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/lit/ - Literature

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14326214 No.14326214 [Reply] [Original]

Has anyone read this book?
I've heard alot about it, how it deals with myth greeks, dystopia, sex, poetry, art etc...

>> No.14326591

>>14326214
bump

>> No.14326768

>>14326214

I read the first half of it. It looks like a cool post-apocalypse thing but it's really about a bunch of hippies having gay sex. I guess there's some allusions to mythology and poetry, and there's supposed to be some meta shit later on in the book, but I didn't get that far. The first half is mostly about gay sex.

>> No.14326787

>>14326214
I like it a lot. I don't like everything Delany's written, although some of his other SF is okay. It's sort of a once in a lifetime book. All his interests converge in it: identity, art, language, poetry, metafiction, race, gender, memory and perception, nadness and sanity, space and time, apocalypse, utopia, etc.

For me, it feels really solid and concrete. I actually would like to live in this world, even though it's impossible because there's no (or next to no) social structure and because the city is eternal, no one needs to every work or anything so there's lots of time to hang out, discuss stuff, and fuck.

Also, Delany's writing it as he's starting to come out and his protagonist is bi instead of gay, which works better than his later gay protagonists because the character hasn't really settled into an identity, and this mirrors they weird world of Bellona.

Some people might find it boring, though, because large parts of it are mudane-- until it explodes into violence. But I like the mundanity.

And also even though it gets violent in places, there's something weirdly utopian and cozy about the violence, too.

It's almost like Delany's perfect world is a decaying abandoned sprawl that's New York circa 1970 where everyone's just free to be themselves. You get bits of this in feeling some of his other works, too, but here it's all very balanced (For example, ...Spiders... is just 400 pages of cartoonishly extreme gay sex before the other 400 pages-- the actual interesting-- kicks in. Dhalgren has lots of sex, but it doesn't overwhelm the narrative.)

>> No.14327540

>>14326214
>I've heard alot about it, how it deals with myth greeks, dystopia, sex, poetry, art etc...
If you say so. All I noticed was punk kids having gay sex.