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Phallos: Enhanced and Revised Edition
Phallos is a 2004 novel by acclaimed novelist and critic, Samuel R. Delany. Taking the form of a gay pornographic novel, only with the explicit sex omitted, Phallos is set during the reign of the second century Roman Emperor Hadrian, and circles around the historical account of the murder of the emperor's young lover, Antinous. The story moves from Syracuse to Egypt, from the Pillars of Hercules to Rome, from Athens to Byzantium, and back. Young Neoptolomus searches after the stolen phallos of the nameless god of Hermopolis, crafted of gold and encrusted with jewels, within which are reputedly the ancient secrets of science and society that will lead to power, knowledge, and wealth. Vivid and clever, the original novella has been expanded by nearly a third. As well, editor Robert Reid-Pharr has appended to the text an afterword and three astute speculative essays by Steven Shapiro, Kenneth James, and Darieck Scott.
190 pages, Paperback
First published October 28, 2004
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383 people want to read
About the author
Samuel R. Delany
304 books2,268 followersSamuel Ray Delany, also known as "Chip," is an award-winning American science fiction author. He was born to a prominent black family on April 1, 1942, and raised in Harlem. His mother, Margaret Carey Boyd Delany, was a library clerk in the New York Public Library system. His father, Samuel Ray Delany, Senior, ran a successful Harlem undertaking establishment, Levy & Delany Funeral Home, on 7th Avenue, between 1938 and his death in 1960. The family lived in the top two floors of the three-story private house between five- and six-story Harlem apartment buildings. Delany's aunts were Sadie and Bessie Delany; Delany used some of their adventures as the basis for the adventures of his characters Elsie and Corry in the opening novella Atlantis: Model 1924 in his book of largely autobiographical stories Atlantis: Three Tales.
Delany attended the Dalton School and the Bronx High School of Science, during which he was selected to attend Camp Rising Sun, the Louis August Jonas Foundation's international summer scholarship program. Delany and poet Marilyn Hacker met in high school, and were married in 1961. Their marriage lasted nineteen years. They had a daughter, Iva Hacker-Delany (b. 1974), who spent a decade working in theater in New York City.
Delany was a published science fiction author by the age of 20. He published nine well-regarded science fiction novels between 1962 and 1968, as well as several prize-winning short stories (collected in Driftglass [1971] and more recently in Aye, and Gomorrah, and other stories [2002]). His eleventh and most popular novel, Dhalgren, was published in 1975. His main literary project through the late 1970s and 1980s was the Return to Nevèrÿon series, the overall title of the four volumes and also the title of the fourth and final book.
Delany has published several autobiographical/semi-autobiographical accounts of his life as a black, gay, and highly dyslexic writer, including his Hugo award winning autobiography, The Motion of Light in Water.
Since 1988, Delany has been a professor at several universities. This includes eleven years as a professor of comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, a year and a half as an English professor at the University at Buffalo. He then moved to the English Department of Temple University in 2001, where he has been teaching since. He has had several visiting guest professorships before and during these same years. He has also published several books of criticism, interviews, and essays. In one of his non-fiction books, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999), he draws on personal experience to examine the relationship between the effort to redevelop Times Square and the public sex lives of working-class men, gay and straight, in New York City.
In 2007, Delany was the subject of a documentary film, The Polymath, or, The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman. The film debuted on April 25 at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival.
Delany attended the Dalton School and the Bronx High School of Science, during which he was selected to attend Camp Rising Sun, the Louis August Jonas Foundation's international summer scholarship program. Delany and poet Marilyn Hacker met in high school, and were married in 1961. Their marriage lasted nineteen years. They had a daughter, Iva Hacker-Delany (b. 1974), who spent a decade working in theater in New York City.
Delany was a published science fiction author by the age of 20. He published nine well-regarded science fiction novels between 1962 and 1968, as well as several prize-winning short stories (collected in Driftglass [1971] and more recently in Aye, and Gomorrah, and other stories [2002]). His eleventh and most popular novel, Dhalgren, was published in 1975. His main literary project through the late 1970s and 1980s was the Return to Nevèrÿon series, the overall title of the four volumes and also the title of the fourth and final book.
Delany has published several autobiographical/semi-autobiographical accounts of his life as a black, gay, and highly dyslexic writer, including his Hugo award winning autobiography, The Motion of Light in Water.
Since 1988, Delany has been a professor at several universities. This includes eleven years as a professor of comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, a year and a half as an English professor at the University at Buffalo. He then moved to the English Department of Temple University in 2001, where he has been teaching since. He has had several visiting guest professorships before and during these same years. He has also published several books of criticism, interviews, and essays. In one of his non-fiction books, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999), he draws on personal experience to examine the relationship between the effort to redevelop Times Square and the public sex lives of working-class men, gay and straight, in New York City.
In 2007, Delany was the subject of a documentary film, The Polymath, or, The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman. The film debuted on April 25 at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival.
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July 28, 2022
I had so much fun reading this I hope my review will make you, in turn, want to read it straightaway. I know Delany has a formidable reputation as a theorist. Yes, this is pretty evident in Phallos, which Darieck Scott argues engages “with the difficult, complex notion of jouissance in Lacanian psychoanalytic theory.” After all, this is a nearly 200-page book, where the title novella is only about 120 pages. The rest consists of an Afterword and three major critical essays that offer fascinating insight into the technical and philosophical underpinnings of the main text.
Delany is something of an enigma for SF readers. Well-known for such seminal works as Babel-17 (1966) and Dhalgren (1975), he has not dabbled in the genre for decades. Instead, his main focus now seems to be on pornotopias such as The Mad Man (1994), Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders (2011) and Shoat Rumblin: His Sensations and Ideas (2020), his latest novel, which had to be self-published. ‘Pornotopia’ refers to the idea in critical theory of “an imagined space determined by fantasies and dominated by human sexual activity, expressed in and encompassing pornography and erotica” [Wikipedia]. (By the way, there is a fascinating shoutout to the main characters in that book at the beginning of Phallos.)
In my favourite essay in this book, ‘Ars Vitae’, Steven Shaviro comments that the subject is nothing less than “the Art of Life. It provides us with a vision, not just of what it means to live, but also of what it might mean … to ‘live well’ and to ‘live better’.” He adds that Delany’s “vision of the good life quite unequivocally involves a wide range and great frequency of sexual encounters and pleasures, with a large number of partners. There are good ethico-political reasons for this, as well as hedonistic ones.” According to Shaviro, this allows Delany to present “even the most ‘extreme’ sexual practices as forms of civility and community, no less than as forms of ecstasy.”
This is an intriguing glimpse into the latter part of Delany’s career, where a book like Phallos is no less an extraordinary utopian vision than Triton (1976): “Delany, for the last thirty-five years or more, has already been looking forward to a possible new articulation of desire – and civility and compassion, and excess and extremity …” However, Shaviro is well aware that the utopia depicted in Phallos requires “radical changes in our social, political, economic, and environmental conditions.”
This is a lot of theoretical baggage for a slight sword-and-sandals novella to carry, but rest assured that you do not have to read the critical essays. It is a separate section at the end that can simply be elided from your reading experience. Doing so will in no way detract from Delany’s extraordinary achievement here, which is to deconstruct typical fantasy tropes (and celebrate them at the same time.)
So, the basic idea behind Phallos is “an unreliable narrator giving us a dubious, second-hand account of a book that is itself fictional.” Having said that, I was amazed to learn from Kenneth R. James’s essay that it is, indeed, based on a true historical incident, namely “the emperor Hadrian’s establishment of a cult devoted to his deceased male lover, Antinous.”
Neoptolomus’s quest, both for the jewelled phallos belonging to the image of the nameless god of an obscure mystery cult and for an understanding of its significance, mirrors the search by the outer tale’s three contemporary scholars – Randy, Binky, and Phyllis – for the identity of the novel’s elusive author. (Both these quests resonate in turn with the outermost narrative, an authorial foreword synopsising the story of Adrian Rome, whose quest to find a copy of the novel eventually leads him to Randy’s own synopsis – which thus stands revealed as an excerpt or extract, the only non-synoptic part of Adrian’s tale we’re given.) In turn, the exegetical debates of the three scholars over the book’s authorship and dates of composition, the credibility of the historical apparatus accompanying it, and, increasingly, the reliability of Randy’s editorial criteria, mirror the debates over the story of Hadrian and Antinous.
Poor Randy. Binky and Phyllis seem to take no small degree of satisfaction in pointing out the subconscious biases and innate prejudices in Randy’s synopsis of the missing/mythical text. His reasoning is that he cannot be as explicit as the source material because he is posting on a university website. However, Binky and Phyllis are onto him … Instead, Randy’s attempted editing of the sexual content, describing one scene, for example, as “five pages devoted to the sensations accruing between the moment one decides to release one’s bladder and the moment urine actually erupts from the foreskin-hooded head”, has the opposite effect of magnifying the lurid qualities of the source material. This is definitely not the prim and proper academic gaze that Randy is hoping to adopt, as he becomes increasingly enamoured of the polymorphous goings-on he is editing…
“Haven’t you learned yet that quests such as yours can never be fulfilled?” a character asks. Elsewhere: “So, you are another searcher after the secrets of the nameless god’s stolen cock.” As a fantasy trope, the ‘quest’ is not only a sure-fire way to get from Point A to Point B, but a guaranteed recipe in terms of character and structure. Instead, Delany turns the concept on its head, as there is “no grounding of desire (or anything else) … no metaphysical conclusion, no unimpeachable certainty, no Final Theory of Everything.”
Hence Shaviro emphasises that Phallos is indeed about “the phallus of Freudian/Lacanian theory, the signifier of desire, and of erotic (and masculine) potency, but which (as a mere signifier) is always absent, or continually other than itself.” Thus, as Neoptolomus continues on his quest to find the nameless god’s missing bejewelled cock, the nature of that journey, and the potent symbolism inherent in that sacred object, begin to blur and transform.
What does this mean in terms of the reader’s experience? There is an incredible sense of nostalgia to Phallos, which reminded me strongly of the Nevèrÿon sequence, Delany’s other great deconstruction of sword-and-sorcery tropes. In particular, I was reminded of the ending of ‘The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals’ (1985), which incidentally is often cited as “the first novel-length treatment of AIDS to appear from a major US publisher” [Wikipedia]. There is an extraordinary scene at the end of that where a character realises how porous the border is between the mythical world of Nevèrÿon and the real world, and how it is almost impossible to tell where the one begins or the other ends…
If there is a strong callout to Nevèrÿon here, then long-time Delany fans will also recognise the quasi god/beast from The Mad Man, and such cool nods as the ‘Sisters of Bellona’, who serve to preserve the cult of the nameless god. Indeed, Phallos is probably the ideal introduction to Delany for new readers, and a wonderful summation and retrospective for long-time ones.
I started this review by stating how much fun this is to read. And it is. Delany is a wonderfully tactile and descriptive writer. He brings entire worlds to life with such effortless economy, and his characters are flawed and believable. Binky and Phyllis’s exasperation at the increasingly obsessive edits of Randy is hilarious. Besides representing Delany at his most playful, it is also a commentary on the hermetic world of academia, and readers and writing in general. Just as the original text-within-a-text is transformed into a Lacanian ‘absent centre’, so too does Delany make us marvel at the power and multitudes contained within the pages of a single book:
Binky phoned last night, however: He cannot wait. He asked if I might get him a Xerox copy of the entire text, which he promises to take better care of than he has his dog-eared, decade-old, second-hand mass-market.
(Will mass-market paperbacks endure, I wonder, twenty, even fifteen, more years?)
Delany is something of an enigma for SF readers. Well-known for such seminal works as Babel-17 (1966) and Dhalgren (1975), he has not dabbled in the genre for decades. Instead, his main focus now seems to be on pornotopias such as The Mad Man (1994), Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders (2011) and Shoat Rumblin: His Sensations and Ideas (2020), his latest novel, which had to be self-published. ‘Pornotopia’ refers to the idea in critical theory of “an imagined space determined by fantasies and dominated by human sexual activity, expressed in and encompassing pornography and erotica” [Wikipedia]. (By the way, there is a fascinating shoutout to the main characters in that book at the beginning of Phallos.)
In my favourite essay in this book, ‘Ars Vitae’, Steven Shaviro comments that the subject is nothing less than “the Art of Life. It provides us with a vision, not just of what it means to live, but also of what it might mean … to ‘live well’ and to ‘live better’.” He adds that Delany’s “vision of the good life quite unequivocally involves a wide range and great frequency of sexual encounters and pleasures, with a large number of partners. There are good ethico-political reasons for this, as well as hedonistic ones.” According to Shaviro, this allows Delany to present “even the most ‘extreme’ sexual practices as forms of civility and community, no less than as forms of ecstasy.”
This is an intriguing glimpse into the latter part of Delany’s career, where a book like Phallos is no less an extraordinary utopian vision than Triton (1976): “Delany, for the last thirty-five years or more, has already been looking forward to a possible new articulation of desire – and civility and compassion, and excess and extremity …” However, Shaviro is well aware that the utopia depicted in Phallos requires “radical changes in our social, political, economic, and environmental conditions.”
This is a lot of theoretical baggage for a slight sword-and-sandals novella to carry, but rest assured that you do not have to read the critical essays. It is a separate section at the end that can simply be elided from your reading experience. Doing so will in no way detract from Delany’s extraordinary achievement here, which is to deconstruct typical fantasy tropes (and celebrate them at the same time.)
So, the basic idea behind Phallos is “an unreliable narrator giving us a dubious, second-hand account of a book that is itself fictional.” Having said that, I was amazed to learn from Kenneth R. James’s essay that it is, indeed, based on a true historical incident, namely “the emperor Hadrian’s establishment of a cult devoted to his deceased male lover, Antinous.”
Neoptolomus’s quest, both for the jewelled phallos belonging to the image of the nameless god of an obscure mystery cult and for an understanding of its significance, mirrors the search by the outer tale’s three contemporary scholars – Randy, Binky, and Phyllis – for the identity of the novel’s elusive author. (Both these quests resonate in turn with the outermost narrative, an authorial foreword synopsising the story of Adrian Rome, whose quest to find a copy of the novel eventually leads him to Randy’s own synopsis – which thus stands revealed as an excerpt or extract, the only non-synoptic part of Adrian’s tale we’re given.) In turn, the exegetical debates of the three scholars over the book’s authorship and dates of composition, the credibility of the historical apparatus accompanying it, and, increasingly, the reliability of Randy’s editorial criteria, mirror the debates over the story of Hadrian and Antinous.
Poor Randy. Binky and Phyllis seem to take no small degree of satisfaction in pointing out the subconscious biases and innate prejudices in Randy’s synopsis of the missing/mythical text. His reasoning is that he cannot be as explicit as the source material because he is posting on a university website. However, Binky and Phyllis are onto him … Instead, Randy’s attempted editing of the sexual content, describing one scene, for example, as “five pages devoted to the sensations accruing between the moment one decides to release one’s bladder and the moment urine actually erupts from the foreskin-hooded head”, has the opposite effect of magnifying the lurid qualities of the source material. This is definitely not the prim and proper academic gaze that Randy is hoping to adopt, as he becomes increasingly enamoured of the polymorphous goings-on he is editing…
“Haven’t you learned yet that quests such as yours can never be fulfilled?” a character asks. Elsewhere: “So, you are another searcher after the secrets of the nameless god’s stolen cock.” As a fantasy trope, the ‘quest’ is not only a sure-fire way to get from Point A to Point B, but a guaranteed recipe in terms of character and structure. Instead, Delany turns the concept on its head, as there is “no grounding of desire (or anything else) … no metaphysical conclusion, no unimpeachable certainty, no Final Theory of Everything.”
Hence Shaviro emphasises that Phallos is indeed about “the phallus of Freudian/Lacanian theory, the signifier of desire, and of erotic (and masculine) potency, but which (as a mere signifier) is always absent, or continually other than itself.” Thus, as Neoptolomus continues on his quest to find the nameless god’s missing bejewelled cock, the nature of that journey, and the potent symbolism inherent in that sacred object, begin to blur and transform.
What does this mean in terms of the reader’s experience? There is an incredible sense of nostalgia to Phallos, which reminded me strongly of the Nevèrÿon sequence, Delany’s other great deconstruction of sword-and-sorcery tropes. In particular, I was reminded of the ending of ‘The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals’ (1985), which incidentally is often cited as “the first novel-length treatment of AIDS to appear from a major US publisher” [Wikipedia]. There is an extraordinary scene at the end of that where a character realises how porous the border is between the mythical world of Nevèrÿon and the real world, and how it is almost impossible to tell where the one begins or the other ends…
If there is a strong callout to Nevèrÿon here, then long-time Delany fans will also recognise the quasi god/beast from The Mad Man, and such cool nods as the ‘Sisters of Bellona’, who serve to preserve the cult of the nameless god. Indeed, Phallos is probably the ideal introduction to Delany for new readers, and a wonderful summation and retrospective for long-time ones.
I started this review by stating how much fun this is to read. And it is. Delany is a wonderfully tactile and descriptive writer. He brings entire worlds to life with such effortless economy, and his characters are flawed and believable. Binky and Phyllis’s exasperation at the increasingly obsessive edits of Randy is hilarious. Besides representing Delany at his most playful, it is also a commentary on the hermetic world of academia, and readers and writing in general. Just as the original text-within-a-text is transformed into a Lacanian ‘absent centre’, so too does Delany make us marvel at the power and multitudes contained within the pages of a single book:
Binky phoned last night, however: He cannot wait. He asked if I might get him a Xerox copy of the entire text, which he promises to take better care of than he has his dog-eared, decade-old, second-hand mass-market.
(Will mass-market paperbacks endure, I wonder, twenty, even fifteen, more years?)
March 2, 2016
“A tale of a tale,” to cite Delany’s own characterization, thus situating his text within the tradition of self-reflexive literature associated so closely with Borges; declaring it a phallus-obsessed
Ficciones
is inevitably reductive but sketches out the general textual landscape. Just like the Argentinian master, Delany unapologetically takes it as a given that literary esoterica and other epistemological pursuits can be just as thrilling as an adventure yarn or mystery story. For Phallos is indeed a mystery at heart, albeit unconventionally so.
A brief opening note outlines the experience of a young potential reader who, after failing to track down a copy of an obscure erotic novel called “Phallos” by an anonymous author, is forced to resign himself instead a lengthy synopsis posted on the internet by an obscure academic residing in Moscow, Idaho. This summary is what constitutes the main text of Phallos, though other layers of narrative become intricately intertwined with this ostensibly "straightforward" explanatory text.
[...]
Despite the fact that all of the explicit sexual material has been edited out (the author worries over issues of hosting sexually explicit material on a university website), I found much of Phallos to still be a surprisingly sexy read. Delany is masterful at titillating solely through inference...
[...]
I also ended up being quite touched by Neoptolomus’s constant discovery and affirmation of the polymorphous quality of love, sex, and desire: “with each of my adventures,” he muses at one point, “I had thought I’d learned a lesson about love, only to discover, with the next, I’d merely learned a lesson about a lover.” And to claims Neoptolomus as a democratic lover would be an understatement: his bedfellows encompass all races, ages, nationalities, and takes no mind of class status, level of education, sexual proclivities, or even orthodox standards of attractiveness. It’s constantly a pleasure to encounter how our protagonist discovers beauty and sexual fulfillment simply by being open to their possibility.
I’m not sure if the novella of Phallos is republished here in its original form, or has been altered in this “enhanced and revised edition,” which is essentially a scholarly edition of the text. Addended at the end is an “Afterward” as well as three scholarly essays—they’re all very academic in nature (that is, highly theoretical and employ the terminology of the academy), and I found lots of interest while perusing them without getting too caught up in the intricacies of their arguments. I’m glad they’re included as they affirm that a text like Phallos merits such close scholarly attention, though I also think it would have been nice to also include at least one analysis immediately accessible to the casual reader.
In the end what I found so wonderful about Phallos is that it essentially invites the reader to embrace the text as a kind of sophisticated variation on the “choose your own adventure” formula. Delany seems to intentionally avoid ever dictating how the text should be read or understood, placing that control (literally) into the reader’s hands. Skip over the extensive footnotes, or dig into the minutiae. Ponder over the broad philosophical questions that are slyly invoked, or simply be entertained by a quick-paced erotic adventure tale. Admire the intricate narrative construction, or marvel at the meticulous historical detail. In the end, it’s all up to you.
[The full review can be found on my blog Queer Modernisms . Apologies for the inconvenience, but as posting a review on Goodreads is to "expressly grant" full license to the content, it's my small attempt at maintaining some control over my writing.]
A brief opening note outlines the experience of a young potential reader who, after failing to track down a copy of an obscure erotic novel called “Phallos” by an anonymous author, is forced to resign himself instead a lengthy synopsis posted on the internet by an obscure academic residing in Moscow, Idaho. This summary is what constitutes the main text of Phallos, though other layers of narrative become intricately intertwined with this ostensibly "straightforward" explanatory text.
[...]
Despite the fact that all of the explicit sexual material has been edited out (the author worries over issues of hosting sexually explicit material on a university website), I found much of Phallos to still be a surprisingly sexy read. Delany is masterful at titillating solely through inference...
[...]
I also ended up being quite touched by Neoptolomus’s constant discovery and affirmation of the polymorphous quality of love, sex, and desire: “with each of my adventures,” he muses at one point, “I had thought I’d learned a lesson about love, only to discover, with the next, I’d merely learned a lesson about a lover.” And to claims Neoptolomus as a democratic lover would be an understatement: his bedfellows encompass all races, ages, nationalities, and takes no mind of class status, level of education, sexual proclivities, or even orthodox standards of attractiveness. It’s constantly a pleasure to encounter how our protagonist discovers beauty and sexual fulfillment simply by being open to their possibility.
I’m not sure if the novella of Phallos is republished here in its original form, or has been altered in this “enhanced and revised edition,” which is essentially a scholarly edition of the text. Addended at the end is an “Afterward” as well as three scholarly essays—they’re all very academic in nature (that is, highly theoretical and employ the terminology of the academy), and I found lots of interest while perusing them without getting too caught up in the intricacies of their arguments. I’m glad they’re included as they affirm that a text like Phallos merits such close scholarly attention, though I also think it would have been nice to also include at least one analysis immediately accessible to the casual reader.
In the end what I found so wonderful about Phallos is that it essentially invites the reader to embrace the text as a kind of sophisticated variation on the “choose your own adventure” formula. Delany seems to intentionally avoid ever dictating how the text should be read or understood, placing that control (literally) into the reader’s hands. Skip over the extensive footnotes, or dig into the minutiae. Ponder over the broad philosophical questions that are slyly invoked, or simply be entertained by a quick-paced erotic adventure tale. Admire the intricate narrative construction, or marvel at the meticulous historical detail. In the end, it’s all up to you.
[The full review can be found on my blog Queer Modernisms . Apologies for the inconvenience, but as posting a review on Goodreads is to "expressly grant" full license to the content, it's my small attempt at maintaining some control over my writing.]
June 12, 2022
This book is a work of genius. It is a work of *genius*. Funny, filthy, philosophical… I only wish I could have read it in college at the same time I was reading all the other “classics” of Western civilization.
All I want to do now is read this book again, this time with a highlighter, a pencil, and the Internet on standby. That, and read everything that everyone’s ever written and thought about it. And then think about it myself some more.
All I want to do now is read this book again, this time with a highlighter, a pencil, and the Internet on standby. That, and read everything that everyone’s ever written and thought about it. And then think about it myself some more.
September 6, 2022
I know very few people I could recommend this book to, but I loved it.
July 18, 2025
Conceptually so so fun— about a man who is trying to find an obscure (fictional) erotic novel he had/lost as a teenager, but all he can find is a synopsis/analysis of it on some guy’s blog, which makes up the bulk of the book and includes “excerpts” from the original book. The synopsis, however, is written by a weirdo who is a little prudish about the sex scenes and tries to skip over and write around them, which frustrates his two friends who provide footnote commentary and talk about how his synopsis misses the point of the actual novel. So like four layers of narration!
In practice though, a little boring/dry and I had to trudge to get through this despite only being like 70 pages. I wanted the narration or the original novel to be weirder/sexier/more spooky! The central fictional novel is erotica set in Ancient Rome and Egypt revolving around a cult of an unnamed god and his statue’s “phallos” which was stolen and may be valuable/have a scroll in it containing hidden knowledge. This all sounds very cool on paper but most of it plays out as kind of stiff historical fiction with some gay sex sprinkled in and some occult stuff in the very margins. I’d Rather Be Reading Borges! Important context for a handful of other Delany books which feature the same creepy well-endowed god, but otherwise not for me.
In practice though, a little boring/dry and I had to trudge to get through this despite only being like 70 pages. I wanted the narration or the original novel to be weirder/sexier/more spooky! The central fictional novel is erotica set in Ancient Rome and Egypt revolving around a cult of an unnamed god and his statue’s “phallos” which was stolen and may be valuable/have a scroll in it containing hidden knowledge. This all sounds very cool on paper but most of it plays out as kind of stiff historical fiction with some gay sex sprinkled in and some occult stuff in the very margins. I’d Rather Be Reading Borges! Important context for a handful of other Delany books which feature the same creepy well-endowed god, but otherwise not for me.
September 23, 2020
Из краткого предисловия романа мы узнаём, что некий чернокожий юноша Адриан Роум ищет анонимный, давно исчезнувший из печати и ставший библиографической редкостью порнографический роман «Фаллос» (чтобы не путаться, назовём этот анонимный роман в романе Фаллос-А, а роман Дилэни – Фаллос-Д). Адриан на протяжении нескольких лет поисков много раз на него натыкался, но упускал из рук, пока однажды ему не выдался шанс прочесть в Интернете синопсис романа. Этот-то синопсис за авторством некоего Рэнди Педарсона из Москвы, штат Айдахо, и составляет тело романа Дилэни. Синопсис сопровождают комментарии самого Рэнди и его друзей из академических кругов - Бинки и Филлис.
Роман, по словам Дилэни, представляет собой «рассказ о рассказе», сочащуюся сексом историю из древнего мира (от Египта до Сиракуз, от Рима до Афин и обратно) о приключениях героя-сироты по имени Неоптолемей и его поиске «украденного» драгоценного фаллоса Безымянного бога. Ценность фаллоса – в предположительно спрятанных внутри него секретах науки и общества, которые даруют власть, знание и богатство. На своем пути Неоптолемей встречает римского императора Адриана и его любовника Антиноя, становится рабом кочевников, участвует во множестве разнообразных оргий и сексуальных активностей, обретает богатство и наследство, но тайна фаллоса Безымянного бога так и остается нераскрытой.
Комментарии трех друзей-академиков, своего рода экзегетика Фаллос-А, об авторстве романа, датах его написания, достоверности исторических подробностей и допустимости редакторского подхода Энди (при пересказе романа он опускает многие сексуальные сцены и целые страницы) сопровождают обсуждения истории Адриана и Антиноя. Взятые вместе – сам анонимный роман и комментарии к нему – эти два нарративых уровня превращают Фаллос-Д в аллегорию чтения и интерпретации прочитанного, а Дилэни со всей однозначностью конструирует своему открытому роману идеального читателя, или, словами Умберто Эко, М-Читателя (см. «Роль читателя»).
Приключения Неоптолемея выступают как бы десублимированной версией приключений героя другого раннего интертекста – «Марий-эпикуреец» Уолтера Патера, философско-исторического романа о временах Марка Аврелия. Фаллос-Д не делает из этого тайны: Филлис пишет, что «во всём Фаллос-А чувствуется Патер». Где у Патера герой проходит путь интеллектуального становления в поисках своей религии и философии, там у Дилэни герой берёт и отдаётся на бесчисленных оргиях и познаёт мужчин в поисках фаллоса, размер ценности которого (pun intended), в лакановской манере, определяется тем, что в него вкладывают (секреты науки и могущества). Текстовые пропуски в описании сексуальных сцен как у Патера, так и в пересказе Фаллос-А у Рэнди рассматриваются через базовый постулат квир-интерпретации текста. А именно: существование в момент создания текста дискурса, контролировавшего выражение гомосексуальности, позволяет нам прочитывать умолчания и пропуски в текстах на сексуальные мотивы либо как бессознательное (само)подавление, либо как намеренную адаптацию к требованию времени. Держа это в уме, несложно разгадать головоломку, которую задает читателю Фаллос-Д – порнографический роман без сексуальных сцен. (А также – восполнить пробелы в биографиях авторов и понять мотивы их творчества, как делает Дидье Эрибон в «Réflexions sur la question gay» с творчеством Уолтера Патера.) Сокращение в пересказе Рэнди можно рассматривать как его собственное отвращение к сексуальности, но скорее – как говорит Рэнди, его намерением было представить анонимный роман миру и дать ему голос – как стратегическое решение и сознательный ответ на дискурс силы, подавляющий гомосексуальность и тем самым подавляющий вариант счастья. Неразрешимая природа сокращений - как раз то, чем Фаллос-Д высвечивает этот дискурс и делает его очевидным.
«Фаллос» Сэмюэля Дилэни – этический роман и в некотором роде роман воспитания. Он конструирует этическую систему – где-то стоическую, где-то эпикурейскую, в форме своеобразного философской повести в духе 18 века («Кандид» Вольтера, «Нескромные сокровища» Дидро, «История Расселаса» Джонсона). «Фаллос» – роман о достижении счастья, об искусстве жить, ars vitae, он предлагает читателю объяснение не только того, что значит жить, но и что значит жить хорошо и жить лучше, чем хорошо.
Роман, по словам Дилэни, представляет собой «рассказ о рассказе», сочащуюся сексом историю из древнего мира (от Египта до Сиракуз, от Рима до Афин и обратно) о приключениях героя-сироты по имени Неоптолемей и его поиске «украденного» драгоценного фаллоса Безымянного бога. Ценность фаллоса – в предположительно спрятанных внутри него секретах науки и общества, которые даруют власть, знание и богатство. На своем пути Неоптолемей встречает римского императора Адриана и его любовника Антиноя, становится рабом кочевников, участвует во множестве разнообразных оргий и сексуальных активностей, обретает богатство и наследство, но тайна фаллоса Безымянного бога так и остается нераскрытой.
Комментарии трех друзей-академиков, своего рода экзегетика Фаллос-А, об авторстве романа, датах его написания, достоверности исторических подробностей и допустимости редакторского подхода Энди (при пересказе романа он опускает многие сексуальные сцены и целые страницы) сопровождают обсуждения истории Адриана и Антиноя. Взятые вместе – сам анонимный роман и комментарии к нему – эти два нарративых уровня превращают Фаллос-Д в аллегорию чтения и интерпретации прочитанного, а Дилэни со всей однозначностью конструирует своему открытому роману идеального читателя, или, словами Умберто Эко, М-Читателя (см. «Роль читателя»).
Приключения Неоптолемея выступают как бы десублимированной версией приключений героя другого раннего интертекста – «Марий-эпикуреец» Уолтера Патера, философско-исторического романа о временах Марка Аврелия. Фаллос-Д не делает из этого тайны: Филлис пишет, что «во всём Фаллос-А чувствуется Патер». Где у Патера герой проходит путь интеллектуального становления в поисках своей религии и философии, там у Дилэни герой берёт и отдаётся на бесчисленных оргиях и познаёт мужчин в поисках фаллоса, размер ценности которого (pun intended), в лакановской манере, определяется тем, что в него вкладывают (секреты науки и могущества). Текстовые пропуски в описании сексуальных сцен как у Патера, так и в пересказе Фаллос-А у Рэнди рассматриваются через базовый постулат квир-интерпретации текста. А именно: существование в момент создания текста дискурса, контролировавшего выражение гомосексуальности, позволяет нам прочитывать умолчания и пропуски в текстах на сексуальные мотивы либо как бессознательное (само)подавление, либо как намеренную адаптацию к требованию времени. Держа это в уме, несложно разгадать головоломку, которую задает читателю Фаллос-Д – порнографический роман без сексуальных сцен. (А также – восполнить пробелы в биографиях авторов и понять мотивы их творчества, как делает Дидье Эрибон в «Réflexions sur la question gay» с творчеством Уолтера Патера.) Сокращение в пересказе Рэнди можно рассматривать как его собственное отвращение к сексуальности, но скорее – как говорит Рэнди, его намерением было представить анонимный роман миру и дать ему голос – как стратегическое решение и сознательный ответ на дискурс силы, подавляющий гомосексуальность и тем самым подавляющий вариант счастья. Неразрешимая природа сокращений - как раз то, чем Фаллос-Д высвечивает этот дискурс и делает его очевидным.
«Фаллос» Сэмюэля Дилэни – этический роман и в некотором роде роман воспитания. Он конструирует этическую систему – где-то стоическую, где-то эпикурейскую, в форме своеобразного философской повести в духе 18 века («Кандид» Вольтера, «Нескромные сокровища» Дидро, «История Расселаса» Джонсона). «Фаллос» – роман о достижении счастья, об искусстве жить, ars vitae, он предлагает читателю объяснение не только того, что значит жить, но и что значит жить хорошо и жить лучше, чем хорошо.
July 29, 2013
Mr Delany enjoys a widespread acclaim by critics and common readers: with good cause, his mastery of the language is outstanding and he knows perfectly how to develop a good story.
Both qualities are to be found and appreciated in "Phallos" too but an author so esteemed must perforce keep his standards extremely high.
In this work he choses a literary topos: he feigns he has found an older work by an unknown author, a pornographical novel set in the late Roman empire and he engages the reader in a witty, cultured commentary on this novel, inserting erotic excerpts from the same.
Problem is, his "commentary" is not witty enough to stand on its own feet, and the excerpts, though teasing enough, are not so outright erotic as to give satisfaction at least in that way.
To read this work is just like reading an interesting literary essay (with some useless shows of erudition where the language is convoluted) about a work which does not exist.
Both qualities are to be found and appreciated in "Phallos" too but an author so esteemed must perforce keep his standards extremely high.
In this work he choses a literary topos: he feigns he has found an older work by an unknown author, a pornographical novel set in the late Roman empire and he engages the reader in a witty, cultured commentary on this novel, inserting erotic excerpts from the same.
Problem is, his "commentary" is not witty enough to stand on its own feet, and the excerpts, though teasing enough, are not so outright erotic as to give satisfaction at least in that way.
To read this work is just like reading an interesting literary essay (with some useless shows of erudition where the language is convoluted) about a work which does not exist.
Read
October 29, 2025highly recommend to any of my friends who love beautiful writing and lacan
March 10, 2017
Much as I love Delany's work, sometimes he gets over-convoluted and gimmicky. This is a short novel about a supposedly legendary pornographic novel reputed to have ancient origins, but may really just be a modern fraud. Not an unknown phenomenon, there are many examples of works that have been "back-dated" by devotees (or art dealers of questionable ethics) and cult leaders (possibly the most significant of which is Hermes Trismegistus, a late classical era invention that ultimately took on the aura of something much, much older among alchemists). In this, Delany gives a thoroughly savvy account of researching the provenance of the book, and then goes on to tell the story contained in the book.
And here's where it gets odd. Supposedly, the narrator has a copy of the book. Instead of just republishing it complete, he excerpts it and then talks about what is left out. It becomes, then, a book about the story you would be reading if you had the original book, with commentary and extensive footnotes. It is not, ultimately, a pornographic novel but a novel about a pornographic novel (This Is Not A Cigar) which, treated this way, is not very pornographic at all. (The narrator tells us he's leaving out the "juicy bits" and only describes what they might be---"the erotic acrobatics then goes on for seven pages" etc.)
It's a cute trick and entertaining as an example of academic/literary study, a kind of palimpsest. Of course, all this is layered atop the fact that the book in question is wholly fictitious. As an example of one of the ways in which fiction can become, by gradual steps, "fact" it is a very clever book. Mercifully, it is also very short (95 pages). Once the idea is thoroughly conveyed, it loses interest unless the reader is a devotee of the kind of fiction it parodies, in which case it may be a thoroughly tantalizing piece.
And here's where it gets odd. Supposedly, the narrator has a copy of the book. Instead of just republishing it complete, he excerpts it and then talks about what is left out. It becomes, then, a book about the story you would be reading if you had the original book, with commentary and extensive footnotes. It is not, ultimately, a pornographic novel but a novel about a pornographic novel (This Is Not A Cigar) which, treated this way, is not very pornographic at all. (The narrator tells us he's leaving out the "juicy bits" and only describes what they might be---"the erotic acrobatics then goes on for seven pages" etc.)
It's a cute trick and entertaining as an example of academic/literary study, a kind of palimpsest. Of course, all this is layered atop the fact that the book in question is wholly fictitious. As an example of one of the ways in which fiction can become, by gradual steps, "fact" it is a very clever book. Mercifully, it is also very short (95 pages). Once the idea is thoroughly conveyed, it loses interest unless the reader is a devotee of the kind of fiction it parodies, in which case it may be a thoroughly tantalizing piece.
December 26, 2013
Certainly one of the most perverse (pardon the pun) "pornographic" novellas ever written the mostly cold academic tone of this worked for me despite Delany's indulgences (the phrase "his large member" must be repeated over two dozen times in the 120 pages).
November 21, 2020
I had thought this book was a joke when I read the blurb. I was right but it was a deep joke that kept making me laugh again and again. I enjoyed the writers attempt to make it all seem so real in history with the false write ups. A fine book.
November 30, 2018
This is a book of absences and echoes.
One thing that is absent is a novel called _Phallos_. There is a summary of it by one (presumably fictional) Randy Pedersen, with occasional helpful comments from his friends Binky and Phyllis. _Phallos_ is a gay porn novel, and _one_ of the things Pedersen leaves out is the lubricious content that makes porn porn.
His summary tells of a man from 2nd-century Syracuse, who, through a series of plot machinations, winds up searching for the golden phallos of the Nameless God. He never finds it, but along the way he meets his life-partner.
Binky and Phyllis suggest that, even on the level of plot, Randy has left a great deal out.
Meanwhile, outside this, before this, there's a brief description of a young man named Adrian Rome, who occasionally encounters a copy of _Phallos_, but never manages to acquire and read it - in the end, all he gets to read is Randy's summary. But, in the search, he meets his life-partner...
One thing that is absent is a novel called _Phallos_. There is a summary of it by one (presumably fictional) Randy Pedersen, with occasional helpful comments from his friends Binky and Phyllis. _Phallos_ is a gay porn novel, and _one_ of the things Pedersen leaves out is the lubricious content that makes porn porn.
His summary tells of a man from 2nd-century Syracuse, who, through a series of plot machinations, winds up searching for the golden phallos of the Nameless God. He never finds it, but along the way he meets his life-partner.
Binky and Phyllis suggest that, even on the level of plot, Randy has left a great deal out.
Meanwhile, outside this, before this, there's a brief description of a young man named Adrian Rome, who occasionally encounters a copy of _Phallos_, but never manages to acquire and read it - in the end, all he gets to read is Randy's summary. But, in the search, he meets his life-partner...
March 9, 2025
I had initially read Phallos as a lesser, ancient Greek version of Kramer's Faggots but the ending footnotes really demonstrate how deep the text goes. There's so many layers to it: a young man becomes obsessed with finding the novella Phallos but only finds a summary on the internet which includes pieces of the original text. This summary is also critiqued by two other people who have read the original and note the erasure of basically every woman and censoring the intense sexual content. There's no twist to it but I went from underwhelmed to fascinated in a matter of pages at the end.
September 4, 2025
Delany continues to Be A God
Erotic, funny, winds in on itself but not so compact it blocks the light. Delanyisms abound - bitten fingernails, age gaps, chunky silver jewelry. I draw a lot of connections to his relationship theories from red/blue Times Square. There’s just so much to *say* about sex, so what happens when you say nothing.
Erotic, funny, winds in on itself but not so compact it blocks the light. Delanyisms abound - bitten fingernails, age gaps, chunky silver jewelry. I draw a lot of connections to his relationship theories from red/blue Times Square. There’s just so much to *say* about sex, so what happens when you say nothing.
March 28, 2025
AUDREY'S ONE-SENTENCE BOOK REVIEWS
Neoptolemus: Maybe the real phallos was the friends with benefits we made along the way
Neoptolemus: Maybe the real phallos was the friends with benefits we made along the way
February 20, 2024
my god this is horny
November 12, 2014
One of Delaney's newer books, Phallos is a story-within-a-story. An interesting study in multilayered ways to tell stories, the narrator claims to be a scholar who presents a summary and brief history of "Phallos," a gay pornographic novella supposedly lost throughout the centuries and just recently resurfaced. The narrator (Randy) provides a summary, as well as several excerpts, of "Phallos," and he, as well as two friends Binky and Phyllis, provide occasional commentary on the likelihood (or lack thereof) that "Phallos" is a centuries-old text as opposed to decades-old. Its authenticity becomes elusive, just as the title phallos--a supposedly stolen relic--is in the inner story.
I found the form refreshing--I've seen it a few times in different novels, but this one manages to successfully make the inner story and the framing story mirror each other. Ultimately it is a story about power--the phallos, just like power, does not exist, and seeming to have it is the same as having it. It's a commentary on how power is practiced in our world--power becomes a thing that we give to people, whether we're aware of it or not. It's social power that Delaney is interested--in words and lies but also how people are treated because of it.
It would have had five except, throughout the summary sections, I wished to have more "excerpts" from the invented book. Delaney's voice as Neoptolomus' the narrator is lush and rich and full of insight.
It's funny to have a feeling that a lot of that insight is missing, because at the end the scholar Randy says he's elided much of the book's power by providing only summary. Phyllis and Binky, in pages-long footnotes, rush to chastise him for excluding much of the racial, sexual, and gender politics. That exclusion itself, then, becomes part of the discussion. There are a lot of layers in this novella that need even more unpacking from someone more attuned than I, but ultimately I enjoyed it and hope to use the form in my own work.
I found the form refreshing--I've seen it a few times in different novels, but this one manages to successfully make the inner story and the framing story mirror each other. Ultimately it is a story about power--the phallos, just like power, does not exist, and seeming to have it is the same as having it. It's a commentary on how power is practiced in our world--power becomes a thing that we give to people, whether we're aware of it or not. It's social power that Delaney is interested--in words and lies but also how people are treated because of it.
It would have had five except, throughout the summary sections, I wished to have more "excerpts" from the invented book. Delaney's voice as Neoptolomus' the narrator is lush and rich and full of insight.
It's funny to have a feeling that a lot of that insight is missing, because at the end the scholar Randy says he's elided much of the book's power by providing only summary. Phyllis and Binky, in pages-long footnotes, rush to chastise him for excluding much of the racial, sexual, and gender politics. That exclusion itself, then, becomes part of the discussion. There are a lot of layers in this novella that need even more unpacking from someone more attuned than I, but ultimately I enjoyed it and hope to use the form in my own work.
May 5, 2012
This is an odd one. A somewhat scholarly analysis/summary of what is may be a work of gay erotica from the 17th? century or a hoax from 1969 (in Delany's next novel, Dark Reflections, the protagonist describes writing the novel, so it's probably the latter). Most of the actual erotic content is elided as the text summarizes a story involving the pursuit of the phallos of the unnamed god (itself quite similar to the beast/creature appearing in the Mad Man) that may or may not exist and may or may not symbolize an assortment of things.
For me it all works. It's a tangled and convoluted story that promises to reward rereadings (and, while the premise seems to owe much to Borges, the text itself reminds me not at all of him) and there are multiple layers of the tale itself to engage with. And, being Delany, there are moments of writing that are absolutely spellbinding - the last paragraph of the 1969 text is amazing.
Probably not for everyone - even in summary things are rather explicit - but quite rewarding nonetheless.
For me it all works. It's a tangled and convoluted story that promises to reward rereadings (and, while the premise seems to owe much to Borges, the text itself reminds me not at all of him) and there are multiple layers of the tale itself to engage with. And, being Delany, there are moments of writing that are absolutely spellbinding - the last paragraph of the 1969 text is amazing.
Probably not for everyone - even in summary things are rather explicit - but quite rewarding nonetheless.
May 27, 2013
On its surface, this novel describes a scholarly search for a likely-forged, much older text purporting to describe a lost Roman novel. Also, finally, a worthy successor to Petronius! And after all, not everyone besides Hadrian refused to worship Antinoos.
Much will be made of the shocking contents, high intellectual qualities, etc. of this book-- but that's just Delany for ya. What's really special about this book is Delany's portrayal of how gay men build our lives and communities together, and transmit our wisdom across our generations, with or without anyone else's knowledge or approval. That is what makes this book a precious little stick of dynamite in the puritanical walls of the ages.
If you like that kind of thing too, you'll also enjoy his latest, "Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders." Also NB, an expanded 2nd edition of "Phallos" is immediately forthcoming.
Much will be made of the shocking contents, high intellectual qualities, etc. of this book-- but that's just Delany for ya. What's really special about this book is Delany's portrayal of how gay men build our lives and communities together, and transmit our wisdom across our generations, with or without anyone else's knowledge or approval. That is what makes this book a precious little stick of dynamite in the puritanical walls of the ages.
If you like that kind of thing too, you'll also enjoy his latest, "Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders." Also NB, an expanded 2nd edition of "Phallos" is immediately forthcoming.
July 4, 2016
I almost forgot this book is fiction. It is an interesting read with some hot scenes and tells the story in a way I've not seen often done. Phallos
April 26, 2015
I have been a great fan of Delany's non science fiction books. This book seems to be a mix of science fiction and gay novel. To me, it is primarily Delaney showing off is enormous erudition!
January 21, 2014
Devoured this book. Excellent.
December 18, 2018
Delany is a magnificent writer, but I wish he'd go back to science fiction or fantasy. :-(
Read
February 27, 2015Fiction D3379p 2013
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