“A visionary novelist and a revolutionary chronicler of gay life”

July 4, 2023 1:31 AM

I got to know a man willing to discuss nearly anything but his own literary significance. Openly sharing the most intimate minutiae of his life—finances, hookup apps, Depends—he recoiled with Victorian modesty whenever I asked why he’d written his books or what they meant to his readers. “I write, I don’t speculate about what I’m writing,” he reminded me a bit sharply after an interpretative question. For Delany, decency entails remembering that the author is dead even when he’s sitting across the table.

–How Samuel R. Delany Reimagined Sci-Fi, Sex, and the City by Julian Lucas.
posted by Kattullus (40 comments total)

Sam wants to be free! [ungated version]
posted by chavenet at 2:09 AM on July 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

This is really a fantastic piece, thanks for posting.
posted by soundguy99 at 5:50 AM on July 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

A fantastic and interesting piece, but too sad. I know that inevitably all my favorite writers age and die, and I know that I too am aging and am going to die, and I'm glad that Delany seems to have a rich and supported life, but he's been such a powerful and magisterial presence in my head for so long that it is especially sad.

I remember that I read a Dorothy Allison essay about searching out GLBTQ science fiction when she was young and it mentioned "Time Considered As A Helix of Semi-Precious Stones", a story that I sought long for, found and didn't get at all. (It's one of my favorites now; I've taught it in a continuing ed class.) Mere shame at not getting it made me read some more of his books. I can't remember what I read next, maybe The Motion of Light In Water, which was more comprehensible. I read the Neveryona books and found them a weird mixture of boring and fascinating. I read his criticism and again, mostly didn't get it. (I still think that he misses the point on Le Guin, but that essay made a big, big change in how I read.) Delany, the Big Other. I literally read my copy of Triton until it fell apart, which was just a few months ago. Triton is maybe my favorite "will always pull me in" book of his. His books really changed the way I saw cities and class and race and public behavior, I think for the better.

I wonder what the most Delany words and titles are.

"Concrete Noun and Concrete Noun", definitely. "Frost" is a very Delany word, also "fire".

Did I read Joanna Russ because of Delany? I know I read the Alyx stories because of Delany. I have a book club copy of Triton plus The Female Man plus a Suzy McKee Charnas novel that is good but not my thing, so I might have read Triton because of Russ, I don't know any more. The book was $3 on the clearance table at Borders back in the mid-nineties when Borders was good; I remember the very day I bought it. I understood none of the stories the first time I tried to read them and thought I'd wasted $3.
posted by Frowner at 6:38 AM on July 4, 2023 [17 favorites]

I’m so glad this isn’t an obit post. When I was at UMass I took a class taught by Delany on the recommendation of a friend who was a huge fan of his. I liked “The Motion of Light in Water” and Marilyn Chambers’ poetry but didn’t like much of his writing. I didn’t get Delany in general, I didn’t understand his grading system, I think I did poorly in his class but am still glad I had the opportunity to be in a room listening to him a couple times a week for a semester.
posted by bendy at 6:54 AM on July 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

A portrait of him was recently unveiled at the William Way Community Center and I unknowingly sat behind him. He turned around and with a delighted look on his face, said hello to me as though we had been friends for 50 years. An important writer, yes, but also just a wonderful person.
posted by rhymedirective at 7:01 AM on July 4, 2023 [12 favorites]

I think it was something Delany wrote in "The Jewel-Hinged Box" that shoved me to make the leap I really needed to make as a writer - that for the reader, there is no "story" separate from the words you put on the page. Style is not the frosting on the cake, style is the whole cake because it controls the pacing and the emotions and the information and the precise order of information that the reader is going to get from the story.

I read all 870 pages of Dhalgren in a week for a science fiction class (a class that ended up getting canceled on account of brutal cold!) so I know I didn't get everything out of it that I would've liked to get out of it, but I want to go back to it in part because he's doing some interesting things playing around with the order of information.

(I think Triton is my favorite - not that I've read a ton of his work - but it's also the one I've read most recently, which is no doubt a factor, since it took his fiction a lot of time to grow on me.)
posted by Jeanne at 7:37 AM on July 4, 2023 [6 favorites]

I love that this article focused on Delany now, as he is today, and not just his literary legacy. It is a little sad to read about the failing health and limitations of being 81. But joyful and sympathetic and humanly honest. I also liked how the profile put Delany's queer books in context vs. his earlier sci-fi career.

Dhalgren was like a bolt of lightning to 20 year old me, a seminal book for my young queer psyche. But I quit reading Delany's newer books; the 1990s sexual autobiographies were just a bit too much for me. I love and respect the full-throated description of his sexual life but I'm too prim and bourgeois for Delany's Whitman-like embrace of men in all forms. For me I found my narrator of gay 70s New York in Edmund White's books. Same era, same city, similar gay liberation. But also quite different. Delany's the more radical writer. Maybe I should go back to him now that I'm not such a delicate flower.

Anyone read “Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders”? How is it?
posted by Nelson at 7:59 AM on July 4, 2023 [5 favorites]

> there is no "story" separate from the words you put on the page.

I couldn't disagree more, at least with regard to my own taste. I like a story to have a shape of its own that the writer describes. Crap that obscures the form of the story "for style points" will make me put the book down. I don't mind if the shape of the story is revealed over time (e.g. Piranesi) or if there's an unreliable narrator, but if you're just stunting it, you as an author can just go hunt. Anyway, I didn't finish Dhalgren and while I respect Chip Delaney a lot, his works aren't for me. And that's cool. I'm glad there are artists with such different kinds of art that some people bounce off it. As an artist, that's important to me, to know that some people won't like my art, and some will love it.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:02 AM on July 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

Nelsen, Delany's relatively recent The Atheist in the Attic is something I liked. There's probably more sex in it than I remember, but it isn't mostly about sex.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 8:38 AM on July 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

This is a nice piece. I came to Delaney via the under rated (IMO anyways) Thomas Disch (Previouslies) and while I can't say that I got his more dense books like Dhalgren, Triton was certainly a favourite but also the stories published as Ace Doubles, particularly Ballad of Beta-2 and Babel-17, but all were heartedly consumed. For me, Science Fiction is best when it is operating as a genre of ideas and experimentation, of radical departures from comfortable norms. Samuel Delaney definitely exemplifies this.
posted by Ashwagandha at 8:46 AM on July 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

What a delightful read! I'm so glad you posted it. Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand utterly rocked my world, changed how I look at life and the world around, so unexpectedly... I'm glad that he seems to be happy even if getting older is a pain in the ass. I've read quite a bit of his stuff, but I should read more of it.
posted by hippybear at 8:54 AM on July 4, 2023 [6 favorites]

Read this yesterday (the New Yorker newsletter is a great way to get to these articles early). I found parallels in the gentrification (cultural cleansing, really) of NYC in the first half of Delany's Times Square Red, Times Square Blue with what is going on in Seattle, particularly the ongoing Disneyfication of queer spaces in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. There is loss of the nostalgic sense, sure, but mostly it is about cultural loss that cities cannot really recover from.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:02 AM on July 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

Spiders is very good, it doesn't quite sustain itself over it's length, but the ambition is unlike anything since Dhalgren, and the desire to shift two kinds of paraliterary forms, seems like a vital summing up of his life. It answered for me, with some solid rhetorical moments the complex questions about how to create queer utopias, and the allowance of queer space for decades which was more settled, happier and less pepeitaic than the 70s work. Also one of the best explinations of Spinoza I've read


Walton's good on it:https://www.tor.com/2012/05/31/a-good-life-samuel-r-delanys-through-the-valley-of-the-nest-of-spiders/
posted by PinkMoose at 9:36 AM on July 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

I am also on Team Triton.
posted by y2karl at 10:11 AM on July 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

I read everything of his I could find up to but not including Dhalgren, which I found incoherent, self indulgent, and ultimately unreadable.

I wondered whether Delany had gone through some kind of health crisis, in fact — which is what I thought had happened to Doris Lessing after The Four Gated City and took to be the subtext of Briefing for a Descent into Hell.
posted by jamjam at 11:14 AM on July 4, 2023

A portrait of him was recently unveiled at the William Way Community Center and I unknowingly sat behind him. He turned around and with a delighted look on his face, said hello to me as though we had been friends for 50 years. An important writer, yes, but also just a wonderful person.

hey rhymedirective, you may be in this article!

Delany thanked the center for its service and scholarship, and for the honor of having his likeness installed a block away from his old apartment. “I’m not going to tell you any of the off-color stories I could about the neighborhood,” he said slyly. “But there were lots and lots of them.” He signed original paperbacks for a cluster of shy twentysomethings, then posed with them for a picture, saying, “Come, let’s pretend to be old friends.”
posted by chavenet at 11:24 AM on July 4, 2023 [5 favorites]

Reading "Aye, and Gomorrah" (1967) in the 1990s as part of the excellent Best of the Nebulas anthology made a singular impression on me. Rather than feeling like I was having my hand held on an adventure into another world, I felt like I was peering voyeuristically through a window at an encounter I lacked the context to fully understand. Now, thirty years later, it's story in that anthology I find myself most often reflecting on.
posted by belarius at 11:40 AM on July 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

This was a superb article. I have no idea how I've managed this, but I've never read any of Delany's work and didn't know anything about his life. Wow. I have now filled up my library queue and am so ready to dig into this body of work. Thanks so much for sharing!
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 1:43 PM on July 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

What a sweet article.

I think it was _Nova_ that really reformatted my sf thinking around age 13? or so. Such dizzying heights of prose. So many textual games on the page, from the headers telling you location to the sudden and titular explosion.

I went on the read everything Delany's written, and to evangelize him to everyone I met, from housemates to bookstore customers to my students and colleagues. Dhalgren, the Neveryon series, Einstein Intersection, Stars in my Pocket, Trouble on Triton, Hogg, Heavenly Breakfast, and the short stories... so much brilliance.

I'm still irked by how few sf readers have read him today. (Perhaps a media adaptation will help.)

Every time I've met him he's been one of the kindest, warmest people I've ever met. Second time I told him my wife wanted to meet, but was in the hospital; he inscribed a book with a very sweet get well soon message.

It's also sweet to interact with him on Facebook, seeing his daily life and thought.

Thank the nameless GODS this wasn't an obit post!
posted by doctornemo at 2:22 PM on July 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

Great article. I'm a fifty something, straight white guy who loves Delaney for percisely who he is - black, gay and full of wonder. Long may he run
posted by hoodrich at 2:23 PM on July 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

I have been reading Delany for decades now. I haven't cracked open Spiders yet but I've plowed through just tons and tons of his fiction and nonfiction over the years. Challenging, gripping, sometimes confusing, occasionally appalling. There really is no one else like him.

I've seen him read, once -- very likely the only time I'll get to, unless I make it over to NY for something.

Personal favorites:
- Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand
- The Neveryona series
- Times Square Red Times Square Blue
- "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones"
posted by feckless at 2:25 PM on July 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

And just to say, Stars In My Pocket is the first half of a never-completed two-book project which ended because the relationship that inspired it ended... but that incompleteness, that utter blank "this is the end because that's how it ended" rather than having any actual "the story wraps up" ending... That is a very big part of that novel for me. Because life doesn't always have neat endings. Sometimes things cut off abruptly and you're just left wondering. I love that about that novel.
posted by hippybear at 2:28 PM on July 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

The Motion of Light in Water will always be my favorite; it’s such a lucid description of a time and place while unflinchingly examining the idea of an autobiography. It’s worth comparing to his Heavenly Breakfast, a much less successful (to my eyes) autobiography written years earlier.

I’ve had some encounters with Delany, including being called out of the blue to keep Dennis entertained for a weekend. I had the two of them and a few local authors over for dinner, and, while I was cooking and getting everything ready, I was nervous (as one might expect), but I realize that I was nervous in the same way Delany described feeling nervous about having Auden for dinner, and my nervousness felt like a shadow or a sham. I think everyone enjoyed the dinner, though.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:51 PM on July 4, 2023 [9 favorites]

The best Science Fiction writer ever, for crossing so many times and worlds and genres, even starting off way back when with some interesting old school sci-fi (Empire Star was kinda like what turned into Star Wars, but better). I read Dhalgren when I was young, and that was something for my mind.

If this is a vote: Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand is my personal fave.
posted by ovvl at 6:36 PM on July 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

One of my favorite SF writers ever. Read all his early stories and I think it strongly enlightened how I see the world. Well except for Dhalgren, got so far and could not handle it at the time, intend to revisit. I saw him once at a convention (Readercon) and was too shy to approach and from the anecdotes here am kicking myself. Being a 'sam', was oddly disconcerted when I learned his nickname was 'Chip'. ;-) I'd been reading another book about the meeting of Leibniz and Spinoza but his short, very personal version, The Atheist in the Attic, really made the somewhat mysterious event very real.
posted by sammyo at 7:48 PM on July 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'd like to see Chip Gates sit down with Chip Delaney for a conversation.
posted by hippybear at 8:03 PM on July 4, 2023

That sounds like a flippant comment, but it could really be interesting.
posted by hippybear at 8:41 PM on July 4, 2023

Thanks for posting this, what a fantastic read. Despite loving both queer lit and sci fi I've never read Delaney. I wonder where I should start....
posted by signsofrain at 9:13 PM on July 4, 2023

I somehow got it into my head that I should read Dhalgren first, which apparently was a mistake.
posted by HeroZero at 9:27 PM on July 4, 2023

Dhalgren is a difficult book for many reasons, but it really is as good as some people say it is. (Or you'll hate it.) A book I reread every few years, and it's always a bit of a struggle but always worth it.
posted by aspo at 10:58 PM on July 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

It really depends where you're coming from and what you're into, but knowing nothing about a person I'd recommend Triton.

(For calibration: second universal recommendation would be Stars, read The Mad Man, still have a bookmark in Dhalgren, have Hogg on the bookshelf but actually will never read.)
posted by away for regrooving at 12:48 AM on July 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

I vote for _Nova_, which is more like conventional space opera, though with gaudier writing more weirdness. I still haven't figured out the Arthurian symbolism.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 4:45 AM on July 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

very good article. i've been reading his books since i was a teenager in the 70s, & several times now given away copies of "nova" as the greatest scifi novel ever written, but it was "dhalgren" that changed my life. his criticism is incisive, too--sometimes startlingly so-- wish there was more of it.

sometimes i joke about a person being "too smart for rock 'n' roll" (zappa), & this was never truer than for delany. he's lucky he started when & where he did. the scifi gatekeepers booted out practically everyone worth reading (e.g. lafferty, disch) a few years later (after "star wars" brought in a legion of new, inexperienced readers) & the genre didn't recover for 30 years.
posted by graywyvern at 5:14 AM on July 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

Babel-17 a quick, pulpy read, with plenty of Delany character.

The short story collections are great and varied. ("Driftglass" or "Aye, and Gomorrah, and Other Stories"--I don't think it matters too much which as they have a lot of overlap).
posted by bfields at 6:38 AM on July 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

Delany is my favorite writer, and I found this profile to be just lovely -- Kattullus, thank you for posting it! Something that comes through in the article that I've always found to be one of the most compelling things about his writing is Delany's uncompromising honesty, which you can also find in his Facebook posts, which, as doctornemo mentioned, are delightful, especially if you enjoy photos of oatmeal and insights into the very human obsessions and minor foibles of a great mind. My own favorite is probably Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, and I want to thank hippybear here for your perspective on the missing second half of the duology -- I've always found that painfully frustrating, but your point about the realism of the absent ending is well taken and helps me feel better about that. But I love about everything I've read by Delany, which is most of it I think, though I didn't finish Hogg and I haven't started Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders yet.

I'll mention another great book of his, a collection of essays called About Writing, which contains both insightful and incisive critical responses to other writers and some insight into his own writing process. It's funny to me to contrast it with another book I like a lot, Stephen King's On Writing. King's book is so encouraging, like your cool uncle saying "C'mon kid, you got this. You can do it!" When I finished it, I wanted to call him Steve. About Writing, on the other hand, is more like a matter-of-fact (though not unfriendly) but still quite demanding high school or college teacher, who's like, "Look, if you really want to write something good -- to do the best work you're capable of -- and why would you even spend the time if you're not going to be doing that -- then you should think about this. And this. And this. And you should probably weave together structural, tonal, and linguistic considerations, and create a tapestry of levels of organization that reflect and refract each other from multiple angles. I mean, do you want to really do this thing, or don't you?" After I read that book, I found the standards Delany set to be impossible to argue with or deny, and what I realized at that point was that I didn't want to be novelist after all, for the simple reason that I wasn't inclined to work that hard. And I think that both the world and I (but especially me) are better off for me having made that choice.
posted by slappy_pinchbottom at 7:27 AM on July 5, 2023 [9 favorites]

Hey Delany lovers, did you know that in 1967 there was a full cast radio production of The Star Pit and Delany got to be the narrator and you can listen to it for free?
posted by foxfirefey at 8:57 AM on July 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

Echoing others on what a lovely piece this is, and how nicely focused it is on Delany today, not just his many literary legacies. He seems like the nicest guy in all the worlds. I stood behind him in line at a post office a few times in the 1990s (Planetarium Station, fittingly!) and have since kicked myself for not saying hello.

I recently brought Delany to my SF/F book club--I thought Nova would be a good accessible starting point--and was bummed that he was very poorly received. Most complained the characters were too flat and dated, the ideas too goofy,* that there was altogether too much tarot. I'm hoping this article encourages them to give him another shot!

(*Granted, the whole Ashton Clark "plug yourself directly into machines to reclaim a connection with labor that the modern workplace has robbed from us" premise is baffling, even without subsequent decades of cyberpunk telling us what a terrible idea that might be.)

I love Delany as a prose stylist, and I'm happy to roll along with his sentences even when I don't entirely get what he's up to. (I feel just this way about Joyce too, no surprise. I enjoy Dhalgren the same way I enjoy Ulysses--as an infrequent dip in a strange mineral spring that's exhausting for all its salutary properties.)
posted by miles per flower at 10:02 AM on July 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

MetaFilter: a strange mineral spring that's exhausting for all
posted by hippybear at 12:06 PM on July 6, 2023

Which fizzes if you add vinegar -- then it's a Jacuzzi.
posted by y2karl at 10:32 AM on July 7, 2023

Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand utterly rocked my world, changed how I look at life and the world around, so unexpectedly

It honestly kind of ruined science fiction as a genre for me -- and I say that as a complement. The intellectual, literary, visionary, stylistically radical -- and radically queer -- high I got from that book I've only found echoes of in other sci-fi works. It was and has remained one of the most towering books of my life
posted by treepour at 4:38 PM on July 7, 2023 [3 favorites]