aged very badly...gave it up after about 80 pages.

...and this thread title irritates the hell out of me. It's like a film thread called "Chuck Heston."

ok, I feel better now. May Julio Desouza forgive me.

i actually like triton and stars more than i do dhalgren, not entirely sure why

congratulations u dont like kiddie sex

wait, what happened to the thread title?

surely the lead's relationship with an autistic character in 'stars ...' is just as troubling on that level as the fifteen year old in dhalgren? or is there something i'm forgetting. i mean, none of these books is quite hogg, i mean.

yeah, i feel like the quote-unquote kiddie sex in dhalgren is totally an exploration of transgression and mental/social/literary breakdown that isn't really about what it's about.

of course, that could also be the polite lie i tell myself so that i can enjoy the rest of the book.

I changed the title from "Sam Delany" to "Samuel Delany."

a regular Chip off the old block?

haw

WmC - I forgive you.

im reading a book of short stories by this guy and hes hella easy to find v cheap

Lots of Delany around but I've never seen a copy of Stars

Not having read Dhalgren, Babel-17 is the best of his I have read: so joyously full of great ideas, so much bouncy FUN

I just finished Dhalgren, so great, thanks guys. Call me a fag, but I always get a little bit sad when I finish a big novel and this was no exception. I'm thinking of reading Stars now.

call me a fag

Just finished Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand. Totally different pace from Dhalgren, this had me clawing for the main narrative for most of the book. As a result, I really didn't give enough attention to some of the detailed description which I feel is a really big part of this book - to realise the sensations and image of these planets, especially Velm. The relationship between Marq and Rat made me quite sick, knowing you can't help but be attracted to another being is somewhat sickening, Marq didn't complain of course, but like those couples who seem so made for eachother, as a couple they struck me as boring and corny.

the hands-as-parentheses bit is pretty central, iirc

i'm curious what the other half of it would have looked like: a tour of a planet from the other set of aliens (the Family?), plus a coda? i don't know. i don't remember a lot of the details but it's my favourite of his books. this is in part due to a bit which isn't particularly central to the thrust of the book in itself, that part in the opening section where rat (?) finds a mental implant that lets him read/experience the entire western canon in seconds; that hit me in a peculiar way, as a teen.

I was particularly taken by that opening section too, and was expecting the book to take off from there, to my surprise, it was not to be. Thanks for your thoughts.

I've bought Dhalgren, and keep picking it up, but it's so huuuuuge. Need to gather my resources.

I read Driftglass in my early teens. Didn't get everything but got a lot. Delany for me will always represent vistas opening (yet in truth I never read much past Nova). "Night and The Loves..." was exactly what I wished a short story would do. It probably still is but I don't dare reread it.

His use, over and over, of teen-prodigy characters didn't seem realistic when I was that age, and far into adulthood, having seen a certain amount, I find it a gimmick and more about Delany (or SF) than about the world.

These days, the imaginary world of Delany that fascinates me is his lost New York, as unreachable as his distant planets.

Editing issue: should be "did exactly what" and "probably still does."

I shall begin reading The Mad Man soon, I'm expecting some of Delany's 'lost New York'.

You won't be disappointed there, as I recall.

And check Heavenly Breakfast, an autobiographical novel(pub. 1979). Its title is also the name of a real-life 60s NYC psych-folk band. SD was a satellite member, sort of.

Also loads of 1960-1965 Manhattan in his memoir, The Motion of Light in Water.

I was just looking at the wiki for his next novel -- it's done, he's just having trouble finding a publisher. It was originally supposed to be published by Alyson Publications, but apparently they've gone under and he's back to shopping it around to publishers.

Man, I'm just finishing up The Mad Man(took me 5 months wtf?! I've been busy). Insane book, really, but Delany really knows how to challenge and reward I think, just as you're becoming insensitive to some bloke shitting all over another blokes face whilst a group of other guys are jacking off all over the guy who is getting shitted on, he throws you a bone. Fantastic.

try hogg next, then. no thrown bones in that one.

Finally reading Auden's Dyer's Hand, which is everything Motion of Light in Water made it out to be and more -- the secondhand quote that Delany gives from it is golden -- and really perfect for Motion..., which is one of my fav Delany books, and fav. works of literary autobiography full stop. There's so many scenes that I remember really clearly from it -- the pockets thing, for example!

a tour of a planet from the other set of aliens (the Family?)

as i understand it, the sygn and family don't exactly work like this ... you might be reading it a bit too much like star trek. the sygn and the family are names for philosophies, not rigid political groups like the federation and klingons.

i forget whether it's the north or the south where humans and evelm don't get along, but in that half of the world you might say the family philosophy is predominant - you are a human first, or an evelm first, and you find strength in that mentality.

in the sygn communities you are a free thinking subject first, and you sort of choose your family or define it as you see it, and your identity (racial, gender, cultural, whatever) comes second.

never read him, should I go?

http://www.welcometolace.org/events/view/screening-the-polymath-or-the-life-and-opinions-of-samuel-r-delany-gentleman/

he is one of my favorite authors and i found him really tedious. i posted a thread about going to see him, it was an awful experience. he mostly talked about discovering he was bisexual, how he got into cruising times square porn theatres, and the gradual erosion of our shared times square porn theatre cultural heritage.

if you are a bicurious or a queer theory grad student you might find it highly stimulating? but as a sci fi fan, or just for kicks, no.

ok

. this is in part due to a bit which isn't particularly central to the thrust of the book in itself, that part in the opening section where rat (?) finds a mental implant that lets him read/experience the entire western canon in seconds

this *is* central to the thrust of the book itself

he's one of martin skidmore's favorite authors. the guy doing martin's funeral service today read from something martin wrote about dhalgren, which i found really moving. it was martin's favorite book.

really want to hear sam delaney monologuing about cruising

i found it hard to follow because a lot of it was in reference to cruising scenes in post-70s delany i hadn't read.

i really want to read some more delaney, when i was in america you could pick up cheap paperbacks by him really easily but over here he's p hard to come by

really want to hear sam delaney monologuing about cruising

― plax (ico), Thursday, August 18, 2011

there's a whole book about this btw

yeah, baja's summary of the event sounds a lot like 'times square red, times square blue'

that was the book!

I haven't read Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, but his book The Mad Man features a lot of cruising, the porn theatres are involved too, the book also documents the impact of AIDS on the gay community. The way Delany describes them, those porn theatres were really home to a kind of exchange and communication that is seldom seen nowadays, I'm not a queer theorist though.

that's the thesis of times square blue (which is the second half of 'times square red...', the first ('times square red', natch) being a memoir of them): that the sexual motivation to go into those locales actually underscored and expedited a whole raft of non-sexual contact up and down the social scale, & that in 'cleaning up' times square (& in similar efforts elsewhere) we're making movement lateral to one's class boundaries much less likely. i don't know in what form it creeps into the novel; never found a copy of 'the mad man'. (almost wrote 'mad men'.)

I think that argument is certainly a big part of the mad man novel. I should really give times square red, time square blue a read.

http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com/2010/11/chip-delany/
http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com/2011/01/chip-delany-part-2-the-miracle-of-dhalgren/

found a copy of 'the mad man'

nice! let us know how it is, i've never read it.

i've started on my draft of "the splendor and misery of bodies, of cities", brian herbert and kevin j anderson style

i'm at the part where rat and marq sneak into the xlv fleet and commandeer a stolen experimental fighter, it turns out that the rings of vondramach okk allow rat to interface w/ xlv biocomputers!

making movement lateral to one's class boundaries much less likely reminds me of Charlie Haden and others on living in 60s Lower East Side tenements, all those artists in dif genres and media in same bldgs--plus a lot of other characters--this way on into late 70s too

Not only easier to speak of, but it also has its real importance -- important enough so that when such encounters as the above three -- as opposed to any of the others I've described -- cease, one seeks out other cruising grounds. Several times since high school I've abandoned one area of the city for another, when forces I will never comprehend drive down the number of such accessible, satisfying exchanges, whose satisfaction is always, Sam, measured on a (or on several) scale(s) more complex than the sexual. Yet, in all cases, a dismal, gray and unresponsive ground is the incomprehensible template against which they occur, not throwing themselves into relief so much as providing a necessary obscurity to their outlines, making them bearable, even possible (making them hard of impossible for we who indulge in them to speak of in any terms save the sexual, even as they are, in their actuality, wholly social), in a world that largely denies they exist.

which is to say that the mad man has its elements of elegy for the cruising scene too, though the action (structure?) of the novel is weirdly orthogonal to that.

-

Man, I'm just finishing up The Mad Man(took me 5 months wtf?! I've been busy). Insane book, really, but Delany really knows how to challenge and reward I think, just as you're becoming insensitive to some bloke shitting all over another blokes face whilst a group of other guys are jacking off all over the guy who is getting shitted on, he throws you a bone. Fantastic.

― historyyy (prettylikealaindelon), Sunday, 14 August 2011 13:24 (11 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this seems like a really weird way to be reading this. ('that movie deep throat really manages challenge and reward the viewer, it's amazing how much you want to get to the end of the next blowjob..')

(weird how the rhythms of pornography are still deducible, compelling even if it's pornography you find (abhorrent? not to your taste? well, maybe reading some-hundred pages of it is enough to make it more the latter and not the former) -- either that or i secretly long to have homeless new yorkers of the 80s excrete in my mouth -- delany's reliance on parentheticals is both contagious and compelling.

-

i read this over like 72 hours, which is the quickest i've read anything of equivalent .. length, density .. in a while.

-

want to say something about the intersection of different narrative styles (campus novel, detective novel) with the novel's pornotopia, also the different characters as different biographical displacements of delany, also the enjoyably (deliberately?) stilted moments of dialogue common to all delany's 'serious' work. on the other hand, don't want to burn myself out when i will probably start in the valley of the nest of spiders tomorrow

I found a used paperback of The Mad Man in a store in Gainesville in 2001. In the SF section, natch. brought it home and discovered a $20 bill in the middle. Like you, thomp, I couldn't put the book down and read it in the course of a few days. There was an element of tourism I'm sure, as a straight male on the vanilla end of the spectrum, but that was far from the only driver. It really is an amazing book.

Mad ol' me, have an unread copy of this since since '07. Will get onto it ASAP.

on the other hand, i flicked ahead to see quite how long the first truck stop bathroom sex scene in ...spiders goes on for, and put the book down, and haven't picked it up again yet.

(it goes on for a lot of pages.)

god i wish he'd finished splendor and misery, i liked stars in my pocket sooo much. i've been keeping my eyes peeled for more but there's only one used book store in town and the only time i went there i overheard the owner slumped over his computer and grumbling "goddamn fucking faggots" and i haven't been back.

only other book i've read was dhalgren. where should i go from there if i'm going to shell out some internet dollars?

Triton, Driftglass (short story collection with his best short work), Tales of Neveryon, Nova. If you like ToN, there are three more volumes in that series.

I think I'm going to go ahead and buy Nest of Spiders now in the 1st edition. I read the missing chapter online and it's just a couple of pages. Plus, with Delany's bad luck with publishers lately, I worry they'll go out of business before they ever come out with another printing.

Not an expert either, but you might try Triton, Nova and The Complete Nebula Award-Winning Fiction of Samuel R. Delaney (compiled in miid-80s,good used copies easy to find online)
Combined edition of two novels and two short stories which won the Nebula Award. Babel - 17 (winner, 1966 Nebula, 1995 James Tiptree, Jr. Award, Classics; nominated, 1967 Hugo Award; 1975 Locus Poll Award, All-Time Best Novel (Place: 36)); A Fabulous, Formless Darkness (original title The Einstein Intersection) (winner, 1967 Nebula Award; nominated, 1968 Hugo Award); Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones (winner, 1969 Nebula Award, 1970 Hugo Award); Aye, and Gomorrah (winner, 1967 Nebula Award; nominated, 1968 Hugo Award).

triton!

einstein intersection!

drift glass seconded.

iirc there is a complete short sci fi that's sweet

that's...a lotta stuff! thanks y'all. with school starting in a few weeks i'll scarcely read a thing for the next nine months :[

Try the short stories when you can catch a breath, usually works for me

The Neveryon stuff is fucking great. Also, it starts out broken up into novella-like chunks which may aid in digestibility...

haven't read a word of this guy... saw him read from his Times Square nonfic book before a showing of an early '70s gay porn film tonight.

He's kinda bored by gay marriage. "Tolerance, not assimilation" is the key to advancing civilization, he said.

every time this gets revived now i'm worried that he's ill or dead.

what was the film?

also is there another delany thread we alternate with because i swear i remember talking about all the piss-drinking in 'through the valley ...'

ask sam delany a question?

ah yeah

film was The Back Row

I have no idea whether to recommend Delany to you, Morbs -- either the sf or the porn.

I just reread his Times Square book in may.

I recently started reading the tales of neveryon, i'm generally not a fan of short stories but since they're all set in neveryon, i'm interested in how the stories are going to relate to each other and if it's all going to fit together somehow.

saw him speak at the university of chicago for the second time tonight (he's just ending a visiting professorship). it was mostly sort of autobiographical this time; he told a great story about hooking up with a senegalese prince in paris in the mid-60s. i got him to sign my copy of trouble on triton

72nd birthday today

The only one of his novels I have unequivocally enjoyed was Babel-17, of which the ebook is on sale for $1.99 today- as has been noted before, both Shakey and I find his style maddening - but the critical writings I have read from him are grebt.

Good (first half of an) interview: http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2015/07/interview-samuel-r-delany-three-novels-launched-career-part-1/

He was also interviewed by Gary Wolfe for the Coode Street Podcast — http://jonathanstrahan.podbean.com/e/episode-241-samuel-r-delany/ — but it seemed a bit lightweight and inessential. Getting a bit of press/doing a bit of promotional work for the new Vintage edition of three early novels.

i have a book of interviews with him and it is endlessly fascinating even when he repeats himself over the years.

Terrific how Delany was worked into this piece on Chaturbate

Emily Witt has now built a fine, fine portfolio of pieces on this intersection of sex and the interwebs.

I haven't read the whole thing so I can't judge but some stuff Delany has said about child abuse and nambla probably wouldn't have been received nearly as well if he wasn't considered such a hero and so good writing about race. He's in the comments too.

http://shetterly.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/a-conversation-with-samuel-r-delany.html

I struggle so much with this - as a person who, when underage, had meaningful relationships with people who were above the age of consent, which, 35 years later, I still don't think of as wrong or hurtful - it's a difficult discussion to have without seeming like a monster. certainly when Delaney says that, at the age of nine, he was entering into consensual sexual relationships with adults...I'm a dad now, two boys: I can't accept that, viscerally I reject that. but at the same time, I got a letter from a Joan Crawford fan a month ago or so: a dude who's doing twenty years in prison. he was in his late twenties having a relationship with a sixteen-year-old boy, and the parents got wind of it, and they threw the book at him. I looked up his case: his victim insisted no victimization had ever taken place, but the southern judge didn't care at all, and put him away. where's the justice in that? I feel like this is Delaney's point broadly put, but the concept of an age of consent feels valuable.

one of the most struggly subjects there is. I have not even the faintest stab at encompassing it.

I haven't read the whole thing so I can't judge but some stuff Delany has said about child abuse and nambla probably wouldn't have been received nearly as well if he wasn't considered such a hero and so good writing about race. He's in the comments too.

http://shetterly.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/a-conversation-with-samuel-r-delany.html

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, September 7, 2016 9:41 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's a very difficult topic but framing it this way is disingenuous garbage.

delany isn't a race writer. did you mean "because he's black?"

he's not a good writer either tbf

I can't have much of an opinion on something I haven't finished but I doubt most other writers talking about similar things would be treated so well. The interview happened because it was being said too many big figures in the genre were getting a free pass while others were getting a ton of shit for relatively minor things, but nobody really knew a lot about Delany's stance on this stuff. Do you think I'm implying he should be dragged through the dirt for his opinions?

delany isn't a race writer. did you mean "because he's black?"

No, because he wrote some very good articles on racism in the past that have been heavily circulated and praised in the past several years when the topic has been at the forefront of sff discussions.

fair

sorry i had my hackles up

That's okay.

Happy 75th birthday.

I'm always scared to open this thread.

This thread is v repetitive

In Glasgow for several events during the next Arika eisode:

http://arika.org.uk/events/episode-9-other-worlds-already-exist/programme

Just finished Dhalgren, my first trip into Delany. I really liked large chunks of it, but other portions were definitely a slog. Even aside from the tedious descriptions of underage orgies, it did feel like some of the same plot points just kept cycling through without moving the story forward. But many of the characters were terrifically drawn and I enjoyed his world-building, what's a good next step?

I enjoyed Dhalgren alright but somehow that's where I got off the bus, many years ago--several people have told me I should have at least gone on to Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, and maybe I will, but right now thinking of re-reading his fun, imaginative debutThe Jewels of Aptor, published when he was 19, I think, also should dig up my copy of a chunky drugstore paperback, The Complete Nebula Award-Winning Fiction of Samuel R. Delany. which Amazon describes thusly:Combined edition of two novels and two short stories which won the Nebula Award. Babel - 17 (winner, 1966 Nebula, 1995 James Tiptree, Jr. Award, Classics; nominated, 1967 Hugo Award; 1975 Locus Poll Award, All-Time Best Novel (Place: 36)); A Fabulous, Formless Darkness (original title The Einstein Intersection) (winner, 1967 Nebula Award; nominated, 1968 Hugo Award); Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones (winner, 1969 Nebula Award, 1970 Hugo Award); Aye, and Gomorrah (winner, 1967 Nebula Award; nominated, 1968 Hugo Award) The cheapest (by far) copy they have of this is $24.03, but worth it, if condition is okay. They have a lot more by him.

that sounds like a good 'tracklist' for sure.

You might check out the Neveryon stuff, bronze age fantasy as vehicle for a dive into semiotics. I loved the two of them I read.

Triton is great also.

I enjoyed the Neveryon books on rereading a couple of years ago. Reread The Einstein Intersection last year and understood it better than the first time I read it. Nova, Triton, and Stars in My Pocket are all good.

imo triton and stars in my pocket are the masterworks

Thanks! I think I'm leaning to Stars In My Pocket next, though it may come down to what the library has available.

First living author to get a Dover Thrift Edition. Dark Reflections is kind of an odd choice in his oeuvre to get that treatment, but ok.

https://dorisvsutherland.com/2019/09/23/samuel-r-delany-and-nambla/

Steve Smith
@nightafternight
·
38m
Today I learned that Samuel R. Delany is an operaphile, a Wagnerite, and a former supernumerary at the
@MetOpera
. Thanks,
@Artforum
!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EdTX6R_WkAAPDe4?format=jpg&name=large

@alexrossmusic
Has written fascinating essays on Wagner and Artaud, Wagner and Willa Cather...

@AbstractTruth
And he's on Twitter now
@SamuelRDelany1
11:34 AM · Jul 19, 2020

@SamuelRDelany1
An experiment in gay pornography and realistic storytelling
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51EJbeJz9aL.jpg

i'm starting through the valley of the nest of spiders, random thoughts:

1) descriptions and fetishization of human filth, stench, shit, etc, can't bother you
2) there's a fan fiction quality to it tbh but the descriptions of one moment into the next into the next are kind of soothing
3) delany definitely comes from a different era as far as gay libidinal energy is concerned. there's a fetishization of the positively masculine that's always present.
4) his style is burdensome and opaque but weirdly readable. what happens next is what keeps me going. you can glaze over certain bits of sentences and descriptions and it's ok.
5) i'm making it sound bad for some reason but i'm enjoying it. feels a little bit like guilty pleasure reading but that's good for me right now, the last thing i want is dutiful reading.

also enjoyably light-hearted for all the sex with super-hung homeless dudes

some dweeby jokes that aren't really funny but i appreciate

it reminds me of reading porn i would find on newsgroups in my teens. but sneaking in the political/ontological point that existence itself is worth existing for. already a spinoza mention. it's fun for me but i would definitely hesitate to recommend it to someone unless i knew it was "up" their "alley" haha.

oh, i also don't think he's good at being "realistic" if that's what he's trying to do for this novel, this stuff still feels very much in the fantasy lane even though it's not in the fantasy genre if that makes sense.

i think it winds up unambiguously 'science fiction' by the end, doesn't it? or at least a long way into the future; maybe just 'utopian fiction'

that said i never finished it

i find delany's model of 'pornographic' writing pretty interesting even though none of it gets me off; he may have been the first writer to make sex literarily interesting for me in that way? idk how many others have succeeded, maybe it's just him

as i wrote above and also jordan, it's always a relief to open this thread and have it not be an RIP post

yeah.

i said all those things above very prematurely, don't know why i was so opinionated after like 15 pages. anyway now i'm 25 pages in after the convo with bill bottom and i'm loving it. it's also really funny! kind of feels like a massive gift so far tbh.

his sex writing isn't embarrassingly hot but it's salacious and gets at the right details and it's panoramic and just... lively and fascinating. it takes cliches and turns them into more realistic commentary on what a sensuous queer existence could or might look like. actually the scene that bill bottom describes in the park, that one did arouse me a little bit haha.

Was going to add this to a recent ILM thread on rock fiction which I can't find now: Delany's Heavenly Breakfast, which I took as a novel, but wiki sez: Heavenly Breakfast: An Essay on the Winter of Love is a 1979 memoir by author, professor, and critic Samuel R. Delany.[1] It details the time he spent living in a commune in New York City during the winter of 1967-1968,[2] although altering some details.[3]

Heavenly Breakfast was also the name of the rock band that lived in the commune, which consisted of Steve Wiseman, Susan Schweers, Bert Lee (later of the Central Park Sheiks)[4], and Delany.[5]
A fairly comsic rock-jazz-folk-etc. way of life; some good bits about timing the echo from a waterfall or something for flute solos-as-duets---also duh lots of polydolly sexandrugs for heavenly breakfast.
Think I once saw listing of an LP by a group of this name, but dunno if same or maybe took their name from book.
A goodread, as I anciently recall.

a fairly *cosmic*, I meant to say.

I listened to an interview with him recently. He recalled asking Judith Merrill if Donald Wollheim hadn't told him about fan communities and conventions for racist reasons, Merrill replied that she would normally assume it was racism but in this case it was just that Wollheim had absolutely no social skills.

pic.twitter.com/RPw35eGrus

— Samuel R Delany (@SamuelRDelany1) July 28, 2020

otm

hahaha

I love Dhalgren and Hogg and TSR,TSB and Heavenly Breakfast, but pretty much anything he's written recently is not very good. And he was, by all accounts, an awful teacher.

He is a very dear man, however!!

"And he was, by all accounts, an awful teacher."

That really surprises me, can I hear more about this?

"I'm really supposed to read all of this...this awful stuff?!?"

"Well yes, Chip, that is your job here."

haha it doesn't surprise me in the least

Delany tweets longer about a recent discovery re gay science fiction history, hope this link works, but if not, guess you can check his twitter account directly? should I do it this way
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EgDaQ99UYAAq965?format=jpg&name=large

Anyway, it has to do with Sturgeon getting blacklisted for a while for submitting short st ory "The World Well Lost," though fatwa was lifted and as D points out, the story is in TS's Collectes Stories and they were both on the first panel for Gay Science Fiction and there's something about Jack Womack's Flying Saucers Are Real and the Shaver Mystery (he spells it "Shavery" at one point), something to do w Gay Fying Saucers maybe? Aklso about Ray Palmer, four feet tall and I don't understand this post overall.
account: https://twitter.com/samuelrdelany1?lang=en Takes lots of pictures of his TV, maybe with his smartphone, a geezer thing. Note he's there as samuelrdelany, there's a also a samueldelany w/o initial in London.

"The World Well Lost" had gay theme apparently.

Gay Flying Saucers dammit and what is up with my typing overall? Sorry! Not drinking, maybe going blind and/or too fast.

To be perfectly frank, I love Chip, but his recent work as well as his written presence on the internet is sometimes very difficult to decipher. He's one of those people whom I think has so much floating around in his head that as he's gotten older, he sometimes spins out on weird paths that don't make a lot of sense.

Delany posted yesterday (FB) about choosing clothes for a New Yorker photo shoot. Fingers crossed for a full profile.

Hope so! They published an astute take on the work of Octavia Butler in March, guess the rest is behind paywall (I happened to see the print edition), but here's the opening: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/15/how-octavia-e-butler-reimagines-sex-and-survival

I can't read the full text just now, but maybe this is The New Yorker piece in question WmC. Interesting photograph, I like it.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/06/07/the-personal-works-of-samuel-r-delany

Unfortunately it's just a paragraph in the "This Week" section.

The “Carte Blanche” film series at moma, programmed by the prodigious science-fiction writer Samuel R. Delany, concludes this week with two personal works. He discusses his childhood in Harlem and his life as a gay man in nineteen-sixties New York in Fred Barney Taylor’s illuminating documentary “The Polymath, or The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman,” from 2007. Delany displays his directorial art in the 1971 featurette “The Orchid,” which blends street theatre and joyful eroticism with ingenious special effects.

I like the point about wanting more radical readers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nh0PF95rdvk

A terrific new profile in the NYer: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/07/10/samuel-r-delany-profile

Interesting he mentions Gay Davenport.

Heh. Guy Davenport.

Every serious writer I know admires Davenport.

this had me rolling

We exited onto a narrow street with a huge mural commemorating the struggle for L.G.B.T.Q. rights. Steam billowed from a vent in the sidewalk, dissipating, as we neared, to reveal a blanket-covered heap. People were sleeping outside all over the neighborhood, which, before its gentrification, had been a red-light district. Delany, as usual, pulled out his phone to take a picture; across the way, a group of smartly dressed young women shot him a reproachful look.

“Could you not?” one said.

Rickett crossed his arms and smiled: “He’s never seen a homeless person before.”

loved reading that piece

I used to live down the street from Delany. I saw him walking around a few times before I realized who he was.

Really enjoyed the piece. I must read something by Davenport.

I have only read a few of his books, I am most fond of Geography of the Imagination. His poems are largely great. I don’t care for his fiction but ymmv

Reflecting a bit more and it feels like there is some overselling of Delany's prose than is necessary...pretty good profile but it's sorta shameful that they only bothered when he is old and at the end.

I read Delany's autobiography. Those sections about Marilyn Hacker reading Victorian novels all day while Delany was at work were pretty funny.