Re: Reading Phallos

Hey, David C. and Pete L. and Heidi L.
and anyone else who's interested in (re)reading Phallos--

I'm glad you found my auxiliary scriblings on Mann and Corvo of
interest. As we all know, Delany is often a pretty bookish
writer--that is, his texts are frequently supported, sometime overtly,
sometimes covertly, by other texts. I find a steady dialogue almost
always at work between his own non-fiction and his fiction. And
*Phallos* is certainly one of the places where that dialogue can be
most clearly heard. As it says on the back of the book, *Phallos*
leans largely on Lacan (who else?)--which, frankly, is like leaning on
an immense whipped cream puff. Which is to say, in turn, Lacan is one
of those writers/thinkers whom you can fall into and drown in
and never come out. (Socrates is reputed to have said the same of
Haraclitus, when Euripides slipped him the *Peri Phuseos* treaties.
Ain't there nothin' new under the sun . . .?) But Delany has done some
of the work for us--in that I (at any rate) found it useful to look at
some of what Delany himself has written about Lacan, specifically
about Lacan's writing on the "Phallus" (yeah, that's with the Latin
ending, not the Greek)as a guide to his overall project in the
novella. I mean, probably it's reasonable to assume that what Delany's
written about it what he's most interested in, no . . .?

Anyway. Delany's essay collection *Shorter Views* contains a
fascinating extended essay called "Neither the First Word Nor the Last
on Deconstruction, Structuralism, Poststructuralism, and Semiotics for
SF Readers" (p 141), which contains, in its turn, a succinct and
remarkably clear exposition of a couple of points about Lacanian
psychoanalysis: It runs from the last paragraph on page 152 through
page 156. I'd suggest anyone who owns that Delany volume (*Shorter
Views*)read those four pages. He or she will find a lot of light
thrown both on the  overall idea of the phallus/phallos and on the
final scene of *Phallos*-the-novel, when Neoptolomus and Nivek embrace
on the shore at Syracuse, listening to "[t]he *Da*, *Da*, *Da* of the
talking thunder." 

I'm tempted to type out the whole four pages, with footnotes. But 
that's a bit much--I'll assume, rather, most of us, as Delany fans,
have the book . . . or at least, I hope, have access to it. Those
pages really do make things clearer, though.

I will quote this much, however, which might tug a few of you on to
look up the rest: Delany has just finished talking about Lacan's first
major *ecrit*, his seminar on Poe's "The Purloined Letter" and is now
talking directly about Lacan's piece, "The Signification of the
phallus." There Delany writes: 

"For Lacan the phallus was specificially *not* the penis or the
clitoris which symbolized it. Rather it was a structure of meaning
that, like the narrative structures that form around the purloined
letter as it journeys on its way through Poe's tale, any 'signifier of
desire' must inhabit--and the signifier of desire (that is, the
structure that creates such a signifier) is what the phallus *is*."
(*Shorter Views*, p 153) 

I think at least one of the things Delany wants to do in *Phallos* is
give us a dramatic experience of what that structure of meaning
is--and even take the reader on a journey which starts *with* the
confusion of the phallos with what symbolizes it; and by stages,
clarify that confusion. But look at the whole four-page passage.
Generally speaking, I've found Delany a pretty good guide to all of
his own novels, but that's especially true for *Phallos*.

Saturday Joe (my partner) and I have to run off to visit Joe's aunt
and uncle in Maryland for two weeks. Hope there's lots of interesting
stuff to chew over here. I'll be lurking, listening, and commenting.
But I won't have my library with me.
  
All best--
Bill         






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