I started reading Dahlgren again. When it annoys me I just plunge through. It's really fun most of the time. Even when it isn't, it's always a unique kind of annoying that is interesting to unpack.
Delany is either a normie or bad at casting value judgments on characters. He clearly had strong opinions about the writer character, Ernest Newboy, so much so that he thought they would be self-explanatory to the reader.
I still don't know what Delany's problem was with Newboy. What, that his prose was purple? Newboy appeared to be honest and was an interesting middleman who offered clearer commentary than other characters. Was he supposed to be annoying because he was vain and frequently full of hot air? I mean, so is the Kid, and by extension the author, both without realizing it, which is worse.
Maybe I was supposed to be hit harder by Newboy's presence and mien. But it is really hard to annoy me now. People can rush up at me screaming and I'm like lol hi sounds like u have a problem that isn't mine. Maybe this is a me thing.
The fact that this book frequently makes me wonder if my problems with it are a difference of personality and preference is itself fascinating. Usually I understand why a famous book is famous. I understand why Delany is well regarded but also I think I hate him.
Btw there was a new sex scene between characters who I only saw a couple of times before. I could not buy any kind of attraction between them. Also it was sex between a 27-year-old man and a 15-year-old boy, and it was honest enough that you could see why it's a bad idea for an adult to fuck someone that young. Also now I'm cursed and that sex scene lives in my brain. Thanks for nothing Samuel R. Delany
Delany cannot write a sex scene. Or rather, he can, as long as you want it to be the most viscerally disgusting series of physical explanations imaginable. Half of the time it's described as technically as an IKEA instruction manual. Here's how parts slot together, or don't, and here's where there's temperature changes and wetness occurs and the skin texture and tendons tensing and bone bumping. All he'd have to add is a thermometer and a few scientific measurements and he could write a paper. I've never seen blowjobs described so dispassionately in my life. Frequently the sex is so unappealing that I don't understand why anyone wants it to begin with.
All the characters are filthy all the time so that doesn't help.
This very well may be the intention, of courseāthe reduction of human experience to mechanical actionāif there were not also elements like hatred-of-Newboy. There are many places in-text where it is simply supposed that you understand where the writer is coming from, all of which I stumble through utterly baffled.
Oddly, I could believe the sex scenes and some of the other unmotivated social interactions if I took another step back and watched them play out without being able to look inside of the Kid. But if I did, I would clearly be assuming motivations that the author doesn't employ.
Does the author think sexual desire is so innately desirable that he doesn't see any reason to sell it? Because this book is the kind you can smell. And maybe that's some people's kink but eghhh.
I'm starting to wonder if this is a difference in personhood. I have always felt like I've had to explain myself to the nth degree to be understood by other people. Is this just what happens to your perspective when you're cocky and rich and neurotypical and a man?
This is one of those books that I require commentary on by other people.