The Einstein Intersection, a book review

Will our stories outlive us; and, if so, how will we be perceived when they are found?

Below is a short review of Samuel R. Delany’s The Einstein Intersection (1967); I’ve posted a more thorough review at Retrospeculative.

I think in this short novel, Delany is showing off (or he was a heck of a lot smarter than I was at the tender age of twenty-three), but if the reader can struggle through the confusing patches, there are delights to be had. Delany is definitely not for everyone, but there is some wonderfully lyrical writing, and the novel is quite satisfying if you’re able to immerse yourself in his world-vision. It amazes me that Delany was published in a pulp fiction market. His working title for the book was A Fabulous, Formless Darkness (from a William Butler Yeats work he’d quoted), but it was ‘re-worked’ by the publisher, Ace Books (of  garish covers and low-priced packaging fame). Ace‘s main audience was teenage boys who wanted formulaic plots with the usual science fiction stereotypes. Delany employed the stereotypes, but twisted them into unusual perspectives. Even though he set his stories far in the future, they were designed to describe the world as it was.

The novel takes place on Earth; however, it is set tens-of-thousands of years into the future: myths run rampant and are only partially explained at the crossroads of logic and irrationality (with tongue firmly planted in cheek, I’d suggest searching at the corner of Einstein Street and Gödel Avenue). Two of the major themes are travel, through space,  time, and thought, as echoed in Delany’s travels through the Mediterranean, Spain, and Greece (which he relates in between-chapter notes), and difference from the ‘norm’, as demonstrated by the mutating aliens, who are attempting to maintain a sense of conformity while sifting through the gossamer memories of a sentient species — humanity — that has vanished.

The reader is immersed in the alien’s milieu, just as the aliens are immersed in the quagmire of humanity’s psychic memories. Within the body of the novel, Delany has included some travel-notes, which he wrote while wandering through foreign lands, creating the novel. At one point [p.119], he writes: “…perhaps on rewriting I shall change Kid Death’s hair from black to red.”  But the reader has already encountered the character, and his hair is red, which demonstrates Delany’s interest in time, events in time, and awareness; what has been, what might have been, and what is. And he has also set up a conscious association between the author, the reader, and the words on the page (something he does to a dizzying degree in Dhalgren). At another point [p. 65], Delany implicitly states that “…the central subject of the book is myth.”

It is a book full of myth and peppered with confusion; nevertheless, if you enjoy a story that requires some cobbling together and leaves you thinking after you finish, I highly recommend it; along with Dhalgren, Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, and the Return to Nevèrÿon series, it displays Delany at his mythical best.

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Dhalgren, a book review

Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren, as a novel, doesn’t fit the mold: there isn’t a linear plot, events re-occur as echoes and distortions, it is unclear what the story is about, and the mind cannot easily detect a natural reading rhythm: it is classified as a novel, I suppose, because there is no other word to describe it. Dhalgren makes the mind work (unless the reader gives up, throws the book into the fireplace, and picks up something else). As I read it, I became — in no particular order — confused, bored, angry, disgusted, and enlightened (these states — in various permutations — were repeated throughout my reading experience). The novel could be viewed as many different things, some of which I’ve outlined below (page numbers refer to the Vintage Trade Edition pictured):

• It could be read as science fiction literature; the labyrinthine city-setting could be on another world (in Dhalgren, the story takes place in a city called Bellona, purportedly in mid-America; interestingly, in Delany’s novel Triton, Bellona is a Martian city. Mars has two moons and, in Dhalgren, there are two moons at one point in the story). The city of Bellona may be situated at the edge of a singularity, within a rift in space-time that allows no communication with the rest of the universe. Science fiction elements are referred to several times in the book’s pages (e.g.: p.372-373, p.432, and p.439), but I sense that Delany didn’t appreciate being marginalized, or categorized, in a particular genre.
• It could be read as a panoramic view of the world from the mind of a schizophrenic: there are countless fragmentary episodes

 

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand; a book review

If I’d attempted to read Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (Stars) when it was first published (1984), I would have undoubtedly thrown it across the room in frustration (I probably would have made it through the lengthy prologue, but the meat of the novel would have strained my patience to the breaking point). Thankfully, I’m a much different reader now than I was then: it is a brilliant novel, but it’s certainly not for everyone (one review I read declared that the title was the only enjoyable part of the book). Stars was Samuel R. Delany’s final major work of science fiction, possibly due to disagreements with his publisher, Bantam, after they declined to publish the final volume of his Return to Nevèrÿon saga (Mr. Delany still writes fiction, and is currently a professor of English and Creative Writing at Temple University). Stars is literate science fiction written by a science fiction author, as opposed to a science fiction novel written by a literate author.

I’ve read other books by Delany (Empire Star, Babel-17, Triton, Dhalgren, and Tales of Nevèrÿon, as well as his short stories in Aye, and Gomorrah) and enjoyed them, but Stars is a mature, literate work that has aged better than others; it is wonderfully written, and the immersion in alien worlds and culture is unlike anything else I’ve encountered (the Nevèrÿon saga — allegorical sword and sorcery— is somewhat comparable, but I found it more pedantic). Stars is filled with themes, including: cultural and social diversity as a function of hierarchical structure, gender, technology, the role of information on civilization, and sexuality (sex is a significant theme: if you’re prudish, or homophobic, you’d best give this book a pass).

Delany did a wonderful job with gender; sometimes it’s difficult, or impossible, to identify the sex of a character. All characters are referred to as she (her, woman, and womankind are also used) unless the person is sexually interesting to the narrator, Marq Dyeth, who would then refer to the character as him or he. The terms male and female are used, but they are often insignificant to Marq, who is a male from an affluent family, and is attracted to certain other males (in particular, those with bitten, dirty fingernails, a Delany trope). Fairly deep into the story, Marq meets an underprivileged male, Rat Korga (first introduced in the novel’s prologue), who is Marq’s ideal erotic partner (how and why they meet is an important plot-point). Rat Korga was a slave on the planet Rhyonon, and he was the sole survivor when Rhyonon was destroyed (presumably by cultural fugue, which occurs when a civilization’s culture and technology spiral out of control).

It is a dense book, filled with  ponderings and descriptive prose: the plot doesn’t move along quickly, but the patient reader is rewarded by the prose and the story’s construction (as an interesting aside, Delany uses subscripts to denote the relative importance of job-related words: Marq Dyeth’s vocation₁ is as a industrial diplomat₁ between star systems, but when he returns to his family home he is a docent₂ for visiting dignitaries; apparently, the subscript convention is based on an aspect of Alfred Korzybski’s theory of general semantics (see the style section in this Wikipedia article for more information).

Delany had originally planned the story as a diptych, but the second book, The Splendor And Misery Of Bodies, Of Cities was never completed (Delany’s motivation died due to two events: he and his partner (Frank Romeo) broke-up, and the AIDS epic began, which impelled him to work on Nevèrÿon). Delany completed 150 pages of the draft for the second book in the diptych; however, because of conflicting priorities, he suspects that he will never finish it); nevertheless, as a work of fiction, Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, is able to stand on its own.

I didn’t find Stars too demanding, but I suppose some readers might find it dry and interminable: the novel is certainly not plot driven. Perhaps it is one of those novels that demand an acquired taste (a bit of postmodern between the covers), but I recommend it to readers who enjoy challenging, literary science fiction.

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Regarding the modular calculus…

On the way to work this morning I heard an interview of Keith Oatley, who’s book Such Stuff as Dreams (subtitled The Psychology of Fiction) was published this year.

The material discussed — from within his book —struck a chord regarding the book I’m reading: Trouble on Triton, by Samuel R. Delany (an excellent read: recommended!). I’m beginning to feel as if Delany’s book is an experiment in fiction that uses the ideas in Oatley’s book, although Triton was first published in 1976, thirty-five years before Oatley’s tome!

Such Stuff as Dreams explores several ideas that are inherent in Delany’s book; in fact, the informal remarks toward the modular calculus in Triton seem to be hinting at quite the same thoughts:

• The ways in which reading can influence our understanding of self to facilitate transformation. I hadn’t thought about Triton in this regard until I heard Mr. Oatley, but it seems more than plausible that Delany was purposefully guiding me (the reader) through the text, and even telling me (if only I’d listen) that he was doing so.
• Psychological research into the how and why of identification with fictional characters. Although the main character in Triton — Bron Helstrom —is not a person to identify with (he’s a self-absorbed boor), there are characteristics of his that, unfortunately, I share (this dichotomy — won’t identify with lout, but can identify with him partially — contributes to the literature’s influence as described above).
• How literature can benefit social skills; as per previous two bulleted items.
• Aspects of fiction; plot, setting, characters, theme…modular calculus…
• Writing techniques; metaphor, metonymy (which (uneducated me) I’d never heard about until Triton, where it is mentioned in the informal remarks toward the modular calculus, part I), defamiliarization, et cetera.

I’m almost finished reading Trouble on Triton, but I feel like I have to re-read the whole thing from the beginning; instead, I’ll finish, let it percolate, and re-read in a year or two….

2011-10-11: Update

I’ve finished Trouble on Triton now, and still feel like I’ll need to reread it sometime. I’d Recommend the novel to science fiction fans who like a bit more of a challenging read than the typical Heinlein, Asimov, or Clarke…