A review by historyofjess
Times Square Red, Times Square Blue 20th Anniversary Edition by Samuel R. Delany, Robert F Reid-Pharr

informative reflective slow-paced

3.0

This was a book I'm glad I read (for the queer book club I'm a part of) but that was really hard for me to get through. Most of that has to do with the structure of the book. It's basically two long essays (plus a decent length introduction, since it's the 20th anniversary edition of the book). I've struggled with similarly structured books, just because I like the comfort of chapters as breakpoints that lengthy essays do not provide. The first essay is the longest and, while it's split into many sections, it's can feel like a very stream of consciousness re-telling of the author's (a Black gay man) experiences frequenting the gay sex scene in adult movie theaters in TImes Square. The content is very graphically sexual, which some folks in our book club talked about having to adjust to because of their puritanical upbringing, I didn't have as much of that experience, but there was a little. Mostly it's fascinating because Delany is just naturally very interested in people and their stories and experiences and he wants to introduce you to the many folks he met during this time, which is a really compelling thing. The second essay is shorter than the first, but still long and it's a more academic discussion of the value of "contact" relationships (something his TImes Square encounters fall under) and how they differ from networking encounters, particularly in how they allow us to communicate and relate across class divides. There's also, though both, a lot about gentrification as it relates to the re-making of Times Square, though, with the second essay published in 1998, Delany still could not conceive of what Times Square looks like now.