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A brilliant theorist and cultural critic on race, sexuality, science fiction, and the art of writing.
In Shorter Views, Hugo and Nebula award-winning author Samuel R. Delany brings his remarkable intellectual powers to bear on a wide range of topics. Whether he is exploring the deeply felt issues of identity, race, and sexuality, untangling the intricacies of literary theory, or the writing process itself, Delany is one of the most lucid and insightful writers of our time. These essays cluster around topics related to queer theory on the one hand, and on the other, questions concerning the paraliterary genres: science fiction, pornography, comics, and more. Readers new to Delany's work will find this collection of shorter pieces an especially good introduction, while those already familiar with his writing will appreciate having these essays between two covers for the first time.
Preface: On Creativity and Academic Writing
I. Part One: Some Queer Thoughts: The Rhetoric of Sex/ The Discourse of Desire
1. Street Talk/ Straight Talk
2. On the Unspeakable
3. Coming/ Out
4. A Bend in the Road
5. The "Gay" Writer/ "Gay Writing"…?
6. The Black Leather in Color Interview
7. The Thomas L. Long Interciew
8. Part Two: The Politics of the Paraliterary: Neither the First Word nor the Last on Deconstruction, Structuralism, Poststructuralism, and Semiotics for SF Readers
1. The Para•doxa Interview: Inside and Outside the Canon
2. The Politics of Paraliterary Criticism
3. Zalazny/ Varley Gibson- and Quality
4. Pornography and Censorship
5. The Making of Hogg
6. The Phil Leggiere Interview :Reading The Mad Man
7. The Second Science-Fiction Studies Interview: Of Trouble on Triton and Other Matters
8. Part Three: Some Writing/Some Writers : Antonia Byatt's Possession: A Romance
1. Neil Gaiman, I, II, and III
2. A Tribute to Judith Merril
3. Michael Perkins's Evil Companions
4. Now It's Time for Dale Peck
5. Othello in Brooklyn
6. A Prefatory Notice to Vincent Czyz's Adrift in a Vanishing City
7. Under the Volcano with Susan Sontag
8. Some Remarks on Narrative and Technology or: Poetry and Truth
SAMUEL R. DELANY's many prizes include the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the William Whitehead Memorial Award for a lifetime's contribution to gay and lesbian literature. Wesleyan has published both his fiction and nonfiction, including Atlantis: three tales (1995), Silent Interviews: On Language, Race, Sex, Science Fiction, and Some Comics (1994) and Longer Views: Extended Essays (1996). The press has also reissued his classic science fiction and fantasy novels Dhalgren (1996), Trouble on Triton (1996, originally published as Triton), and the four-volume Return to Nevèrÿon series. Delany's non-Wesleyan books include Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999), The Mad Man (1995), They Fly at Çiron (1993), and The Motion of Light in Water (1987).
"This important collection demonstrates [Delany's] passion and intelligence, and his dedication to pursuing difficult questions about writing, theory, teaching and sexuality."
~Publishers Weekly
""This important collection demonstrates [Delany's] passion and intelligence, and his dedication to pursuing difficult questions about writing, theory, teaching and sexuality.""
~Publishers Weekly
""A daringly original mind at work.""
~Library Journal
"Delany always seems to be everywhere at once. At one moment writing some of the most fulfilling prose ever achieved by an American speculative fiction writer, at another tackling the most knotty theoretical issues within deconstruction, and at yet another producing frank, hot, outrageously delectable essays on his life as a New Yorker, a gay man, and a Black American. Delany's newest collection, Shorter Views, gives one perhaps the clearest sense of how all these aspects of Delany's work operate both with and against one another."
~Robert F. Reid-Pharr, Johns Hopkins University
"Delany always seems to be everywhere at once. At one moment writing some of the most fulfilling prose ever achieved by an American speculative fiction writer, at another tackling the most knotty theoretical issues within deconstruction, and at yet another producing frank, hot, outrageously delectable essays on his life as a New Yorker, a gay man, and a Black American. Delany's newest collection, Shorter Views, gives one perhaps the clearest sense of how all these aspects of Delany's work operate both with and against one another."
~Robert F. Reid-Pharr, Johns Hopkins University
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