some thoughts on delany
Apr. 13th, 2010 11:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aamcnamaraSo I was reading The Jewel-Hinged Jaw last week. It's Samuel Delany's book about (alternately or at the same time) science fiction and writing. I had read some of his short stories, and picked this up half at random--it was something the library owned, I was curious, et cetera. I read it in bits over the course of maybe a week, as I seem to do with books these days, but in any case I think I would have wanted to read it slowly. Some pieces seemed to just be anecdotes; some speeches he gave; some essays he'd composed.
One in particular, a letter to a critic written in 1972, fascinated me just because the science fiction field Delany described was so utterly not how I see it as being today. Fantasy has taken on some aspects of that role, to a certain extent, but not really. You can't quite just slap a woman facing away from the camera wearing leather pants and holding a dagger behind her back on anything and have it sell a bunch of copies (though it might help) (and part of that is what my Urban Fantasy Novel is about, I suppose). Part of this is, I think, just that science fiction and fantasy have both, as genres, grown hugely--in terms of sales, sure, and general popularity/mainstream prominence, and number of writers working in them, and and and...
Another thing which Delany brought up several times was the deliberation with which he chooses words for fiction. Each word dropping into its right place. He talks about how each successive word adds to the image in a reader's head, and how careful you have to be to form those images correctly, not to cut down or undermine them with further words. This is probably one of those things that you could read at any point in learning to write and take something slightly different from, but I'm glad I read it at this point: it helped cohere a few things I had been contemplating in short story revisions lately.
That mostly sums up a lot of my feelings about the book: I'm glad I read it at this point, and it helped me think about my writing slightly differently. (He talks about what he sees science fiction as, too, and that shifted my perception of the genre a little bit--I'm still contemplating what I think about it.)
Right now I'm halfway through Dhalgren, which is equally fascinating. I'm not sure if I'm glad that I read Jaw first, because it impressed on me what care Delany takes with his writing and it would have been interesting to see if I would've noticed some of the things he is doing if I hadn't known he was probably doing them deliberately. (Although, based on his reputation, I probably would've suspected it anyway.) Dhalgren itself brings up some of these questions, about art and community and life, and also race and gender and things.
When people ask if I like the novel, I have to answer, "I don't know yet." Which is true: I'm not sure. I haven't decided. I keep reading, though, and I am interested to see what the rest of the novel is, which is to some extent an answer in itself.
(Or it would be if I habitually gave up reading things I didn't like.)
One in particular, a letter to a critic written in 1972, fascinated me just because the science fiction field Delany described was so utterly not how I see it as being today. Fantasy has taken on some aspects of that role, to a certain extent, but not really. You can't quite just slap a woman facing away from the camera wearing leather pants and holding a dagger behind her back on anything and have it sell a bunch of copies (though it might help) (and part of that is what my Urban Fantasy Novel is about, I suppose). Part of this is, I think, just that science fiction and fantasy have both, as genres, grown hugely--in terms of sales, sure, and general popularity/mainstream prominence, and number of writers working in them, and and and...
Another thing which Delany brought up several times was the deliberation with which he chooses words for fiction. Each word dropping into its right place. He talks about how each successive word adds to the image in a reader's head, and how careful you have to be to form those images correctly, not to cut down or undermine them with further words. This is probably one of those things that you could read at any point in learning to write and take something slightly different from, but I'm glad I read it at this point: it helped cohere a few things I had been contemplating in short story revisions lately.
That mostly sums up a lot of my feelings about the book: I'm glad I read it at this point, and it helped me think about my writing slightly differently. (He talks about what he sees science fiction as, too, and that shifted my perception of the genre a little bit--I'm still contemplating what I think about it.)
Right now I'm halfway through Dhalgren, which is equally fascinating. I'm not sure if I'm glad that I read Jaw first, because it impressed on me what care Delany takes with his writing and it would have been interesting to see if I would've noticed some of the things he is doing if I hadn't known he was probably doing them deliberately. (Although, based on his reputation, I probably would've suspected it anyway.) Dhalgren itself brings up some of these questions, about art and community and life, and also race and gender and things.
When people ask if I like the novel, I have to answer, "I don't know yet." Which is true: I'm not sure. I haven't decided. I keep reading, though, and I am interested to see what the rest of the novel is, which is to some extent an answer in itself.
(Or it would be if I habitually gave up reading things I didn't like.)
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Date: 2010-04-14 08:07 pm (UTC)To really put it in perspective, I'd encourage you to find a copy of Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand and read that next. It is made of awesome and win.
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Date: 2010-04-15 02:36 am (UTC)Reading Dhalgren is an experience, to be sure. I'm glad I'm reading it.
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Date: 2010-05-27 11:56 pm (UTC)There is, a hell of a lot of STUFF in there. It's so, psychologically intricate - devastatingly intelligent, honestly. Twisty & bendy and ignorantly self-aware (if that isn't an oxymoron in itself.)
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Date: 2010-05-28 03:16 am (UTC)