Pretentious, Verbose, and Dull -- A Lament on Samuel R. Delany

My blog post title gives me a vague feeling of guilt. I know, I know -- we're supposed to like Delany. He's both LGBTQ+ and African-American, especially at a time when SFF desperate needed the diversity. Even more importantly, he's probably the most theory-orientated major writer of science fiction and fantasy out there, and thus there's just oodles of material in his writings that causes literary theorists to salivate.

Still, my intense dislike for Delany's fiction is hard to express -- only slightly alleviated, I must admit, by Delany owning one of the all-time great beards. 

Case in point:

I recently forced myself to digest the first two books in his S&S fantasy series, Return to Nevèrÿon. I entered into these books with mixed hopes. On one hand, it's virtually the only S&S -- thanks to Delany's Marxist, psychoanalytic, and poststructuralist leanings -- to get serious academic respect.

On the other hand, I have encountered Delany before. Several years ago, I read Triton (1976), a long-winded and (in my view) intellectually suspect work, and The Jewel-Hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of Science Fiction vastly disappointed me. My issues with that book are perhaps indicative of my dislike of Delany in general. There, he displayed an impressive range of knowledge about high theory concepts, but the lack of sustained analytical rigor appalled me. The "notes" in the title perhaps should have indicated this, but I could find no discussion of any concept that was not also more clearly, and more rigorously, available in books by actual philosophers or academics. It was like reading the literature review of a dissertation by a moderately competent doctoral student. Why read second-hand interpretations when the original works are so much more clearly expressed? Perhaps calling Delany a critical theory dilettante is unfair, but there it is.

Anyway, back to the Nevèrÿon books. My main objections are all found in my blog title, so let's just list them out here.

1. Verbose. Good gawd, Delany is long-winded. There is one section in Tales of Nevèrÿon where a character re-tells the creation story from Genesis from a feminist perspective . . . for six pages. I got the main gist after the first paragraph; the rest is just crazy. Indeed though, this verbosity seems like a general feature of Delany's writing. Close reading is nearly impossible for me -- skim-reading was my basic modus operandi. Alongside that, there are several scenes where Delany virtually halts the narrative in some unimportant setting, mentions his characters doing some narratively pointless things (like setting up camp or cooking), and just allowing his mouthpiece characters to engage in dull dialogue that expresses the ideas Delany wishes to express
2. Boring. Granted, boredom can be subjective, but there's a number of concrete items here. 
1. First, obviously, is the verbosity -- when a reader feels that every other word is unnecessary, that of course is a problem.
2. Extended monologues; lack of action. Despite being S&S, the plot -- such as it is -- is only a thinly disguised vehicle for various long monologues. There are entire chapters where Character X expounds at length on some pet topic, such as Gorgik in Neveryóna discoursing not-so-eloquently to Pryn on the city Kolhari, or Madame Keyne**  discoursing not-so-eloquently to Pryn on capitalism. Occasionally, Pryn interjects an occasional remark, but nothing substantive. . . they just prompt more monologue.
1. Actually, Delany's form is closer to lecturing than fiction. His characters are too often mere authorial mouthpieces for complex ideas better expressed in a different format. Other characters, like Pryn, are simply passive listeners. Delany's attempts to give depth or nuance to these characters all fail drastically. 
1. In fact, Delany frequently reminds me of the extended monologue by Dr. Matthew O'Connor to Nora Flood in Nightwood (Djuna Barnes, 1936). An no, I couldn't read that closely either.
3. Suspense. Oddly enough, Delany seems to entirely ignore the possibility for narrative suspense, which seems like genre fiction's biggest selling point. I'm not talking about ending books with big booms or battles, either -- the culmination of character arcs can be important suspense points, too. Yet, as I mentioned, there don't seem to be any characters in Delany -- just conveyers of authorial ideas through lecture-like dialogue who happen to have odd personal names.
3. Pretentious. I've hit upon this before when discussing The Jewel-Hinged Jaw. Delany is basically writing "philosophical" novels that partake of the worst of both worlds -- on the philosophical side, a lack of sustained analysis and rigor, and a deep failures of narrative engagement on the literary side.
1. In particular, I'm thinking of "The Tale of Old Venn" from Tales from Neveryón, another case of character X lecturing characters Y and Z for dozens and dozens of pages. Anyway, Venn**** talks about the emergence of a money economy among the barter-economy Rulvyn, and all the implications for alientation that a second-order semiotic system like "money" implies. All Venn's ideas might have been -- and are -- more concisely and engagingly presented by academic works. Encyclopedia entries or introductions to theory, even. Read as fiction, it's just murder.
2. Also, speaking of pretentious . . . opening every chapter with a dense epigraph from some academic or critical theorist is NOT a good way to show readers just how smart you are.

All told, reading the first two books in the Return to Nevèrÿon, there was simply nothing that I found admirable. For all Delany's unquestioned originality -- for example, using BDSM to reflect class relations is a stroke of inspiration, no matter how poorly written its execution -- I have rarely encountered an author with so little emotional depth to their work.



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 ** Madame Keyne's name, in case you didn't notice, is a clear play on John Maynard Keynes.
**** By the way, also if you haven't noticed, Venn = Venn diagram, since she's the overlap-point between multiple cultures and ways of life. Oh, Delany, you scamp.