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)

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.