Re: The Mad Man

At 8:45 AM +0100 12/24/05, Henrick Pålsson wrote:
>  I reading now The Mad Man I have only read  50 
>pages so far, but I wonder how biograhical The 
>Mad Man is. I know  its fiction, but is some 
>thing about Delanys own life. I got that 
>felling when I read. Anyway it is a great book. 
>I also have his About  Writing and hope he will 
>write more great books. He is after all my 
>favorite writer both fiction and non-fiction.
>
>   Merry christmas and happy new year I wish all Delany-fan.
>
>   Cheerio!
>   Henrick

I think that's one of those questions that rarely 
is of much value with fiction. As you read 
Delany's explanation of "Write what you know" in 
his book "About Writing" it becomes clear how 
slippery this question is.

What can be said: Certainly the descriptions of 
New York City are informed by Delany's own 
observation of that city. Certainly the fact that 
his current lover was homeless informed his 
portraits of homeless men in the story. Certainly 
his visits to adult movie houses informed that 
portion of the book. And certainly his recent 
career in various universities informed his 
writing about those aspects of the book and about 
the characters that come from or pass through 
that milieu. However, "informed by" is different 
from "based on."

Read "The Motion of Light in Water" and "Times 
Square Red, Times Square Blue" and 1984, as well 
as the graphic novel about his relationship with 
Dennis to get biographical information about his 
sexual and intellectual life. If you do, you will 
see correspondences--character traits that show 
up in someone encountered in his memoirs that are 
remapped onto a fictional character, but few if 
any one-to-one matchups. In the same way, some of 
the experiences in Delany's triadic relationship 
with Marilyn Hacker and Bob Folsom certainly 
informed some of the dynamics of the relationship 
of Kidd, Lanya, and Denny in Dhalgren, but Kidd, 
Lanya and Denny are not Delany, Hacker and 
Folsom. There is no simple one-to-one 
correspondence.

In short, it's a work of fiction that, like any 
good work of fiction, draws on its writer's life, 
but if you read the memoirs, it's clear that The 
Mad Man is not a roman a clef.

However, your sense that "this must be real" is a 
testament to how well it is written, how well he 
used real experience to make the fictional 
occurrences feel real.


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