Cultural Fugue - A Review of Samuel R. Delany's 'Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand'

 

In Samuel R. Delaney's landmark novel, 'Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand,' which many people rightly regard as his best book, he describes something he calls "cultural fugue," where a civilization becomes so technologically convoluted and socially volatile that the entire planet's population dies in a massive, suicidal conflagration. The phenomenon seems to be a euphemism for global thermonuclear war, which was the primary political threat at the time Delany wrote the book, and he wanted to write of its consequences without actually naming it.

Our society is no longer poised on the brink of nuclear war between two superpowers. But given recent events, I'm beginning to wonder if Delany, without intending to, might have actually hit on something.

And there lies the only extent to which this blog will get political - this time.

Delany's writing is perfectly suited for readers. Not audiobook consumers, readers. His is a writing style that rambles in a way which delights readers who want to re-read portions as they go, revel in little turns of the phrase, or become awash in the experiences of the characters. Readers who like to relax and read can delight in how a character felt with each look in the eye, each new event, and every nuance.

For audiobook users, the whole thing splays out in too many directions at once, and devolves into a kind of fog.

This is what I discovered when I tried to experience Delany's book in audio form. The purple prose that Delany uses is wonderful when read. When spoken as a recording, the constant digressions and descriptions end up boring the listener and bogging the entire experience down. Just as an experiment, I picked up the print copy of the book and found myself drawn right in. But the audio format consistently left me lost. Delany is the sort of author whose work is meant to be ruminated upon. Not merely consumed in a single shot.

An additional obstacle presents itself in the form of the person who usually narrates Delany's fiction, Stefan Rudnicki. He doesn't do a bad job of narrating per se, but his deep, deep voice is prone to being absurdly loud one moment, and sultrily quiet the next, depending upon which character he is enacting. I found that if any background noise was present, any at all, I tended to lose whole paragraphs and had to rewind to the point I'd lost after things quieted down. Rudnicki's voice is pleasant, and I enjoy listening to him, but the volume aspect is a hurdle. Combine that with Delany's nuanced detailism, and it becomes pure negative synergy.

Delany is rightly regarded as a pioneer of fiction. He wrote bluntly homosexual scenes, or even alien-bestiality, at a time period when such things might still get one arrested if the book were sent through the U.S. Postal Service! He took the genre of science fiction and helped elevate it to high-brow literary quality instead of merely greasy-kid's-stuff. Yet for all Delany's pioneering, both as a writer and as an African-American, I find his plot lines to be character driven in a way that is unsatisfying. I first experienced this when I read Dhalgren, another of Delany's landmark books, and found when it was done that I really didn't see the point. The main character of that book enters a city, experiences a wide variety of things, and then leaves the city a somewhat changed man, but this character-driven milieu left me wondering what the point was. With Stars In My Pocket, I think I finally know. Delany writes of a specific person, based on someone he knows in real life, whom he truly loves. He places that person in an alien and futuristic world or series of worlds, and then runs the scene forward, re-living the love he knew. In this case, Delany probably based his man character, Rat Korga, on a man he actually met, possibly tall and red-haired like his character, fell in love with him, and delighted in knowing him all over again in his fiction. It works for those who grow to love the character through Delany's microscopically detailed descriptions. You end up relating to the character, and find yourself drawn in. But the plot lacks any ideas or conflicts. There is no obstacle which has been overcome, no lesson which has been learned. The entire plot of Stars In My Pocket is this: Object of love's backstory, love found, love lost. End of book. How the hell did that last a few hundred pages?

I'm well aware that my disappointment comes from my generational differences with Delany. I am a Gen-Xer, critiquing a New Wave writer. I know perfectly well how Delany's fiction broke ground up until and even through the Cyberpunk Era. But having grown up with my roots permeating that previously broken ground, I find that seeing that ground broken anew doesn't surprise or phase me. The soft-core homosexual porn that Delany writes isn't new to my eyes, scandalous though it was in the 80's. Instead of being blown away by someone daring to write such things, I and my generation are a bit more like, "Been there, done that." And while I acknowledge Delany's rightful place at the Vanguard of societal change, I simply have a hard time getting worked up about it. The track has been laid, and there's blood on the tracks - Delany's blood - which I acknowledge and salute. But I must render it a product of its time.

I hope one does not get the impression that I did not enjoy the book. I most certainly did. Nor should one think that I am one of those who is trying to toss Delany on the same "canon irrelevant" pile as some in the modern sci-fi community have done with foundational writers such as John W. Campbell or H.P. Lovecraft. Delany is as far removed from those racist hacks as Everest is from the Marianas Trench. Yet I cannot deny that an afterward included at the end of the book, in which Delany discusses the philosophies and motivations of science fiction, delighted me much more than the book itself. I am a Transhumanist, both in my philosophy, and in my tastes in sci-fi. Delany is damned good, but just a bit outside my personal comfort zone.

In conclusion, I give Stars In My Pocket 4 out of 5 stars, IF one reads it. Don't bother trying to audiobook this author. I imagine gay male or straight female readers will find Delany's gay lovemaking scenes exciting, as opposed to my straight-white self, who finds them boring, and so they will think my review is too harsh. That's both fine, and fair.

We all march to the beat of a different cultural fugue.

Eric

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