Re: Ash of Stars

While I understand the value of exploring the extremist behavior that
probes at the boundaries of what is deemed moral within certain society
patterns, I must confess I am often discomforted by the friendly approach
of Delany to characters that are criminals, not to society per se, as a
system of authority and hierarchy, but to plain other people.  The casual
portrayal of rapists (who make a methodology and almost profession of
such abuse) sometimes strikes me as going beyond intellectual curiosity
or desire to explore mindsets, into outright fascination.  I have not given
it the detailed reading and critical analysis it may need for accurate
commentary, but my distaste lingers.


On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 6:19 PM, Steve M <[email protected]> wrote:
> At 12:01 PM -0400 10/17/11, [email protected] wrote:
>>Delany, like Wright, is a highly civilzed man, though not a
>>product of the dire circumstances of the latter, so that, whatever he
>>has experienced in the Unlicensed Zone, he wouldn't do well with real
>>criminals. He's probably been around thugs, as I have, and hopefully
>>he'd be smart enough to see them as the enemy.
>
> Somehow, having read Heavenly Breakfast, and Time Square Red/Blue, I
> doubt "enemy" or "thugs" are the words he would choose for the people
> you characterize thus. I'm not saying he would embrace them as
> comrades in arms--that seems equally unlikely. The thugs and enemy of
> Times Square Red/Blue, such as they are, would be the financial and
> real estate speculators who robbed the Times Square area of its
> street life.
>
> You have always seemed to proceed from an essentially binary
> conception of the world (and especially of types of people) that
> seems frankly at odds with the the sort of complexity that seems to
> energize Delany's work.  The circumstances of Hasler's death in "The
> Man Man" when finally revealed, make choosing clear "enemies" or
> "thugs" problematic at best.
>
> And it's clear that the "thugs" of S"tars in My Pocket..." are the
> Thant family--not the inscrutible xlv or even the assassin on Marq's
> initial flight home. Indeed, Marq (and the book) see him as someone
> to whom one should give a wide berth, but not the "enemy."
>
> At 12:01 PM -0400 10/17/11, [email protected] wrote:
>>Real criminality is not remotely
>>oppositional.
>
> I think you also simplify a complex question here--one that Delany
> explores in "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones"
> which suggests that most criminality (and by extension most art) is
> not oppositional in any effective sense. It neither tries nor
> succeeds in shaking up the social structures it weaves in and out of.
> Indeed: It depends on the stability of those structures. Disruptive
> criminality (and art) are intentionally (and sometimes effectively)
> oppositional. The criminals who want to game systems are different
> from those who want to destroy them. (This is how the Prohbition-era
> rum-runners, who depended on Prohibition to keep prices and profits
> high, are different from those who participated in the Underground
> Railway for slaves, though both were criminal.)
>
> That is what Maud Hinkle is hinting at in "Time Considered..." And
> while Delany's later work seems to move away from that simple
> romantic view of the criminal, the changes are not so much to deny
> the observations there as to simply deromanticize the criminal and
> explore the ways in which criminality is in fact determined by the
> structures of non-criminal society and necessary to and interwoven
> with it. The smuggler in the Neveryon series is a criminal but
> necessary--the legitimate markets would not function without him. His
> role is determined, and the occasional prosecutions of smugglers are
> meant not to eliminate the practice but to keep it in check at the
> necessary level. Meanwhile Gorgik's disruptive criminality, once he
> starts freeing slaves, makes him the object of active pursuit, until
> the later Neveryon novels, when his role becomes integrated into and
> necessary to those structures.
>
>
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