STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, then DUNE and now, the major novel of love and terror at the end of time: DHALGREN, by Samuel Delany, four-time Nebula award winner (ilx book club #Y8554)

Also just want to reiterate how shitty Delany’s writing is, Heinlein’s no prose master but he never penned anything as awful as this:

"He mapped the folds that fell, wetly out, with his tongue; and the grisly nut in the folded vortex, and the soft granular trough behind it."

― Οὖτις, Saturday, September 1, 2018 11:00 AM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

sorry shakey's not here to defend this but this is some real forest for the trees shit in the dhalgren thread. part of the specific appeal of this book is how it claws its way out of clotted language into clarity and dives back in again. the paragraphs that resemble the quoted passage amount to maybe 20 total pages of the book + kid's poems, many of which we never actually read. the rest of the prose is fucking sparkling imo

also i for one do not think the sex writing is bad at all. (i have little to no taste for sex scenes in lit beyond hollinghurst who strikes the impossible balance of literary and hot. the sex scenes in dhalgren are not hot but they strike a different balance—between physical and metaphysical—that i greatly enjoyed)

plus they are essential material in kid's constantly-dispersing sense of self

tbf they're more physical than metaphysical but that's also why i can't disagree with the depictions, it's just... describing what people are doing

really loved the kid/lanya/denny relationship, a credible, non-annoying throuple

i def lol'd when it felt like there was a pretty extended span in part four where there weren't any sex scenes, and i was like, "is he done?" and then *bam*, gangbang in the fifth part!

i just remember a long paragraph where he rhapsodises about his dick detumescing and how the transition from it not touching to touching his partner's thigh encapsulates a universe and i'm like... ok dude.

cosine brad on that reading (also isn't it "gristly" not "grisly"? -- don't know where my copy is to check this tho)

one of delany's lifelong projects is the re-instrumentalisation if not detournement of pornography as a mode of literature, his first step usually being this kind of super-careful de-cliched description (he does this with non-sexual activities also: the taste and feel of coffee held in the mouth until cold is one that struck me when i first read it, like what's being said here? well, basically just what it says!)

i don't know how successful this project has been (or what would constitute success) but it's definitely missing the point just to say "lol do normal porn better please" since "normal porn" is exactly what he's trying to expand and rewire

i just remember a long paragraph where he rhapsodises about his dick detumescing and how the transition from it not touching to touching his partner's thigh encapsulates a universe and i'm like... ok dude.

― neith moon (ledge), Tuesday, October 27, 2020 1:40 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i guess none of this really registered as bad to me because it felt very consistent with kid's established character, as much as i can say such a thing exists

lol'd heartily @ this from a few paragraphs before

"The odor, like a blow against his face, brought back—was it from Oregon?—an ax blade's first hack in some wet pine log."

what if synaesthesia but too much

Heard a vintage KSAN (San Francisco) radio ad the other day that mentioned concert tickets being on sale at Roger Calkins' Music Store, and remembered that the book was partially written in SF.

How did you happen to hear that ad, and how other the day? Recently?

I read this book for the first time at age 13; I found it in a spinner rack somewhere, a drugstore most likely. It's hard to overstate the impression it made on me then; as much as the story itself, the structure (or lack of structure) of the book itself, the anarchic possibilities it opened up, I had never so much as considered before. I reread it maybe 10 years ago, and thought it had very much held up. One thing that struck me was its echo of Gravity's Rainbow, particularly in the scene where the Kid discovers that Someone is manufacturing and supplying the weapons, holograms, chains, etc. that are the recurring images/items in the book.

(I am referring to the scene at the "Maitland Systems Engineering Warehouse," btw)

@dow, via the excellent https://psychedelicized.com "radio" station, which puts just the right amount of late 60s radio spots in amongst the songs. This was a Tom Donahue spot for some upcoming concert and where to get tickets, iirc.