Six essays from the critic and award-winning author exploring topics such as theater, LGBTQ+ scholarship, cyborgs, metaphors, and Star Wars.
โReading is a many-layered processโlike writing,โ observes Samuel R. Delany, a Nebula and Hugo Awardโwinning author and a major commentator on American literature and culture. In this collection of six extended essays, Delany challenges what he calls โthe hard-edged boundaries of meaningโ by going beyond the customary limits of the genre in which heโs writing. By radically reworking the essay form, Delany can explore and express the many layers of his thinking about the nature of art, the workings of language, and the injustices and ironies of social, political, and sexual marginalization. Thus, Delany connects, in sometimes unexpected ways, topics as diverse as the origins of modern theater, the context of lesbian and gay scholarship, the theories of cyborgs, how metaphors mean, and the narrative structures in the Star Wars trilogy.
โOver the course of his career,โ Kenneth James writes in his extensive introduction, โDelany has again and again thrown into question the world-models that all too many of us unknowingly live by.โ Indeed, Delany challenges an impressive list of world-models here, including High and Low Art, sanity and madness, mathematical logic and the mechanics of mythmaking, the distribution of wealth in our society, and the limitations of our sexual vocabulary. Also included are two essays that illustrate Delanyโs unique chrestomathic technique, the grouping of textual fragments whose associative interrelationships a reader must actively trace to read them as a resonant argument. Whether writing about Wagner or Hart Crane, Foucault or Robert Mapplethorpe, Delany combines a fierce and often piercing vision with a powerful honesty that beckons us to share in the perspective of these Longer Views.
โAn intellectually adventurous book.ย .ย .ย . Every page of every essay here rewards a second reading, and a third. Delany has a fearsomely stocked intellect, and a wider range of experience than most writers can even imagine.ย .ย .ย . He is brilliant, driven, prolific.โ โThe Nation
โOne of science fictionโs grand masters.ย .ย .ย . Delanyโs elegant command of language and deep insight into other authorsโ works are delightful to behold.โ โBooklist
โRare personal frankness and stunning erudition.ย .ย .ย . Recommended for readers who enjoy the challenge of being led into remote regions of a gifted mind.โ โLibrary Journal