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The Mad Man: Or, The Mysteries of Manhattan
A philosophy student’s research draws him into the sexual underground of 1980s and early nineties New York
John Marr is surprised he doesn’t have AIDS. He has been having near-daily sexual encounters with strange men since before the dawn of HIV, but he remains healthy. His initiation began in the bathroom of the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, and since then he has found himself at home in the darkest corners of Manhattan’s culture of anonymous gay sex. During the day, it is a different story, as Marr works on his graduate thesis—an analysis of the work of a brilliant 1970s philosopher who died mysteriously in one of the gay bars of Hell’s Kitchen. As his research and his sex life begin to converge, Marr senses that if AIDS doesn’t get him, something darker will.
The Mad Man, which the author dubbed a “pornotopic fantasy,” is more than a powerful work of philosophical erotica; it is a snapshot of a vanished moment in New York City’s gay history, when fear and lust commingled in a single powerful force.
John Marr is surprised he doesn’t have AIDS. He has been having near-daily sexual encounters with strange men since before the dawn of HIV, but he remains healthy. His initiation began in the bathroom of the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, and since then he has found himself at home in the darkest corners of Manhattan’s culture of anonymous gay sex. During the day, it is a different story, as Marr works on his graduate thesis—an analysis of the work of a brilliant 1970s philosopher who died mysteriously in one of the gay bars of Hell’s Kitchen. As his research and his sex life begin to converge, Marr senses that if AIDS doesn’t get him, something darker will.
The Mad Man, which the author dubbed a “pornotopic fantasy,” is more than a powerful work of philosophical erotica; it is a snapshot of a vanished moment in New York City’s gay history, when fear and lust commingled in a single powerful force.
689 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 28, 1994
59 people are currently reading
1224 people want to read
About the author
Samuel R. Delany
306 books2,265 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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Displaying 1 - 30 of 66 reviews
August 15, 2019
Nowhere near as intelligent as the Marquis's monstrosities, nor as sexy as any of Tom of Finland's drawings. This is indeed a self-proclaimed underdog, as it insists in being grotesque & antiromantic, unintelligent & v. v. verrrry redundant. There's absolutely no charm here!
The story tells of an uberkinky student who partakes in disgusting acts with the hobos of the streets of NYC. Tackling incredibly difficult issues (S&M, homelessness, homosexuality) and doing not much with them is indicative of a strong sense of self satisfaction for the writer, while the reader is left to contend with the shocking results. Perhaps neater, shorter, with worthwhile characters, with a more discerning eye toward some type of literature & not porny trash, the novel may've worked. Even if you are gay and you gravitate toward the GAY ADULT section, this novel is not sexy. For that, & for a more intelligent, intricate plot, try Christopher Rice.
The story tells of an uberkinky student who partakes in disgusting acts with the hobos of the streets of NYC. Tackling incredibly difficult issues (S&M, homelessness, homosexuality) and doing not much with them is indicative of a strong sense of self satisfaction for the writer, while the reader is left to contend with the shocking results. Perhaps neater, shorter, with worthwhile characters, with a more discerning eye toward some type of literature & not porny trash, the novel may've worked. Even if you are gay and you gravitate toward the GAY ADULT section, this novel is not sexy. For that, & for a more intelligent, intricate plot, try Christopher Rice.
Read
September 19, 2021Pratim tako ja na fb finog čika Čipa, profesora književnosti u penziji, koji sa neverovatnim šarmom i veštinom opisuje jebeno sve što mu prođe kroz glavu bez razlike i naznake o bitnosti, od kaše koju kusa za doručak do vrunskih umetnika i njihovih dela koja su svuda oko njega u hobitskoj rupi ispunjenoj dragim i vrednim knjigama, a kaže koju i o svojim delima. Tako je uspeo da mi u nekoliko usputnih opaski proda i zainteresuje me za ovaj roman.
Radnja se oslanja na potragu doktoranda Džona Mara po životu i legatu pokojnog filozofa-vudnerkinda Timotija Haslera, otkrivanju njegovih mračnih i akademiji neprijatnih strasti - kinki gej seks i pisanje naučne fantastike - koje se mistično i sudbinski ponavljaju i u Marovom životu. Nadao sam se nekom meta narativu o naučnoj fantastici, a dobio sam filozofiju u njujorškom porno bioskopu, bespoštedne i beskrajne opise scat i piss gej seksova i dirljivih poznanstava i ljubavi što se iz toga rode, zastrašujuće zapise o epidemiji HIVa, povremene izlete u oniričku lavkraftovštinu, prozor u dušu osobe koja se ne oseća ispunjeno dok nije temeljno zapišana - a sve fino ljucki sa pristankom i dubinskim prihvatanjem sopstvenih i tuđih sjebanih psiha i sudbina.
I kao ok, nije ovo loše iako je mučno, i ne vidim ni kako se moglo zatrpati u neke metafore i neshvatljive vanzemaljce ili elfove a da zadrži bisere o ljudskoj (gadnoj gadnoj) prirodi, i lepo je pisalo na koricama u šta sam se upustio... 🤦♂️
Čika Čip mi je sad prodao Džona Kroulija, jako lepo je pisao o Little, Big povodom 40 godina od objavljivanja. To sam davno pročitao i odlična je knjiga i Džon Krouli me sigurno neće baciti u nužnik ljudskog uma.
Radnja se oslanja na potragu doktoranda Džona Mara po životu i legatu pokojnog filozofa-vudnerkinda Timotija Haslera, otkrivanju njegovih mračnih i akademiji neprijatnih strasti - kinki gej seks i pisanje naučne fantastike - koje se mistično i sudbinski ponavljaju i u Marovom životu. Nadao sam se nekom meta narativu o naučnoj fantastici, a dobio sam filozofiju u njujorškom porno bioskopu, bespoštedne i beskrajne opise scat i piss gej seksova i dirljivih poznanstava i ljubavi što se iz toga rode, zastrašujuće zapise o epidemiji HIVa, povremene izlete u oniričku lavkraftovštinu, prozor u dušu osobe koja se ne oseća ispunjeno dok nije temeljno zapišana - a sve fino ljucki sa pristankom i dubinskim prihvatanjem sopstvenih i tuđih sjebanih psiha i sudbina.
I kao ok, nije ovo loše iako je mučno, i ne vidim ni kako se moglo zatrpati u neke metafore i neshvatljive vanzemaljce ili elfove a da zadrži bisere o ljudskoj (gadnoj gadnoj) prirodi, i lepo je pisalo na koricama u šta sam se upustio... 🤦♂️
Čika Čip mi je sad prodao Džona Kroulija, jako lepo je pisao o Little, Big povodom 40 godina od objavljivanja. To sam davno pročitao i odlična je knjiga i Džon Krouli me sigurno neće baciti u nužnik ljudskog uma.
July 16, 2012
This book was an extremely tough, but ultimately satisfying, read. It went beyond what I thought I could accept about sexual kinks and then even further. I actually had to put the book down several times to check in with myself. It was a real direct challenge to the openminded person I thought I was and I made IMMENSE progress in developing my opinions and stances on the issues presented as I read it. It also sucked you right into the pressurized world of a writer like Delany and then turned the heat up even more by giving you a guide tour through the first few exceedingly terrifying years of the AIDS epidemic in New York. This is the true beauty of Delany, he writes so well that no matter where he takes you, you want to keep going on that journey. I recommend this book for those of strong and open minds who want to be challenged; it will definitely take you further.
July 25, 2013
Are you a
baseball player?
Or a cocksucker?
Another reviewer wrote that, unless the reader has "very specialized tastes," he or she should avoid Delany's The Mad Man by any means necessary. The comment made me wonder if, somehow, Delany published another version of this novel at some point -- not merely the first, unedited edition I'm already aware of, but an interstitial manuscript that reads like a complete negative image of The Mad Man, the one I've been wildly consuming, and yes, even sucking, over the past ten days. Sure, the concept of "specialization" materializes as a significant motif, well signaled and signposted, throughout the book. The protagonist, John Marr, works in the world of academia -- a world in which your particular research specialization remains intensely policed and scrutinized over the course of your career. So too does Marr revel in the individuality of his sexual "tastes," as a lover of dick and, above all, piss (I hope, by now, he's tattooed that lovely combination onto his two knuckles). But landing at the end of this 500 page story, Marr almost shouts out to the reader, in desperation, hoping he or she might reflect on the entire narrative as a 'Hasler structure.' Specialities are revealed as acts of superficial condensation, tied to (or stabilizing) an inchoate, chaotic basin. The reader who assigned Delany's book "very specialized tastes" should turn to Hasler, who himself warns: "To confuse a producing mechanism for a stabilizing mechanism is to create all the problems a mechanic might have confusing a gyroscope for an internal combustion engine, or a farmer confusing his sack of fertilizer for a bag of seeds." Maybe the idea of the "Hasler structure," after all, isn't all that ground-breaking. It's as if conceptions of the world's systems have been stabilized enough! And it is precisely through that logic that Marr is led by his PhD advisor to abandon that tome and, yes, begin to specialize in "Hasler studies." But it's impossible to miss Marr's constant return, through the narrative, to his belief in "the systems of the world." And by the tale's end I've at least come to the conclusion that Marr's "The Mad Man" became his updated publication of "Systems of the World." And, more significant than the idea of the "Hasler structure," is the observation that finds its footing in Hasler's notes but runs off throughout the narrative, that stabilizers (predominantly language) all to frequently get confused for producers. The identity of the producers, of course, remains covered in question marks. But Delany, by way of Marr, by way of Hasler, gives us a hint: the fact of language's superficiality, if that's the right term for it, "in no way contradicts the notion that the world is constituted entirely of language, i.e., that it is constituted entirely by the structure of its stabilizing forces..." Language tightens as often as it slacks. Gertrude Stein firmly planted her flag on this tense ground, expressing her own pleasure in "the feeling of words doing / as they want to do and as they have to do." Though the wants of words may be specialized, the wanting of words isn't. The "wholeness" to be found in the force of language finds "its expression" in Heraclitus's fragment that lines the novel in various forms. "All things are guided by the lightning," "... by Zeus's power," "...by Zeus's bolt," "...by God's power." "Wisdom is whole: the knowledge of how all things are plotted in their courses by all other things." Or, as Alder phrases it, through Hasler's mouth, "All things are guided by the foot." In this final form Hasler's foot fetishism stands in for God's power, the "specialized taste" doing work as "all other things." I'd like to expand a fragment from Hasler's notebooks Marr briefly quotes; "To live within the tethers of desire is -- again and again -- to be shocked at how far they have come loose from reason," and subsequently to be shocked at how close they bring us to the world, the whole (and the hole??) of the world.
During the time of the novel, when AIDS warred against the gay community, the tethers of desire were all too tense and constricted. "Strangulation, blood" indeed...But the novel forces upon the reader the stunning realization that, out in the world, the deaths of victims of AIDS have been (and, yes, still are!) unseen -- about as anonymous as a body "found dead in the parking lot behind the Pit." After reading The Mad Man the depths of the world, more so than its mere details, open up to sight and language. "Hell is as deep as the sun is high."
The novel's dramatic thematization of race, as well as Mad Man Mike's "pennies" and his conception of ownership are probably best analyzed in the context of Delany's work in Neveryon. For another day!
baseball player?
Or a cocksucker?
Another reviewer wrote that, unless the reader has "very specialized tastes," he or she should avoid Delany's The Mad Man by any means necessary. The comment made me wonder if, somehow, Delany published another version of this novel at some point -- not merely the first, unedited edition I'm already aware of, but an interstitial manuscript that reads like a complete negative image of The Mad Man, the one I've been wildly consuming, and yes, even sucking, over the past ten days. Sure, the concept of "specialization" materializes as a significant motif, well signaled and signposted, throughout the book. The protagonist, John Marr, works in the world of academia -- a world in which your particular research specialization remains intensely policed and scrutinized over the course of your career. So too does Marr revel in the individuality of his sexual "tastes," as a lover of dick and, above all, piss (I hope, by now, he's tattooed that lovely combination onto his two knuckles). But landing at the end of this 500 page story, Marr almost shouts out to the reader, in desperation, hoping he or she might reflect on the entire narrative as a 'Hasler structure.' Specialities are revealed as acts of superficial condensation, tied to (or stabilizing) an inchoate, chaotic basin. The reader who assigned Delany's book "very specialized tastes" should turn to Hasler, who himself warns: "To confuse a producing mechanism for a stabilizing mechanism is to create all the problems a mechanic might have confusing a gyroscope for an internal combustion engine, or a farmer confusing his sack of fertilizer for a bag of seeds." Maybe the idea of the "Hasler structure," after all, isn't all that ground-breaking. It's as if conceptions of the world's systems have been stabilized enough! And it is precisely through that logic that Marr is led by his PhD advisor to abandon that tome and, yes, begin to specialize in "Hasler studies." But it's impossible to miss Marr's constant return, through the narrative, to his belief in "the systems of the world." And by the tale's end I've at least come to the conclusion that Marr's "The Mad Man" became his updated publication of "Systems of the World." And, more significant than the idea of the "Hasler structure," is the observation that finds its footing in Hasler's notes but runs off throughout the narrative, that stabilizers (predominantly language) all to frequently get confused for producers. The identity of the producers, of course, remains covered in question marks. But Delany, by way of Marr, by way of Hasler, gives us a hint: the fact of language's superficiality, if that's the right term for it, "in no way contradicts the notion that the world is constituted entirely of language, i.e., that it is constituted entirely by the structure of its stabilizing forces..." Language tightens as often as it slacks. Gertrude Stein firmly planted her flag on this tense ground, expressing her own pleasure in "the feeling of words doing / as they want to do and as they have to do." Though the wants of words may be specialized, the wanting of words isn't. The "wholeness" to be found in the force of language finds "its expression" in Heraclitus's fragment that lines the novel in various forms. "All things are guided by the lightning," "... by Zeus's power," "...by Zeus's bolt," "...by God's power." "Wisdom is whole: the knowledge of how all things are plotted in their courses by all other things." Or, as Alder phrases it, through Hasler's mouth, "All things are guided by the foot." In this final form Hasler's foot fetishism stands in for God's power, the "specialized taste" doing work as "all other things." I'd like to expand a fragment from Hasler's notebooks Marr briefly quotes; "To live within the tethers of desire is -- again and again -- to be shocked at how far they have come loose from reason," and subsequently to be shocked at how close they bring us to the world, the whole (and the hole??) of the world.
During the time of the novel, when AIDS warred against the gay community, the tethers of desire were all too tense and constricted. "Strangulation, blood" indeed...But the novel forces upon the reader the stunning realization that, out in the world, the deaths of victims of AIDS have been (and, yes, still are!) unseen -- about as anonymous as a body "found dead in the parking lot behind the Pit." After reading The Mad Man the depths of the world, more so than its mere details, open up to sight and language. "Hell is as deep as the sun is high."
The novel's dramatic thematization of race, as well as Mad Man Mike's "pennies" and his conception of ownership are probably best analyzed in the context of Delany's work in Neveryon. For another day!
October 15, 2016
Damn. That nearly brought me to tears.
I really wasn't expecting that.
As other reviews here note, this book is often exceptionally disgusting. I just read the last 150-or-so pages in a single sitting. I was bracing myself for an assault - and in a sense, yes, it was (detailed descriptions of coprophagia will always be hard to take), but more importantly, the book turns into an incredibly moving love story. Those are very hard to find, in my opinion.
It used to be a consensus view that any form of sex between men was so degrading and disgusting that no one could meaningfully consent to it. Happily, that's no longer the case. Now we do find mainstream acceptance for gay love stories. Certain acts and relations still remain well out of bounds, however.
And Delany, in this book written over two decades ago, remains light years ahead of the mainstream. I feel at once inspired and a little embarrassed by my own readiness to cow to conventions and popular opinion.
This is not a piece of philosophical erotica in the manner of Bataille or de Sade; it's not an experiment in cruelty and perversity as ends in themselves; I daresay the transvaluation is more immediate and deeply felt, affected by the author directly in the reader -
pain to pleasure
shame to pride
disgust to desire
shit to gold.
I really wasn't expecting that.
As other reviews here note, this book is often exceptionally disgusting. I just read the last 150-or-so pages in a single sitting. I was bracing myself for an assault - and in a sense, yes, it was (detailed descriptions of coprophagia will always be hard to take), but more importantly, the book turns into an incredibly moving love story. Those are very hard to find, in my opinion.
It used to be a consensus view that any form of sex between men was so degrading and disgusting that no one could meaningfully consent to it. Happily, that's no longer the case. Now we do find mainstream acceptance for gay love stories. Certain acts and relations still remain well out of bounds, however.
And Delany, in this book written over two decades ago, remains light years ahead of the mainstream. I feel at once inspired and a little embarrassed by my own readiness to cow to conventions and popular opinion.
This is not a piece of philosophical erotica in the manner of Bataille or de Sade; it's not an experiment in cruelty and perversity as ends in themselves; I daresay the transvaluation is more immediate and deeply felt, affected by the author directly in the reader -
pain to pleasure
shame to pride
disgust to desire
shit to gold.
November 24, 2012
I probably shouldn't review this baby or my GR friends will start getting the idea that a whole lot of the stuff I read is just a kind of creepy tourism - let's check out the grossest stuff ever and let's crack open a tube of Scruttock's Old Dirigible and have a good old grossfest with many involuntary shouts of ech! ach! urch! and oh hey, you gotta read this bit - here - oh, man! - that kind of thing. Followed by a double bill of Pasolini's Salo and von Trier's Antichrist.
But no, I am much more high-minded than that! All this stuff is legitimate cultural exploration. I'm broadening my entrenched working class sensibilities. I'm......
Well, sometimes it's true. It's just a grossfest. As in the present instance, Samuel Delaney's The Mad Man.
I mean...really!
In case you were wondering, I urge you not to read this one unless you have very very very very very very very very very very specialised tastes.
But no, I am much more high-minded than that! All this stuff is legitimate cultural exploration. I'm broadening my entrenched working class sensibilities. I'm......
Well, sometimes it's true. It's just a grossfest. As in the present instance, Samuel Delaney's The Mad Man.
I mean...really!
In case you were wondering, I urge you not to read this one unless you have very very very very very very very very very very specialised tastes.
August 30, 2022
Just what is Delany? Poet...Philosopher...Pornographer? Hell if I know. More study is required, but not before dinner.
March 27, 2023
I can’t believe I read this whole thing 🤣🤣 Every page has passed by my eyeballs! And they will never be clean again!
The plot and themes are fascinating, honestly (onset of AIDS, a mysterious murder, the surreal influence of a beautifully described mythological creature) but don’t constitute that much of the book. Most of the book is dedicated to detailed accounts of extremely unhygienic sex. The reason for this became clear in a single line about the protagonist (and Delany, I have to imagine) having read almost all of de Sade for an undergraduate class. He is amazed by de Sade’s obsessive cataloguing of every possible sexual permutation between a set number of folk, doubting he can do it himself. Well, Delany has clearly tried here, which is coldly admirable but not the most interesting reading.
And yet there is a weird sort of love story going on here, and the frankness with which bizarre sexual acts is discussed does minimise your ability to judge those who enjoy them. The dialogue in here also about supposedly straight men who engage in sex with other men is still a poorly understood phenomenon and something that, wherever it is shamed, will ruin lives. And so I have to admire a novel that seeks to normalise these interactions (even if I can’t imagine it reaching the readership who would benefit from that message!)
Delany has me convinced HE is a mad man. But a wholly original, admirably unapologetic and fascinating one at that.
The plot and themes are fascinating, honestly (onset of AIDS, a mysterious murder, the surreal influence of a beautifully described mythological creature) but don’t constitute that much of the book. Most of the book is dedicated to detailed accounts of extremely unhygienic sex. The reason for this became clear in a single line about the protagonist (and Delany, I have to imagine) having read almost all of de Sade for an undergraduate class. He is amazed by de Sade’s obsessive cataloguing of every possible sexual permutation between a set number of folk, doubting he can do it himself. Well, Delany has clearly tried here, which is coldly admirable but not the most interesting reading.
And yet there is a weird sort of love story going on here, and the frankness with which bizarre sexual acts is discussed does minimise your ability to judge those who enjoy them. The dialogue in here also about supposedly straight men who engage in sex with other men is still a poorly understood phenomenon and something that, wherever it is shamed, will ruin lives. And so I have to admire a novel that seeks to normalise these interactions (even if I can’t imagine it reaching the readership who would benefit from that message!)
Delany has me convinced HE is a mad man. But a wholly original, admirably unapologetic and fascinating one at that.
January 15, 2016
Delany continues to soar in presenting and exploring lives and behaviors forgotten, ignored and dismissed by most other writers and artists. A sublime murder mystery, porn fantasia of sorts that doubles as a heart-felt, class-crossing love story and triples as an academic, philosophical exploration of boundaries and taboos. Delany himself forewords the book by claiming it is not a novel about homelessness, but I’ve never read anything that so drastically reset, expanded and deepened my view of people without homes and lives lived on the streets. The book similarly forced me to rethink previously dismissed sexual practices and mores. For the full magic, read this along with the earnest and romantic Bread & Wine, a graphic novel with similar themes detailing Delany’s IRL story of meeting his then homeless life partner, Dennis Ricketts.
January 12, 2025
Putrid, heartfelt, educational (learned about fetishes I didn't know existed) (a LOT of piss-drinking, like almost nonstop for most of the book. Sorry to be a prude [and hardly the most extreme thing in the novel] but doesn't sound appealing!). As a literary mystery and a horror story I don't think it landed for me as hard as Hogg-- maybe part of that was the shock value of reading Hogg for the first time, probably the most physical/bodily reaction I've ever had to a book, and this is a much less violent and angry book. Still INCREDIBLY graphic and confrontational, but it's in service of what's ultimately a kind of sweet love story about finding someone who matches your freak (his freak being piss-drinking) and wanting to protect them and literally/figuratively bring them in from the cold.
April 30, 2018
Imagine if 120 Days of Sodom was consensual and had a happy ending, and was set in New York City. My rough estimate is that this books about half sex by volume, maybe more. There's a lot of philosophy, and also a murder mystery. If you don't have the stomach to read about explicit sex acts that focus on the dirty (as in unwashed, not immoral) aspects of human sexuality, then this is not the book for you. There's no way for me to really tell you about what the book is about without myself getting scatalogical, which is a sign of a really dirty porno book, which this is. But it's also a philosophy book. It's one long rebel cry against propriety. Actually it's probably more like Juliette, except for gay sex. I mean it's the happy story of a gay guy who does all the sex stuff that's immoral in the good gay guy next door who just wants to be married narrative. The story is queer as hell. It's not a book for everyone, but maybe it's a book for you. I guess this whole review is the literary equivalent of "smell this, it's disgusting!".
All that said, I enjoyed reading it.
All that said, I enjoyed reading it.
June 9, 2023
this seriously has to have changed the way I read forever
September 14, 2010
Reading this was a little like reading The 120 Days of Sodom-- not so much because it has lots of outrageous, gross, scatological sex scenes, but because the author is pushing the limits of reality and tolerability in pursuit of an abstract principle. But in Delany's case, I think the principle is anti-Sade: it's about freedom rather than control. The title character may have encouraged some people to more or less destroy their lives, but they're having a good time doing it, and he's developed an innovative ethic of consensual slavery: it's only OK to sell yourself if the price is exactly one penny.
What's really jarring (assuming you can get past the obvious stuff) is that it starts out as a realistic novel, and gradually turns into what Delany calls a "pornotopia" where the sexual process has taken over completely. The scene that begins this process, where the narrator walks up to some homeless men in Central Park and propositions them to their great surprise (and his own), is very strange and moving-- it's a science-fiction effect.
What's really jarring (assuming you can get past the obvious stuff) is that it starts out as a realistic novel, and gradually turns into what Delany calls a "pornotopia" where the sexual process has taken over completely. The scene that begins this process, where the narrator walks up to some homeless men in Central Park and propositions them to their great surprise (and his own), is very strange and moving-- it's a science-fiction effect.
May 25, 2021
2.5 stars
This book rested on my 'to read' list for a very long time and great expectations were attached to it. Most of the reviews I read were talking about a unique experience, depth, and considered it a classic of the transgressive literature. Maybe that's why I ended up being disappointed.
The novel tells the story of a graduate student, John Marr who is trying to solve the mystery of the death of a prodigy philosopher during the AIDS epidemic. In his free time though, he wanders in the parks of New York city and has sex with homeless men, and these acts increasingly include scat and piss.
The reviews I read are right that the sex scenes are very explicit, which wouldn't be a problem in itself but they are also very repetitive. Yet what really bothered me is the lack of psychological depth. In 600 pages I didn't really get to see what are the motives behind these fetishes and sexual acts, how does it relate to Marr's past, why is he drawn to homeless men as an intellectual. As the story progressed I felt the lacking more and more and while in the end we got an answer to the initial mystery the sense of incompleteness remained.
I do wonder what was the purpose of the book, because for pornography it's too long and has too much 'story' , and after a while it fails to deliver any shock value because the acts repeat themselves over and over.
This book rested on my 'to read' list for a very long time and great expectations were attached to it. Most of the reviews I read were talking about a unique experience, depth, and considered it a classic of the transgressive literature. Maybe that's why I ended up being disappointed.
The novel tells the story of a graduate student, John Marr who is trying to solve the mystery of the death of a prodigy philosopher during the AIDS epidemic. In his free time though, he wanders in the parks of New York city and has sex with homeless men, and these acts increasingly include scat and piss.
The reviews I read are right that the sex scenes are very explicit, which wouldn't be a problem in itself but they are also very repetitive. Yet what really bothered me is the lack of psychological depth. In 600 pages I didn't really get to see what are the motives behind these fetishes and sexual acts, how does it relate to Marr's past, why is he drawn to homeless men as an intellectual. As the story progressed I felt the lacking more and more and while in the end we got an answer to the initial mystery the sense of incompleteness remained.
I do wonder what was the purpose of the book, because for pornography it's too long and has too much 'story' , and after a while it fails to deliver any shock value because the acts repeat themselves over and over.
June 30, 2022
I never thought I’d DNF a Delany book. Then again, I never thought I’d have the chance to call a book of erotica “tedious,” and yet, that’s exactly what this is. Five hundred plotless pages of sexual exploits with very little substance, despite the promising premise. I’m so disappointed but was truly too bored to make it past ~1/3.
October 26, 2024
DNF at 25%
The constant racial slurs were unnecessary and the graphic scenes felt repetitive and gratuitous. I’m sure it would have gotten even more depraved (which I can handle) had I continued on but it felt cheap and added just for the sake of shock value.
The constant racial slurs were unnecessary and the graphic scenes felt repetitive and gratuitous. I’m sure it would have gotten even more depraved (which I can handle) had I continued on but it felt cheap and added just for the sake of shock value.
March 30, 2024
one of the most fascinating and filthiest books i've read. the only book i consider filthier is another delany... XD
one part campus novel, one part murder mystery, one part sociological exploration of sex and love on the margins.
margins of what, you ask? "whadda you got?"
one part campus novel, one part murder mystery, one part sociological exploration of sex and love on the margins.
margins of what, you ask? "whadda you got?"
March 28, 2019
A single two-word quote from The Mad Man sums up this entire novel: sexual chaos. Samuel R. Delany has much to say about sex: its dark corners; the intersection of sex, gender, race, and capitalism; the body; memory. The chaotic, puerile events that transpire in this text are not for the squeamish or narrow-minded. Read this novel at your own risk.
Anyone familiar with Hogg, an earlier novel by Delany that deals with similar themes, knows what they're in for with The Mad Man. Grad student John Marr is obsessed with Timothy Hasler, a young gay Korean-American philosopher and doctoral student with decidedly outre sexual interests who was murdered in 1973. Delving into Hasler's papers and journals, John begins to go down the same road as Hasler, engaging in reckless sex with homeless men at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.
My main criticism with this novel is that it is simply too long. Like his main character, Delany wants readers to wallow in the piss, shit, and cum that raddle this book, to inhale funky bodies and absorb the animated racism deployed by the characters. He wants us to be complicit in these acts of debauchery and disgust. The Mad Man is a dialogue-driven novel: most of this book's 500 pages is devoted to characters regaling John with lengthy stories about their past, their perversions--that word seems inappropriate when discussing this novel--and the choices they make. (At one point even John begins to question how much of what these men tell him is true and whether they're spinning dirty stories just to arouse him.) Yet the nasty stories these men recount grow repetitive; had Delany yanked at least one hundred pages out of this book, the narrative would have been stronger and more engaging.
Also at issue is Delany's treatment of the homeless. Very little distinguishes one man from another, and the sex John has with them is similar. Delany doesn't do enough work to humanize these men. Yet the ending of the novel, where John forms a relationship with Leaky, one of the many homeless men he has sex with, Delany misses an opportunity to explore that dynamic. To me, that's the real story to be told, not the parallel Delany draws between John Marr and Timothy Hasler, two academics who start out doing ethnographic work among New York City's homeless men but who eventually allow themselves to become human urinals and cum rags for them. The more interesting story is how John domesticates, lives with, and maintains a genial, if not loving, relationship with Leaky. So many questions remain.
Pornographic literature is dangerous, and Delany is unafraid to use graphic depictions of sex and degradation to make readers think. I am left with much to think about: What message is Delany trying to send about sex and race? Why do his characters glory in filth? And what do our reactions to this book say about us?
Anyone familiar with Hogg, an earlier novel by Delany that deals with similar themes, knows what they're in for with The Mad Man. Grad student John Marr is obsessed with Timothy Hasler, a young gay Korean-American philosopher and doctoral student with decidedly outre sexual interests who was murdered in 1973. Delving into Hasler's papers and journals, John begins to go down the same road as Hasler, engaging in reckless sex with homeless men at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.
My main criticism with this novel is that it is simply too long. Like his main character, Delany wants readers to wallow in the piss, shit, and cum that raddle this book, to inhale funky bodies and absorb the animated racism deployed by the characters. He wants us to be complicit in these acts of debauchery and disgust. The Mad Man is a dialogue-driven novel: most of this book's 500 pages is devoted to characters regaling John with lengthy stories about their past, their perversions--that word seems inappropriate when discussing this novel--and the choices they make. (At one point even John begins to question how much of what these men tell him is true and whether they're spinning dirty stories just to arouse him.) Yet the nasty stories these men recount grow repetitive; had Delany yanked at least one hundred pages out of this book, the narrative would have been stronger and more engaging.
Also at issue is Delany's treatment of the homeless. Very little distinguishes one man from another, and the sex John has with them is similar. Delany doesn't do enough work to humanize these men. Yet the ending of the novel, where John forms a relationship with Leaky, one of the many homeless men he has sex with, Delany misses an opportunity to explore that dynamic. To me, that's the real story to be told, not the parallel Delany draws between John Marr and Timothy Hasler, two academics who start out doing ethnographic work among New York City's homeless men but who eventually allow themselves to become human urinals and cum rags for them. The more interesting story is how John domesticates, lives with, and maintains a genial, if not loving, relationship with Leaky. So many questions remain.
Pornographic literature is dangerous, and Delany is unafraid to use graphic depictions of sex and degradation to make readers think. I am left with much to think about: What message is Delany trying to send about sex and race? Why do his characters glory in filth? And what do our reactions to this book say about us?
October 3, 2020
The Mad Man is not for everyone.
If you shy away from sex scenes in novels, give this book a wide berth. If you’re uncomfortable reading about gay men, move along. (Also, maybe see a therapist.) And if you’re okay with the first two items but get squeamish at the thought of pee or poop, may I suggest something by Chuck Tingle?
For everyone else, I can’t recommend this book highly enough.
I’ve always appreciated Samuel Delany’s talent for using rich prose and morally ambiguous heroes to tell complex, unusual stories. In The Mad Man, his gift for language remains on full display, his characters are just as memorable as in his better-known fantasy novels, but here, the plot is even more masterfully designed, and the themes woven throughout it are as delicate and powerful as a spider’s web.
Without spoiling anything, I can say that there are two narratives intertwined within The Mad Man: one about a graduate student researching the work and untimely death of a promising young philosopher, the other about that same graduate student discovering himself (and his similarities to the deceased philosopher) via many, many, many sexual encounters. The Mad Man starts out a murder-mystery but concludes as a tale of personal awakening.
It reads like De Sade at times, with sexual hook-ups involving multiple positions and acts, each described in explicit detail. Also like De Sade, there’s a great deal of philosophizing while everyone’s getting it on—though in Delany’s case, that’s done via the narrator’s interior monologue, not through racy Socratic dialogue. And all that literotica is cleverly hung on the framework of a mystery novel.
If you’re the kind of person who likes mashup analogies, it’s a little like the 1980 movie Cruising, but smarter and far more lurid—and without the homophobic overtones of the film.
And as a bonus, the story is set in New York during the 1980s and 90s, offering a snapshot of the AIDS epidemic’s early years.
I admit, at nearly 600 pages, The Mad Man is a long slog, but if you’re willing to invest the time, I think the book will stick with you.
If you shy away from sex scenes in novels, give this book a wide berth. If you’re uncomfortable reading about gay men, move along. (Also, maybe see a therapist.) And if you’re okay with the first two items but get squeamish at the thought of pee or poop, may I suggest something by Chuck Tingle?
For everyone else, I can’t recommend this book highly enough.
I’ve always appreciated Samuel Delany’s talent for using rich prose and morally ambiguous heroes to tell complex, unusual stories. In The Mad Man, his gift for language remains on full display, his characters are just as memorable as in his better-known fantasy novels, but here, the plot is even more masterfully designed, and the themes woven throughout it are as delicate and powerful as a spider’s web.
Without spoiling anything, I can say that there are two narratives intertwined within The Mad Man: one about a graduate student researching the work and untimely death of a promising young philosopher, the other about that same graduate student discovering himself (and his similarities to the deceased philosopher) via many, many, many sexual encounters. The Mad Man starts out a murder-mystery but concludes as a tale of personal awakening.
It reads like De Sade at times, with sexual hook-ups involving multiple positions and acts, each described in explicit detail. Also like De Sade, there’s a great deal of philosophizing while everyone’s getting it on—though in Delany’s case, that’s done via the narrator’s interior monologue, not through racy Socratic dialogue. And all that literotica is cleverly hung on the framework of a mystery novel.
If you’re the kind of person who likes mashup analogies, it’s a little like the 1980 movie Cruising, but smarter and far more lurid—and without the homophobic overtones of the film.
And as a bonus, the story is set in New York during the 1980s and 90s, offering a snapshot of the AIDS epidemic’s early years.
I admit, at nearly 600 pages, The Mad Man is a long slog, but if you’re willing to invest the time, I think the book will stick with you.
August 16, 2008
I feel like I should review this book as it's not even summarized and I had to add it to Goodreads. Having never read any of Delaney's Sci-Fi, I can't really say if this is his best work or not. However I did enjoy it a lot.
Apparently the book originally came out in 1993 and then was "revised extensively" before the 2002 edition which I read. What sort of revison was done I can't really imagine as this book is way too long at 488 pages and often slips into terrible amateurish literary devices. Unconvincing slang is used by nearly all the homeless charactors and Delaney is prone to using paragraph breaks to highlight emotions.
("I drank.
It was good.")
In a way though this book is perfect, in it's unwieldliness it really delves in a kind of sexual obsessiveness in a way that is honest and also difficult to read. Also it is extremely upbeat and positive that a lot of "extreme" literature is not which makes it seem a lot more lived than many other pornographic works. The charactors in this work do filthy and repugnant things together but they enjoy them and derive happiness from them and still live rich and interesting lives outside of these things.
Apparently the book originally came out in 1993 and then was "revised extensively" before the 2002 edition which I read. What sort of revison was done I can't really imagine as this book is way too long at 488 pages and often slips into terrible amateurish literary devices. Unconvincing slang is used by nearly all the homeless charactors and Delaney is prone to using paragraph breaks to highlight emotions.
("I drank.
It was good.")
In a way though this book is perfect, in it's unwieldliness it really delves in a kind of sexual obsessiveness in a way that is honest and also difficult to read. Also it is extremely upbeat and positive that a lot of "extreme" literature is not which makes it seem a lot more lived than many other pornographic works. The charactors in this work do filthy and repugnant things together but they enjoy them and derive happiness from them and still live rich and interesting lives outside of these things.
September 25, 2015
This is my first Delany book, and a hand-me-down of (well, stolen-from-the-shelf-of) my older brother. Mostly for the Bosch on the cover - though he did warn me several years ago about the kinky contents. So far, I think the writing is waaaaaay too self-conscious, particularly self-consciously 'poetic' and 'writer-ly.' But at the same time, I can't put it down. It seems to be giving a lot of insight to my brother's suprisingly, unpleasantly sexual BFA poetry thesis, which I recently (tried to) pick back up. I think he had been reading The Mad Man at the time.
September 29, 2008
This book really tripped me out,grossed me out, and aroused me in ways that I'd never been before. It takes place in the seedy NYC of decades past. It's a mystery, a journey of sexuality, a world that most people would never see and may not want to. I think I'm the only person I know that's completed it.
October 19, 2011
Amazing, just amazing. It's filthier than every John Waters movie squeezed into one and still very sexy and loving. It's about this watersports enthusiast who's trying to write the biography of this gay philosopher foot-fetishist. Not so much sci-fi but pretty out of this world all the same. The philosophy is heavy, the play sessions spectacular and the writing just very engrossing.
July 3, 2025
Here's the thing: this is the book Delany wrote instead of a sequel to the book of his I love best-- Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand. It was the first novel he published after a long gap, except for an expanded edition of They Fly At Ciron, which was a revamped version of a book he'd written in the sixties. He has said, a couple of times, that it acts sort of as a sequel to Stars--which doesn't make sense on its face. The Mad Man is not the same as Stars, or indeed, any of Delany's science-fiction or theory-- excessively long, full of porn containing both details and kinks most people, and most gay men, don't particularly want to read about. It's reflexive. It's somewhat repetitive, thin on active plot, and not nearly as densely packed with big mysterious new world as Dhalgren or other prior ambitious books, and not sci-fi. It is frequently advertised to Delany enthusiasts as one of his darker works, alongside Hogg or Through The Valley Of The Nest Of Spiders. I don't blame anyone who doesn't care for it-- its more political qualities are, after all, to be found also--and more polished-- in Times Square Red, Times Square Blue and A Tale of Plagues and Carnivals, and its memoir-adjacent narrative can be distilled to more accurate information and straightforward reflection on more aspects of SRD's life in The Motion of Light In Water. This is a sprawling, disreputable novel, focused on the experiences of one gay and downwardly-mobile philosopher in the age of AIDS, by an author who had previously written bestselling science fiction and was a reputable professor. It doesn't talk about space and galaxies or the end of the world. It features, mostly, a gay man researching a predecessor and trying to burnish this predecessor's reputation in the academy, considering his potential impending illness as he continues to be sexually active and AIDS spreads through his slightly less-conventional gay community. Rather than a community of marginalized but otherwise-productive artists, John finds passing conversation, sex and something like friendship mostly with (many, many, stinky, unwashed) homeless men, some of whom are addicts, and some of whom have absolutely no ability to function in ordinary life. And the book does this for 500 or so pages. Delany is nothing if not hyperlexic.
I want to make some arguments about why, despite/because of its stylings and form and length, it's an important book--both for Delany enthusiasts and for lay queers, even if you choose not to read it and just know about it. Maybe I'm wrong, and it's just important to me.
First, this marks where Delany's brain goes in the first years of AIDS, and the moral choices he makes in the terrain of an unfolding pandemic. Which are: he continues to touch people, to have contact, and he says that despite his terror, he cannot stop making contact. He notes that if he had other predilections (outside the relatively safe oral that is his preference) he might well be dead, but that he doesn't think he would survive without casual sex-- a position that many, including within gay society, vocally condemned at this time, and which he admits within the text could be proven wrong by history.
He cannot continue to attend to the problems he was working on before AIDS, however timely--if AIDS had not existed, if Delany had continued to work on cyberpunk sci fi, he easily might have outpaced Gibson or others in terms of thinking about the implications of information in an interconnected world. Now, obviously he was also teaching and writing a lot of theory during this time, but it seems to me that he looked at the pandemic, looked at the fiction he had been producing, and concluded he needed to express something else. Or he was just unable to write anything else. He needed to express the sexual thoughts, actions and landscape that he had restrained himself from articulating in published work before-- he had been a sexually active gay man and writer for a good twenty years before this book, and in Stars had written a "gay" protagonist existing in a very different world (I think Mouse in Nova is gay too, but is less sexual). He finds it impossible, in the face of the restrictions on gay male life and culture, and the horror about the idea of the sort of sex he's having, to not talk about it. He's caught between the academy and paraliterature, between low doggerel and prestigious awards, and he's a middle-class light-skinned Black man who is attracted to men who are working-class, homeless, outcast or otherwise seen as dangerous. His protagonist is in the exact same position-- this book being basically the first time Delany makes so many parts of his material identity realistically appear in his own fiction, though obviously he includes lots of stand-ins for himself (the spaceship in Empire Star) in his science fiction, just as Hasler does in his.
Second-- this is similar to Stars, and to a handful of other stories -- Dhalgren, too-- because it continues Delany's exploration of his obsession with marginal, information-deprived men very different from Delany who are on the outskirts or fully outside of society, friendship or sanity, and what it means to engage with them, fail them, love them, more or less live among them, and perhaps become like them or learn from them. Part of this is porn: nothing makes John more happy than to find the connection he is so often seeking among this kind of man, and he accepts many, many situations as potentially fruitful that other people would find merely absurd, disgusting or degrading, in the search of this connection. It is not a utopian search, though it yields, occasionally, perfect pleasure for both people. John does not rescue or redeem the men he talks to and touches-- he just is there, in their lives, paying them attention. His attraction to marginal men can be seen as an exploitative fetish, and i think many still read it this way. I'm not sure I entirely disagree, even though Dennis and SRD have been living together happily for decades, but you cannot but notice that even as John is no Francis of Assissi, and sometimes behaves selfishly, responds with terror when the marginal lives of men he hooks up with threaten his safety, he's deeply concerned with the people he encounters and grows close to. And he wants to note that merely talking about seeing insane marginal men as potential lovers is disruptive to the world he is from.
Third-- I am not going to say I'm interested in every sex act that happens in this book, but I think this book was Delany learning to write what he really wanted to write erotically. In the style of Big Joe or Shoat Rumblin', there's a lot of gross but consensual sex, explicit and stinky and rich; it is not looking to be commercial, just to articulate a thought, a gesture, a desire.
I think that Mad Man helps Delany talk about what he means to be and stand for in the world in a way he polishes later. He uses it to intentionally distance himself from a politic of respectability within gay fiction, at the same time as the collapse of pulp sci fi publishing was also making his prior style of publishing success within paraliterature impossible. And Delany isn't interested in being part of a safe sex movement that ignores or smack-talks particular kinds of people, or insists rigidly on who is or isn't gay. He's interested in everyone who the pandemic might impact, and especially in people who are revolting to respectable people.
I want to make some arguments about why, despite/because of its stylings and form and length, it's an important book--both for Delany enthusiasts and for lay queers, even if you choose not to read it and just know about it. Maybe I'm wrong, and it's just important to me.
First, this marks where Delany's brain goes in the first years of AIDS, and the moral choices he makes in the terrain of an unfolding pandemic. Which are: he continues to touch people, to have contact, and he says that despite his terror, he cannot stop making contact. He notes that if he had other predilections (outside the relatively safe oral that is his preference) he might well be dead, but that he doesn't think he would survive without casual sex-- a position that many, including within gay society, vocally condemned at this time, and which he admits within the text could be proven wrong by history.
He cannot continue to attend to the problems he was working on before AIDS, however timely--if AIDS had not existed, if Delany had continued to work on cyberpunk sci fi, he easily might have outpaced Gibson or others in terms of thinking about the implications of information in an interconnected world. Now, obviously he was also teaching and writing a lot of theory during this time, but it seems to me that he looked at the pandemic, looked at the fiction he had been producing, and concluded he needed to express something else. Or he was just unable to write anything else. He needed to express the sexual thoughts, actions and landscape that he had restrained himself from articulating in published work before-- he had been a sexually active gay man and writer for a good twenty years before this book, and in Stars had written a "gay" protagonist existing in a very different world (I think Mouse in Nova is gay too, but is less sexual). He finds it impossible, in the face of the restrictions on gay male life and culture, and the horror about the idea of the sort of sex he's having, to not talk about it. He's caught between the academy and paraliterature, between low doggerel and prestigious awards, and he's a middle-class light-skinned Black man who is attracted to men who are working-class, homeless, outcast or otherwise seen as dangerous. His protagonist is in the exact same position-- this book being basically the first time Delany makes so many parts of his material identity realistically appear in his own fiction, though obviously he includes lots of stand-ins for himself (the spaceship in Empire Star) in his science fiction, just as Hasler does in his.
Second-- this is similar to Stars, and to a handful of other stories -- Dhalgren, too-- because it continues Delany's exploration of his obsession with marginal, information-deprived men very different from Delany who are on the outskirts or fully outside of society, friendship or sanity, and what it means to engage with them, fail them, love them, more or less live among them, and perhaps become like them or learn from them. Part of this is porn: nothing makes John more happy than to find the connection he is so often seeking among this kind of man, and he accepts many, many situations as potentially fruitful that other people would find merely absurd, disgusting or degrading, in the search of this connection. It is not a utopian search, though it yields, occasionally, perfect pleasure for both people. John does not rescue or redeem the men he talks to and touches-- he just is there, in their lives, paying them attention. His attraction to marginal men can be seen as an exploitative fetish, and i think many still read it this way. I'm not sure I entirely disagree, even though Dennis and SRD have been living together happily for decades, but you cannot but notice that even as John is no Francis of Assissi, and sometimes behaves selfishly, responds with terror when the marginal lives of men he hooks up with threaten his safety, he's deeply concerned with the people he encounters and grows close to. And he wants to note that merely talking about seeing insane marginal men as potential lovers is disruptive to the world he is from.
Third-- I am not going to say I'm interested in every sex act that happens in this book, but I think this book was Delany learning to write what he really wanted to write erotically. In the style of Big Joe or Shoat Rumblin', there's a lot of gross but consensual sex, explicit and stinky and rich; it is not looking to be commercial, just to articulate a thought, a gesture, a desire.
I think that Mad Man helps Delany talk about what he means to be and stand for in the world in a way he polishes later. He uses it to intentionally distance himself from a politic of respectability within gay fiction, at the same time as the collapse of pulp sci fi publishing was also making his prior style of publishing success within paraliterature impossible. And Delany isn't interested in being part of a safe sex movement that ignores or smack-talks particular kinds of people, or insists rigidly on who is or isn't gay. He's interested in everyone who the pandemic might impact, and especially in people who are revolting to respectable people.
May 23, 2019
My Delany reviews repeat themselves: This is not the best book to start with. (Though I did think it was great.) Here are some other suggestions:
Hogg is also explicitly pornographic and set in a contemporary world. It's shorter. It's more violent, but roughly on par as far as gross/nasty/vulgar sex with The Mad Man and Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders.
Times Square Red, Time Square Blue covers some similar ground around Delany's experiences of gay sex, porn theaters, and the HIV/AIDS crisis in New York City. It's a shorter book, but denser and more academic, and presented as non-fiction. If I remember correctly, the descriptions of sex are a little tamer.
(Or start with one of his shorter science fiction books, like Nova or The Einstein Intersection. Or Dhalgren, of course, if you're willing to do a long book and want to just start with his most famous.)
At this point in my reading of Delany, having read nearly all of his fiction and memoir, I'm increasingly interested in the ways his books reflect and build off one another.
The Neveryon books also cover some similar ground around sex, including a public health crises around a possible STD. These book more prominently features some elements that appear in The Mad Man: a concern for how history gets retold and an interest in sexual owner/master roleplay.
I didn't like either as much, but Phallos and Dark Reflections seem to be contending with some similar things as The Mad Man around sex and academia.
There are some interesting parallels in the main sexual/romantic relationships between The Mad Man and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, which is interesting specifically because one is a contemporary novel and one is science fiction set far away in time and space.
The Mad Man is about an educated, urban gay man during the HIV crisis. Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders makes as interesting counterpoint, as it's about less educated, rural gay men after the HIV crisis. I think these two make more sense to read in this order, which is the order they were written in.
If you read reviews of this book and then choose to read this book and then give this book a 1- or 2- star review, you are an idiot.
Hogg is also explicitly pornographic and set in a contemporary world. It's shorter. It's more violent, but roughly on par as far as gross/nasty/vulgar sex with The Mad Man and Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders.
Times Square Red, Time Square Blue covers some similar ground around Delany's experiences of gay sex, porn theaters, and the HIV/AIDS crisis in New York City. It's a shorter book, but denser and more academic, and presented as non-fiction. If I remember correctly, the descriptions of sex are a little tamer.
(Or start with one of his shorter science fiction books, like Nova or The Einstein Intersection. Or Dhalgren, of course, if you're willing to do a long book and want to just start with his most famous.)
At this point in my reading of Delany, having read nearly all of his fiction and memoir, I'm increasingly interested in the ways his books reflect and build off one another.
The Neveryon books also cover some similar ground around sex, including a public health crises around a possible STD. These book more prominently features some elements that appear in The Mad Man: a concern for how history gets retold and an interest in sexual owner/master roleplay.
I didn't like either as much, but Phallos and Dark Reflections seem to be contending with some similar things as The Mad Man around sex and academia.
There are some interesting parallels in the main sexual/romantic relationships between The Mad Man and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, which is interesting specifically because one is a contemporary novel and one is science fiction set far away in time and space.
The Mad Man is about an educated, urban gay man during the HIV crisis. Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders makes as interesting counterpoint, as it's about less educated, rural gay men after the HIV crisis. I think these two make more sense to read in this order, which is the order they were written in.
If you read reviews of this book and then choose to read this book and then give this book a 1- or 2- star review, you are an idiot.
May 27, 2022
WOW! This book activates and engages. If you have reservations coming into it, you will meet resistance, but whether pushing through discomfort or ravenously fascinated, Delany and his company’s words and stories do something very powerful to you. The complexities of life and desire are untangled and retangled for your contemplation. I am astonished how much I enjoyed this book, and how strongly I felt compelled to stay reading it. Thank you, Delany, your writing gives me things I can’t find the words for.
TLDR; I am purchasing a second copy. It’s the sort of book you want to keep on-hand to pass on to the right person at the right time.
CONTENT SPECIFICITIES AND WARNINGS:
- fecal matter and urine in sexual contexts
- mention of vomit, though no description of the act or anything too triggering for emetophobes
- sexual assault and explicit rape (though not fetishized or overly detailed)
- bestiality/sexual abuse of an animal
- incest, pedophilia
- public nudity and public sexual encounter
- group sex
- (open conversations regarding the above topics; ethics and sexuality are part of the conversation on life and death and desire)
- AIDS and its impacts (core to the work)
- blood and violence
- death (of course), though only one dying/dead individual is witnessed directly
- eating and food
- common slurs, racial and sexual
- racial violence
- some content may stir thoughts about one’s body image, but these are minimal and in the attitude of Delany’s authorial voice, “different” bodies are celebrated
- philosophy (ha, ha)
I include a list of “content warnings” not because this is a particularly good book to come to for shelter from any specific content, but because it is helpful to approach knowing what you’re getting into. If you have a phobia of urine, it is not the Delany work for you. If you have emetophobia (my personal experience and thus bias), this book isn’t much trouble and never upset me in the particular way phobias do.
TLDR; I am purchasing a second copy. It’s the sort of book you want to keep on-hand to pass on to the right person at the right time.
CONTENT SPECIFICITIES AND WARNINGS:
- fecal matter and urine in sexual contexts
- mention of vomit, though no description of the act or anything too triggering for emetophobes
- sexual assault and explicit rape (though not fetishized or overly detailed)
- bestiality/sexual abuse of an animal
- incest, pedophilia
- public nudity and public sexual encounter
- group sex
- (open conversations regarding the above topics; ethics and sexuality are part of the conversation on life and death and desire)
- AIDS and its impacts (core to the work)
- blood and violence
- death (of course), though only one dying/dead individual is witnessed directly
- eating and food
- common slurs, racial and sexual
- racial violence
- some content may stir thoughts about one’s body image, but these are minimal and in the attitude of Delany’s authorial voice, “different” bodies are celebrated
- philosophy (ha, ha)
I include a list of “content warnings” not because this is a particularly good book to come to for shelter from any specific content, but because it is helpful to approach knowing what you’re getting into. If you have a phobia of urine, it is not the Delany work for you. If you have emetophobia (my personal experience and thus bias), this book isn’t much trouble and never upset me in the particular way phobias do.
June 13, 2025
This one’s for all the cocksuckers who, after taking their cum, enjoy swallowing piss as well. A subversive, philosophical queer erotica that’s more a performative manifesto than anything.
One reviewer says not to read this book unless you have “very very very specialised tastes,” but the whole point is to go beyond the proprieties of taste—normalcy is the aberration. At least the characters had the guts to take what they desired instead of remaining a mere fantasy.
Another reviewer even had the gall to call this “anti-romantic”, yet the narrator develops a romance after finally finding the perfect person who shares the same kinks—so what if they were homeless, liked pissing in people’s mouths and getting their cheesy yoni sucked off. Most of the reviewers say more about the offensiveness to their own prudishness than they do about the book. The whole point of erotica like this is to take you beyond your limits—to eradicate them—and then, in doing so, take you to the threshold of acceptance to render our individual specificity visible, thus, making the very acts you condemn possible when the people committing them are, at last, understood.
Though, to be fair, the book did feel a little bloated at times—pages of sexual digressions that don’t always seem relevant to the main thread of the story—but, as I said, it is more a performative gesture, an indirect philosophical embodiment of a System of the World smashing against that which is given.
~2.5 (not bad)
One reviewer says not to read this book unless you have “very very very specialised tastes,” but the whole point is to go beyond the proprieties of taste—normalcy is the aberration. At least the characters had the guts to take what they desired instead of remaining a mere fantasy.
Another reviewer even had the gall to call this “anti-romantic”, yet the narrator develops a romance after finally finding the perfect person who shares the same kinks—so what if they were homeless, liked pissing in people’s mouths and getting their cheesy yoni sucked off. Most of the reviewers say more about the offensiveness to their own prudishness than they do about the book. The whole point of erotica like this is to take you beyond your limits—to eradicate them—and then, in doing so, take you to the threshold of acceptance to render our individual specificity visible, thus, making the very acts you condemn possible when the people committing them are, at last, understood.
Though, to be fair, the book did feel a little bloated at times—pages of sexual digressions that don’t always seem relevant to the main thread of the story—but, as I said, it is more a performative gesture, an indirect philosophical embodiment of a System of the World smashing against that which is given.
~2.5 (not bad)
July 5, 2020
A very challenging novel on several levels, this epic of urban gay life during the first decade or so of AIDS in New York City accomplishes many things: anatomizes sides of gay life (and the lives of men who have sex with men) very few writers have the courage or skill to explore, depicts homelessness not merely as a problem needing direct action but as a site of resistance and alternative ways of living and loving, creates a raunchy and mutually fulfilling cross-class/cross-race love story, explores the nature of sanity/insanity, and satirizes the academy, all while being a fascinating murder mystery and exploration of the mind, heart and desires of protagonist John Marr and his doppelganger Timothy Hasler. Delany does this via a prose style entirely his own, incorporating the rich detail received by all five human senses. Highly recommended, but not for the faint of heart, stomach or soul.
July 29, 2024
Of the three Delany novels I've read (the other two being Hogg, The Tides of Lust) this is my favorite so far. This novel was so much better written than Hogg, and in a way more disturbing than Hogg. Why? For me, the better the writing, the more I believe in the story when the disturbing subjects are brought up. The characters in Hogg are absolutely one dimensional and it is written to shock, and that's it. The Mad Man is different. In this novel, I wanted to know why the protagonist had chosen such an unconventional life. I wanted to know what caused the murder of the genius philosopher Timothy Hasler back in the seventies. There are many disturbing novels, how many include Greek text and references to Heraclitus? Not many. The fact that this was a well written book makes me want to read some of the science fiction Delany has written. If you are looking for a dark, disturbing, and still want to care about the characters novel, check this book out if you can handle some weird stuff.
October 15, 2020
When I was a grad student writing a dissertation about the ecological politics of shit, a professor once recommended this book to me, saying, "Not only is this the most scatological book I've ever read, it's the queerest as well." And it really is. There are so many scatological gay sex scenes it gets boring after awhile. And lest you misunderstand me, all of those things are good things. This is a brilliant book on every level.
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