What do you think?
Rate this book
In Search of Silence: The Journals of Samuel R. Delany, Volume 1
The renowned novelist and critic's private journals, spanning from his years as a high school student in the Bronx to early adult life in San Francisco.
For fifty years Samuel Delany has cultivated a special relationship with language in works of fiction, criticism, and memoir that have garnered critical praise and legions of fans. The present volume--the first in a series--reveals a new dimension of his genius. In Search of Silence presents over a decade's worth of Delany's private journals, commencing in 1957 when he was still a student at the Bronx High School of Science, and ending in 1969 when he was living in San Francisco and on the verge of reconceiving the novel that would become Dhalgren.
In these pages, Delany muses on the writing of the stories that will establish him as a science fiction wunderkind, the early years of his marriage to the poet Marilyn Hacker, performances as a singer-songwriter during the heyday of the American folk revival, travels in Europe, experiences in a New York City commune, and much more--and crosses paths with artists working in many genres, including poets such as Robert Frost, W. H. Auden, and Marie Ponsot, and science fiction writers such as Arthur C. Clarke, Michael Moorcock, Roger Zelazny, and Joanna Russ. Delany scholar Kenneth R. James presents the journal entries alongside generous samplings of story outlines, poetry, fragments of novels and essays that have never seen publication, and more; James also provides biographical synopses and an extensive set of endnotes to supply contextual information and connect journal material to Delany's published work.
"This is a tremendously significant and vital addition to the oeuvre of Samuel Delany; it clarifies questions not only of the writer's process, but also his development--to see, in his juvenilia, traces that take full form in his novels--is literally breathtaking." --Matthew Cheney, author of Blood: Stories
"Traversing Delany's youth, we see a precocious mind grappling with his own talent he lives on two registers, participating in the world and also observing it, living simultaneously as a kid in NYC and, 'a writer of genius.'" --Robert Minto, New Republic
"Mesmerizing . . . a true portrait of an artist as a young Black man . . . already visible in these pages are the wit, sensitivity, penetration, playfulness and the incandescent intelligence that will characterize Delany and his extraordinary work." --Junot D�az, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
For fifty years Samuel Delany has cultivated a special relationship with language in works of fiction, criticism, and memoir that have garnered critical praise and legions of fans. The present volume--the first in a series--reveals a new dimension of his genius. In Search of Silence presents over a decade's worth of Delany's private journals, commencing in 1957 when he was still a student at the Bronx High School of Science, and ending in 1969 when he was living in San Francisco and on the verge of reconceiving the novel that would become Dhalgren.
In these pages, Delany muses on the writing of the stories that will establish him as a science fiction wunderkind, the early years of his marriage to the poet Marilyn Hacker, performances as a singer-songwriter during the heyday of the American folk revival, travels in Europe, experiences in a New York City commune, and much more--and crosses paths with artists working in many genres, including poets such as Robert Frost, W. H. Auden, and Marie Ponsot, and science fiction writers such as Arthur C. Clarke, Michael Moorcock, Roger Zelazny, and Joanna Russ. Delany scholar Kenneth R. James presents the journal entries alongside generous samplings of story outlines, poetry, fragments of novels and essays that have never seen publication, and more; James also provides biographical synopses and an extensive set of endnotes to supply contextual information and connect journal material to Delany's published work.
"This is a tremendously significant and vital addition to the oeuvre of Samuel Delany; it clarifies questions not only of the writer's process, but also his development--to see, in his juvenilia, traces that take full form in his novels--is literally breathtaking." --Matthew Cheney, author of Blood: Stories
"Traversing Delany's youth, we see a precocious mind grappling with his own talent he lives on two registers, participating in the world and also observing it, living simultaneously as a kid in NYC and, 'a writer of genius.'" --Robert Minto, New Republic
"Mesmerizing . . . a true portrait of an artist as a young Black man . . . already visible in these pages are the wit, sensitivity, penetration, playfulness and the incandescent intelligence that will characterize Delany and his extraordinary work." --Junot D�az, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
- GenresNonfiction
720 pages, Hardcover
Published February 17, 2017
7 people are currently reading
135 people want to read
About the author
Samuel R. Delany
306 books2,250 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 23, 2024
I was born in 1969 ...
I am eagerly awaiting ‘Autumnal City: The Journals of Samuel R. Delany, Volume 2’, to be edited by Kenneth James, which is being crowdfunded on indiegogo. I have no idea how far the campaign is or how much it still needs. One of the weirder ‘perks’ for higher-level donors is a Delany t-shirt ... Everyone who is famous ends up on a t-shirt at some point.
I suppose it is an indictment of the publishing industry, the limited interests of SF fans, or a combination of both, that a writer of Delany’s stature has to resort to crowdfunding to get a scholarly resource as important as his journals out there. I think his last novel ‘Shoat Rumblin’ was self-published on Amazon.
Anyway, this is definitely for Delany completists and researchers only. Even then, it makes for exhaustive reading, so I kind of dipped in and out of interesting bits. It gives a fascinating glimpse into Delany’s thoughts and ideas, how these progressed, and the genesis of some of his earlier SF novels specifically.
I do like the idea of the t-shirt …
I am eagerly awaiting ‘Autumnal City: The Journals of Samuel R. Delany, Volume 2’, to be edited by Kenneth James, which is being crowdfunded on indiegogo. I have no idea how far the campaign is or how much it still needs. One of the weirder ‘perks’ for higher-level donors is a Delany t-shirt ... Everyone who is famous ends up on a t-shirt at some point.
I suppose it is an indictment of the publishing industry, the limited interests of SF fans, or a combination of both, that a writer of Delany’s stature has to resort to crowdfunding to get a scholarly resource as important as his journals out there. I think his last novel ‘Shoat Rumblin’ was self-published on Amazon.
Anyway, this is definitely for Delany completists and researchers only. Even then, it makes for exhaustive reading, so I kind of dipped in and out of interesting bits. It gives a fascinating glimpse into Delany’s thoughts and ideas, how these progressed, and the genesis of some of his earlier SF novels specifically.
I do like the idea of the t-shirt …
February 14, 2017
A new book by Delany is always cause for celebration chez moi, and this is no exception. For the past week and a half it has been my only leisure reading; that it has taken me that long to read a six hundred page book is a measure both of its density/richness and of how little leisure reading time I have lately.
What this book is:
Beginning near the end of December 1957 - dating is a little complex -, the young Samuel Ray "Chip" Delany, Jr. began carrying around a spiral notebook and jotting in it his thoughts, observations, poetry, sexual fantasies, notes for stories, and many other things. He continued this practice for many years; for all I know, he still does it today.
_In Search of Silence_, then, is a selection of material from the first dozen years (roughly) of these notebooks.
What this book is not:
Cohesive and proairetic. Entries start and stop abruptly, sometimes to be continued later in the same notebook (or another), and, other than the general sense of watching a young mind develop, there is no sense of narrativity running through them. Some entries are simply opaque or mysterious, quite likely even to Delany at this distance of time. Others are, well, almost banal, as perhaps one might expect from a teenaged genius.
It is also not an introduction either to Delany's work, or to Delany the human being. I do not claim to "know" Samuel R. Delany, except in the most casual possible sense*, and _Silence_ has not changed that. I have, now, some insights into who he _was_, fifty years ago, but even if I were to take a timetrip to New York in (say) 1968 and arrange to meet that young man, he would be a stranger to me - quite properly.
That said, reading it offers a great deal of insight into the _processes_ of the young Delany (and processes are key to personhood, or anything else, but that's another matter entirely). It also offers a selection of the quotidianness of life in that long-gone time, as it was lived and experienced by a very specific human being.
The editor, Kenneth R. James (more on this in a bit), suggests that this volume might be profitably read with/against Delany's _The Motion of Light in Water_, an autobiographical sketch covering much of the same period (though _Motion_ both begins and ends a bit earlier than _Silence_). This is a pungent suggestion. In particular _Silence_ appends a great deal to the sense _Motion_ gives of Delany's relationship with his co-student and, after a while, wife, the poet Marilyn Hacker.
The insights to Delany's writerly process are both surface and profound. On the surface level, it is fascinating to know that his first published novel, _The Jewels of Aptor_, was intended to be a lengthy dream-sequence in his massive non-genre novel _Voyage, Orestes_. Another massive project, _Prism, Mirror, Lens_ came at one level to nothing; at another, it provided seed material to _Dhalgren_ (including its [in]famous first line) and _Trouble on Triton_, though _this_ volume ends before either of those novels is properly conceived.
Kenneth R. James makes it clear that this is by no means all the material contained in these particular spiral notebooks. Rather, he has made a selection, among other things mostly excluding drafts of published, and even to a large extent unpublished, stories and novels. I respect this choice: while it would be fascinating to see how (say) _Babel-17_ developed in drafts, such material would be better saved for individual studies of the development of the individual novels. (Though not, one hopes, to the extent that Christopher Tolkien has made a cottage industry of his father's minutiae. While those books are fascinating glimpses into JRRT's creative processes, there are times when I think he, a very private man, would feel violated by the publication of some of them.) Certainly Delany's major works are deserving of such treatment, though perhaps, if only out of mercy, not while he is still alive and creating new texts.
What James does include is generous, even lavish.
There will, assuming the funding occurs**, be a second volume, _Autumnal City_, and it will (I do hope) continue from there.
_____
* I met Delany once, in 1978, and made a damnfool of myself; in recent years I have been connected to him on Facebook. That, coupled with careful reading of his fiction and non-fiction, is the extent of my "knowing" Delany.
** James has an Indiegogo to procure said funding, with some interesting rewards...H'mmm....
What this book is:
Beginning near the end of December 1957 - dating is a little complex -, the young Samuel Ray "Chip" Delany, Jr. began carrying around a spiral notebook and jotting in it his thoughts, observations, poetry, sexual fantasies, notes for stories, and many other things. He continued this practice for many years; for all I know, he still does it today.
_In Search of Silence_, then, is a selection of material from the first dozen years (roughly) of these notebooks.
What this book is not:
Cohesive and proairetic. Entries start and stop abruptly, sometimes to be continued later in the same notebook (or another), and, other than the general sense of watching a young mind develop, there is no sense of narrativity running through them. Some entries are simply opaque or mysterious, quite likely even to Delany at this distance of time. Others are, well, almost banal, as perhaps one might expect from a teenaged genius.
It is also not an introduction either to Delany's work, or to Delany the human being. I do not claim to "know" Samuel R. Delany, except in the most casual possible sense*, and _Silence_ has not changed that. I have, now, some insights into who he _was_, fifty years ago, but even if I were to take a timetrip to New York in (say) 1968 and arrange to meet that young man, he would be a stranger to me - quite properly.
That said, reading it offers a great deal of insight into the _processes_ of the young Delany (and processes are key to personhood, or anything else, but that's another matter entirely). It also offers a selection of the quotidianness of life in that long-gone time, as it was lived and experienced by a very specific human being.
The editor, Kenneth R. James (more on this in a bit), suggests that this volume might be profitably read with/against Delany's _The Motion of Light in Water_, an autobiographical sketch covering much of the same period (though _Motion_ both begins and ends a bit earlier than _Silence_). This is a pungent suggestion. In particular _Silence_ appends a great deal to the sense _Motion_ gives of Delany's relationship with his co-student and, after a while, wife, the poet Marilyn Hacker.
The insights to Delany's writerly process are both surface and profound. On the surface level, it is fascinating to know that his first published novel, _The Jewels of Aptor_, was intended to be a lengthy dream-sequence in his massive non-genre novel _Voyage, Orestes_. Another massive project, _Prism, Mirror, Lens_ came at one level to nothing; at another, it provided seed material to _Dhalgren_ (including its [in]famous first line) and _Trouble on Triton_, though _this_ volume ends before either of those novels is properly conceived.
Kenneth R. James makes it clear that this is by no means all the material contained in these particular spiral notebooks. Rather, he has made a selection, among other things mostly excluding drafts of published, and even to a large extent unpublished, stories and novels. I respect this choice: while it would be fascinating to see how (say) _Babel-17_ developed in drafts, such material would be better saved for individual studies of the development of the individual novels. (Though not, one hopes, to the extent that Christopher Tolkien has made a cottage industry of his father's minutiae. While those books are fascinating glimpses into JRRT's creative processes, there are times when I think he, a very private man, would feel violated by the publication of some of them.) Certainly Delany's major works are deserving of such treatment, though perhaps, if only out of mercy, not while he is still alive and creating new texts.
What James does include is generous, even lavish.
There will, assuming the funding occurs**, be a second volume, _Autumnal City_, and it will (I do hope) continue from there.
_____
* I met Delany once, in 1978, and made a damnfool of myself; in recent years I have been connected to him on Facebook. That, coupled with careful reading of his fiction and non-fiction, is the extent of my "knowing" Delany.
** James has an Indiegogo to procure said funding, with some interesting rewards...H'mmm....
February 18, 2019
Delany's early published works are among my favorite of his, so I was fascinated to read about their genesis and strife in his intimate journals. I wasn't alive in the 60s, so the book didn't produce for me a sense of nostalgia. Nonetheless, I read it with interest.
It's people like Kenneth R. James to whom all of us readers owe our thanks. When I lived in Boston, I didn't get the chance to visit Delany's archive as I should have done (I was a student at Boston College at the time, so trekking down Commonwealth Avenue was a bit like approaching the lion's den). I'm especially glad that someone has spent the time to edit down and make into a comprehensive first volume what I could have easily pored over for months. Well, in retrospect it would have been a better use of my time than that which I spent on Ni no Kuni and Mario Kart 8 instead of studying.
Anyway, I'm not just looking forward to the next volume; I need it. Where is it?
It's people like Kenneth R. James to whom all of us readers owe our thanks. When I lived in Boston, I didn't get the chance to visit Delany's archive as I should have done (I was a student at Boston College at the time, so trekking down Commonwealth Avenue was a bit like approaching the lion's den). I'm especially glad that someone has spent the time to edit down and make into a comprehensive first volume what I could have easily pored over for months. Well, in retrospect it would have been a better use of my time than that which I spent on Ni no Kuni and Mario Kart 8 instead of studying.
Anyway, I'm not just looking forward to the next volume; I need it. Where is it?
February 17, 2019
I try to write a few words about everything I read, but as I work through nearly every book of Delany's dozens, I find myself repeating the same point: if you're a newer reader of Delany, there are lots of other books you should read before this one. (Nova, Heavenly Breakfast, and Dhalgren and my top recommendations.)
I found it a little hard to get into this book, since it's long and jumps all over the place with different kinds of stuff. I started reading it over a year ago, and would put it down for longer stretches. But there are lots of interesting bits in it, like notes and drafts for some of his early novels, details from his personal life, repeated sections that open with just the first phrase from Dhalgren, and some passages that feel very close to some of his more recent work. I'm also excited now to go back and reread some of the books he was working on during these years.
I found it a little hard to get into this book, since it's long and jumps all over the place with different kinds of stuff. I started reading it over a year ago, and would put it down for longer stretches. But there are lots of interesting bits in it, like notes and drafts for some of his early novels, details from his personal life, repeated sections that open with just the first phrase from Dhalgren, and some passages that feel very close to some of his more recent work. I'm also excited now to go back and reread some of the books he was working on during these years.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews