[PREV - FALLEN_FUTURES]    [TOP]

NULL_HINGED

                                        January  22, 2004
                              Revised:  November 13, 2004

An interview with Delany in
Charles Platt's "Dream Makers" (1980):

  "Primitive vitality is usually a
  kind of illusion.  If you have a
  gut response to a story, you are
  not responding to something new"       A non sequitur: "primitive vitality"
                                         would suggest something very old.
  "What you are really
  responding to is a story you
  were told when you were six
  or seven, which has been so          Recently I looked at Delany's
  overlaid, you don't recognize        own Dhalgren (1975) again,
  what it really is. But your          and I found that the opening
  subconscious recognizes it."         lines sent chills down my
                                       spine:
  "If you're going to work
  with these old things, I                FUNCTION_OF_WORD_PATTERNS
  think you do beter to
  work with them with a                     I couldn't tell you if
  sense of irony, to know                   it was the quality of
  what you're telling the                   the writing, or just
  old story and indeed keep                 the fact that I first
  your tounge somewhat in                   read it when I was 15.
  your cheek as you tell it."

Delany has probably never
said anything I disagree
with more strongly, though
the intervening decades of
increasingly enervated
tounge-in-cheek fiction
probably has a lot to do     SUNDAY_CAMP
with my disgust.


    If you're going to walk that path,
    you'd better walk it like you mean
    it.  Take it seriously. Nothing is
    more irritating than the pose that
    these tropes are too silly for
    intelligent people like yourself.      TAKEN_LIGHTLY
    Who do you think you're fooling?

                   Heretics that commit
                   sacrilege against
                   their own faith...


  "You have to know what
  these old stories are and
  what they mean in order to      Imagine you've taken this
  actually say something new,     to heart.  The words from
  because, if you don't, what     your pen makes your hair
  you will do is wind up          stand on end, your beard
  saying the old things with      (or whatever) is bristling...
  out knowing it."
                                      And you're now supposed to
                                      stand back, treat that
But you don't in fact                 reaction with suspicion,
need to be conscious of               start deconstructing...
everything, which is a
good thing, because you                   All in a quest for novelty?
*can't* be conscious of
everything.                                    NOVELTY_AGAIN
                          BLACKBOX
   Some things have to be
   internalized, worked
   with "instinctively".

     Having something to say is more
     important than having something           (Though that,
     new to say.                               of course,
                                               wouldn't hurt).

--------
[NEXT - MULTIPLY_HUNG]