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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;
  you can bet your bottom dollar                   
  that what you are really                         DHALGREN 
  responding to is a story you were         
  told when you were six or seven,           
  which has been so overlaid, you      Recently I looked at       
  don't recognize what it really       Dhalgren again, and I       
  is. But your subconscious            found that the       
  recognizes it."                      opening lines sent       
                                       chills down my spine:       
                                                               
  "If you're going to work                FUNCTION_OF_WORD_PATTERNS 
  with these old things, I                  
  think you do beter to                     I couldn't tell you if 
  work with them with a                     it was the quality of 
  sense of irony, to know                   the writing, or just 
  what you're telling the                   the fact that I first 
  old story and indeed keep                 read it when I was 15. 
  your tounge somewhat in                   
  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 need            reaction with suspicion,  
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).

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