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SYSTEMS_OF_THE_MADMAN

                                              January 2,  2003 
                                        Rev:  February 4, 2005 
 
"The Madman" by Samuel R. Delany (1994): 
 
   The main theme of this book 
   is the ways people are 
   limited to seeing the things        The main foreground action 
   they're ready to see.               concerns casual promiscuous 
                                       male-male sex in New York, 
   Most often, this is shown           just as AIDs is beginning 
   in the ways ways that text          to become an issue. 
   depends on context. 
                                           Delany a fantasist turned 
The whole plot of the story                to social realism... 
revolves around interpreting texts: 
                                           He wanted to record this 
The main character is a gay male           kind of experience because 
philosophy grad student, who is            the discussion of the AIDS 
trying to understand the writings          issue made it abundantly 
of another gay male philosopher,           clear that the world at 
who was killed under mysterious            large knew little about this 
circumstances not too long ago.            kind of life. 
 
The student's advisor was pretty                (E.g. 300 contacts a 
clearly having some trouble                     year sounds like a lot 
understanding some things in the                to some, but 300 a 
philosopher's personal papers,                  month is a slow period 
maybe because he's a straight                   for someone living in 
guy -- or maybe because he's                    that world.) 
just too straight.  E.g. there's 
a piece of pornographic fiction 
that he mistook for a personal 
account. 
 
As the main character follows in the footsteps 
of his subject, he finds out that his own 
interpretations of the texts were unreliable 
because he's post-Stonewall, and the author 
was pre-Stonewall, and therefore closeted in 
ways difficult to understand today. 
 
Along the way the main character writes 
some texts of his own, and the point is 
made that these are also products of 
their times -- pre-AIDS -- and perhaps 
not so comprehensible to someone living 
in the AIDS era. 
 
 
The narrator often talks about 
the "systems of the world". 
Solving the mystery wasn't very         His professors 
difficult once you got yourself         seem quite          Mere students 
into the right "system",                amused by his       are not supposed 
i.e. after you've gotten to             fondness for        to indulge in 
know the right kind of people           the phrase.         grandiose 
(perhaps, after you've become                               abstractions like 
the right kind of person?).                                 the official 
                                                            philosophers they 
                                                            study. 
 
In addition to the texts/contexts:              FALSE_CENTER 
   
There's a scene where he's sucking the     
cock of a bum on a park bench who        
assures him that the other people in the    
park won't even see him doing it.  There    
are cocksuckers and there are baseball    
players, and the baseball players can't    
see the cocksuckers.                    
                    
   These phrases are refrains that are 
   repeated throughout the book: 
   "Systems of the world" and 
   "cocksuckers and baseball players". 
 
 
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