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Shorter Views: Queer Thoughts & the Politics of the Paraliterary
A theorist and cultural critic on race, sexuality, science fiction, and the art of writing.
Hardcover
First published August 4, 2000
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About the author
Samuel R. Delany
306 books2,247 followersSamuel Ray Delany, also known as "Chip," is an award-winning American science fiction author. He was born to a prominent black family on April 1, 1942, and raised in Harlem. His mother, Margaret Carey Boyd Delany, was a library clerk in the New York Public Library system. His father, Samuel Ray Delany, Senior, ran a successful Harlem undertaking establishment, Levy & Delany Funeral Home, on 7th Avenue, between 1938 and his death in 1960. The family lived in the top two floors of the three-story private house between five- and six-story Harlem apartment buildings. Delany's aunts were Sadie and Bessie Delany; Delany used some of their adventures as the basis for the adventures of his characters Elsie and Corry in the opening novella Atlantis: Model 1924 in his book of largely autobiographical stories Atlantis: Three Tales.
Delany attended the Dalton School and the Bronx High School of Science, during which he was selected to attend Camp Rising Sun, the Louis August Jonas Foundation's international summer scholarship program. Delany and poet Marilyn Hacker met in high school, and were married in 1961. Their marriage lasted nineteen years. They had a daughter, Iva Hacker-Delany (b. 1974), who spent a decade working in theater in New York City.
Delany was a published science fiction author by the age of 20. He published nine well-regarded science fiction novels between 1962 and 1968, as well as several prize-winning short stories (collected in Driftglass [1971] and more recently in Aye, and Gomorrah, and other stories [2002]). His eleventh and most popular novel, Dhalgren, was published in 1975. His main literary project through the late 1970s and 1980s was the Return to Nevèrÿon series, the overall title of the four volumes and also the title of the fourth and final book.
Delany has published several autobiographical/semi-autobiographical accounts of his life as a black, gay, and highly dyslexic writer, including his Hugo award winning autobiography, The Motion of Light in Water.
Since 1988, Delany has been a professor at several universities. This includes eleven years as a professor of comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, a year and a half as an English professor at the University at Buffalo. He then moved to the English Department of Temple University in 2001, where he has been teaching since. He has had several visiting guest professorships before and during these same years. He has also published several books of criticism, interviews, and essays. In one of his non-fiction books, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999), he draws on personal experience to examine the relationship between the effort to redevelop Times Square and the public sex lives of working-class men, gay and straight, in New York City.
In 2007, Delany was the subject of a documentary film, The Polymath, or, The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman. The film debuted on April 25 at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival.
Delany attended the Dalton School and the Bronx High School of Science, during which he was selected to attend Camp Rising Sun, the Louis August Jonas Foundation's international summer scholarship program. Delany and poet Marilyn Hacker met in high school, and were married in 1961. Their marriage lasted nineteen years. They had a daughter, Iva Hacker-Delany (b. 1974), who spent a decade working in theater in New York City.
Delany was a published science fiction author by the age of 20. He published nine well-regarded science fiction novels between 1962 and 1968, as well as several prize-winning short stories (collected in Driftglass [1971] and more recently in Aye, and Gomorrah, and other stories [2002]). His eleventh and most popular novel, Dhalgren, was published in 1975. His main literary project through the late 1970s and 1980s was the Return to Nevèrÿon series, the overall title of the four volumes and also the title of the fourth and final book.
Delany has published several autobiographical/semi-autobiographical accounts of his life as a black, gay, and highly dyslexic writer, including his Hugo award winning autobiography, The Motion of Light in Water.
Since 1988, Delany has been a professor at several universities. This includes eleven years as a professor of comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, a year and a half as an English professor at the University at Buffalo. He then moved to the English Department of Temple University in 2001, where he has been teaching since. He has had several visiting guest professorships before and during these same years. He has also published several books of criticism, interviews, and essays. In one of his non-fiction books, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999), he draws on personal experience to examine the relationship between the effort to redevelop Times Square and the public sex lives of working-class men, gay and straight, in New York City.
In 2007, Delany was the subject of a documentary film, The Polymath, or, The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman. The film debuted on April 25 at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 18, 2024
The title is an (intentional) mouthful: 'Neither the First Word nor the Last on Deconstruction, Structuralism, Poststructuralism, and Semiotics for SF Readers'. The essay, collected here in its full form, is not only one of the best summations of this literary criticism minefield I have ever read, but also my 'go to' guide if I need any inspiration or clarity. A superb example of Delany's cogent, passionate analysis. It really feels like he is talking to you over your shoulder, and that you understand every word in that deep, calm voice of his.
May 5, 2012
Not all science fiction writing is fiction. Shorter Views brings together twenty-six essays and interviews by Samuel R. Delany about being black, being gay, and about science fiction. His fiction has won four Nebula Awards and a Hugo, and his work as an academic literary critic may be the most intellectual in the science fiction field. What makes effective fiction? He says:
“Fiction exists as an extraordinary complex of expectations. Texts that fulfill all these expectations register as moderately good or mediocre fiction: the sort one reads, more or less enjoys, but forgets immediately. What strikes us as extraordinary, excellent, or superb fiction must fulfill some of these expectations and at the same time violate others. It’s a very fancy dance of fulfillment and violation that produces the 'Wow!' of wonder that greets a truly fine piece of writing -- a truly wonderful story.”
“Fiction exists as an extraordinary complex of expectations. Texts that fulfill all these expectations register as moderately good or mediocre fiction: the sort one reads, more or less enjoys, but forgets immediately. What strikes us as extraordinary, excellent, or superb fiction must fulfill some of these expectations and at the same time violate others. It’s a very fancy dance of fulfillment and violation that produces the 'Wow!' of wonder that greets a truly fine piece of writing -- a truly wonderful story.”
May 26, 2007
One of the joys of Delany's work is his attention to language and how it works in fantasy and science fiction. His work here and in The Jewel-Hinged Jaw, Longer Views, The American Shore, and elsewhere taught me more about writing and how it works than any class I took.
April 16, 2018
Samuel R. Delany is as well-known and respected for his literary and social/queer criticism as he is for his writing of fiction in multiple, often paraliterary, genres, from science fiction to queer erotica. Shorter Views: Queer Thoughts and the Politics of the Paraliterary, a collection of critical essays on race, sexuality, science fiction, and the art of writing, plus a number of interviews on a variety of topics, that demonstrates the breadth and depth of his thinking and his academic work in these areas, and offers the reader a sustained experience both instructive and challenging.
The book is divided into three sections - Part One: Some Queer Thoughts, Part Two: The Politics of the Paraliterary, and Part Three: Some Writing/Some Writers. These categories, while suggestive of the overarching themes of each section, should not be taken as exclusive. In the first section, for instance, Delany has gathered essays and interviews that talk about queerness, but also queerness in relation to art, to his own writing in various paraliterary genres (science fiction, pornography), in other writers. In the second, he examines theory and criticism of science fiction, comics, and other paraliterary genres, but does so from the persoective of a queer academic, critic and author. The third section looks at specific writers and works, both literary and paraliterary.
There’s a documentary about Delany, called The Polymath, or The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman. I’ve never seen it (though I’d love to if I can ever find a coy), but one thing I am certain of, is that polymath is one of the words that one can definitely use to describe him. It’s there in his writing, in the breadth and scope of his thinking, his references, his allusions, the often very disparate threads of knowledge that he draws together in presenting his arguments. To read Delany is to learn things you never would have imagined. To read this collection of essays and interviews is to have your perspectives on race and sexuality challenged, to have your understanding of the art and practice of writing and the genre of speculative fiction - and a few other paraliterary genres - broadened.
The book is divided into three sections - Part One: Some Queer Thoughts, Part Two: The Politics of the Paraliterary, and Part Three: Some Writing/Some Writers. These categories, while suggestive of the overarching themes of each section, should not be taken as exclusive. In the first section, for instance, Delany has gathered essays and interviews that talk about queerness, but also queerness in relation to art, to his own writing in various paraliterary genres (science fiction, pornography), in other writers. In the second, he examines theory and criticism of science fiction, comics, and other paraliterary genres, but does so from the persoective of a queer academic, critic and author. The third section looks at specific writers and works, both literary and paraliterary.
There’s a documentary about Delany, called The Polymath, or The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman. I’ve never seen it (though I’d love to if I can ever find a coy), but one thing I am certain of, is that polymath is one of the words that one can definitely use to describe him. It’s there in his writing, in the breadth and scope of his thinking, his references, his allusions, the often very disparate threads of knowledge that he draws together in presenting his arguments. To read Delany is to learn things you never would have imagined. To read this collection of essays and interviews is to have your perspectives on race and sexuality challenged, to have your understanding of the art and practice of writing and the genre of speculative fiction - and a few other paraliterary genres - broadened.
May 10, 2015
Fascinating interviews and excellent provocations and dissentions on a range of subjects. I have only read a few of the essays, and skimmed others.
Delany's argumentative style moves back and forth between an easy deployment of all manner of scholarship--but particularly literary theory (psychoanalysis and semiotics)--and interesting anecdotes that introduce his themes or provide examples of the point he is making. Being something of a source-hoarder, I was always looking for more footnotes and citations where they weren't to be found. It's the easy style that carries the day here. Liquid sentences offered up in cleverly crafted paragraphs and section breaks that bring disparate ideas into contact in convincing and interesting ways.
"The Politics of Paraliterary Criticism" wins the whole collection my five stars. It manages to critique the politicking of institutional publishing and a falsely historicist genetic view of cultural production, while at the same time celebrating the pleasures of writing, of criticism, and of struggling toward an understanding of how art does cultural work. A beautiful piece.
Delany's argumentative style moves back and forth between an easy deployment of all manner of scholarship--but particularly literary theory (psychoanalysis and semiotics)--and interesting anecdotes that introduce his themes or provide examples of the point he is making. Being something of a source-hoarder, I was always looking for more footnotes and citations where they weren't to be found. It's the easy style that carries the day here. Liquid sentences offered up in cleverly crafted paragraphs and section breaks that bring disparate ideas into contact in convincing and interesting ways.
"The Politics of Paraliterary Criticism" wins the whole collection my five stars. It manages to critique the politicking of institutional publishing and a falsely historicist genetic view of cultural production, while at the same time celebrating the pleasures of writing, of criticism, and of struggling toward an understanding of how art does cultural work. A beautiful piece.
January 14, 2009
I really shouldn't call this seminal, but it is. Delany persuasively makes a comparative case for paraliterature/genres and queered sexualities.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews