What do you think?
Rate this book
Big Joe
An uproarious and scandalous Southern picaresque by the master Samuel R. Delany.
A chance encounter with two older fellows at the movie theater has the young vagabond Ligie on his way to Lot-8, a trailer park down the road with an unconventional local reputation. There, Ligie meets Big Joe and his extended a loose-knit community of freaks all sectioned together by the landlord at the outskirts of town. Weaving together colorful characters and outright carnal debauchery, Big Joe is a radical pastoral of community, desire, and the strangeness of knowing one another.
A chance encounter with two older fellows at the movie theater has the young vagabond Ligie on his way to Lot-8, a trailer park down the road with an unconventional local reputation. There, Ligie meets Big Joe and his extended a loose-knit community of freaks all sectioned together by the landlord at the outskirts of town. Weaving together colorful characters and outright carnal debauchery, Big Joe is a radical pastoral of community, desire, and the strangeness of knowing one another.
128 pages, Paperback
Published March 1, 2021
2 people are currently reading
99 people want to read
About the author
Samuel R. Delany
306 books2,248 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 - 14 of 14 reviews
April 5, 2021
A quick and fun trip into Chip’s pornoverse, but illustrated this time. Filled with all the tropes of his recent output: interracial couples, scumbags and their cocksuckers, endearing racial slurs, casually incestuous family situations, and piss drinking in lieu of bathroom trips. The art is beautiful, especially the drawings of Uncle Tom (reusing the name of the dog from Nest of Spiders, interestingly) and the colorful gay hippie commune section at the end. Worth the entry fee for another taste of Delany’s beautiful filth if it’s your thing.
June 9, 2025
This was literally just vignettes of ethically-dubious p0rn. But I kinda liked it? Happy pride 🏳️🌈
May 30, 2021
How do you rate pornography when the pornography in question doesn't remotely appeal to your personal kinks? I've given Big Joe three stars because Samuel R. Delany is incapable of writing poorly, but at the same time, this very slim book is really just porn.
Like his most recent masterpiece (from a writer with more than a few to his name), the enormous novel Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders, Big Joe is a story with no real conflict and which is replete with graphic gay male sex of the snot, piss, and shit fetishizing kind, along with very liberal use of words like "nigger" and "cock-sucker". Unlike TVNS, though, Big Joe's characters are mere sketches acting out one sex scene after the other; I certainly never cared about any of them, not the narrator Ligie, nor the titular character Big Joe himself.
This novella is only for Delany completists and/or those with a penchant for Delany's kind of pornography.
Like his most recent masterpiece (from a writer with more than a few to his name), the enormous novel Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders, Big Joe is a story with no real conflict and which is replete with graphic gay male sex of the snot, piss, and shit fetishizing kind, along with very liberal use of words like "nigger" and "cock-sucker". Unlike TVNS, though, Big Joe's characters are mere sketches acting out one sex scene after the other; I certainly never cared about any of them, not the narrator Ligie, nor the titular character Big Joe himself.
This novella is only for Delany completists and/or those with a penchant for Delany's kind of pornography.
November 6, 2021
This is a nice entry point for Delany's erotica/porn. It's a quick read and doesn't get as "gross" as some of his other work. Would recommend starting here before reading Hogg, The Mad Man, Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders, or Shoat Rumblin. Those books all offer more plot, character, and "literary stuff," but if you don't enjoy this one, I have a hard time imagining you'd find any of those fun to read.
Read
June 10, 2024Samuel Delany book club said we were going to read all of Samuel Delany. This maintains much of the sexual taboo boundary pushing of Delany's late masterpieces (Through The Valley of the Nest of Spiders, Mad Man) but, imo, without the larger narrative framework to sustain interest. According to Delany, he stopped writing fiction after "the big drop." I hope that's not true.
June 7, 2025
A brief sliver of a book, I really wanted it to go on longer. Definitely a bit raunchy and shocking, but I loved the themes of chosen family and the sex positivity. I enjoyed my time with the characters and definitely want to read more from the author. I hear that the others are MORE outrageous than this one?!?
December 26, 2023
I don't know how to rate this 4? 5? I think I don't have enough experience reading good porn to like have other things to compare to and know what's what... but maybe that's a comparison in and of itself.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 1, 2022
Straightforward utopian erotica. Very uncomfortable at times – typical Delany. Similar to Through The Valley… but without much more than the sex and a lot easier to read. Great illustrations.
December 20, 2022
Cocksucker as term of endearment ❤️
June 21, 2025
Well that was… interesting
August 7, 2025
Elite smut
Read
September 18, 2025Picarisqué yass
June 12, 2025
hot. Lil nasty for my taste but love whatcha love
July 24, 2025
A quick and dirty book perfect for a hot, horny, sweaty Summer afternoon.
———————————————————————————
“Orgasms are things that, when they happen to you, it's hard to describe which, I guess, is why most people do it by just naming them: I had an orgasm. I came. I shot… Something starts from the back of the legs and rises through the body, and it carries you away, tingling, into something that grows and grows and is all pleasure though as easily it could be pain, if some switch in the brain/body were set to another position. It peaks— Then, like a sneeze or a cramp or spasm of the belly where you upchuck, it releases and, as you come down from it, it becomes harder and harder to remember. Satisfied? Well, yes, but you know you'll want it again.”
———————————————————————————
“Orgasms are things that, when they happen to you, it's hard to describe which, I guess, is why most people do it by just naming them: I had an orgasm. I came. I shot… Something starts from the back of the legs and rises through the body, and it carries you away, tingling, into something that grows and grows and is all pleasure though as easily it could be pain, if some switch in the brain/body were set to another position. It peaks— Then, like a sneeze or a cramp or spasm of the belly where you upchuck, it releases and, as you come down from it, it becomes harder and harder to remember. Satisfied? Well, yes, but you know you'll want it again.”
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews