A review by jazzypizzaz
Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany
5.0
Easily the most fascinating book & the richest reading experience, I've had all year -- it's one that I know I could reread again and again, and would get entirely new things out of each time. Much of the time I had no idea what was going on or why it was relevant, or at least knew I was only getting a few layers of the context at most, but each sentence was, in turn: a bafflement, a delight, an oddity, a thrill, an obscurity, and this was more than enough to dazzle. Few sentences within seem like they could exist in any other book. It was, more than most anything I've read (or so it seems right now, in the afterglow), like reading a book written from an alternate universe (the one in which it is set? or another?). I now realize this was an intentional device to mimic the outsider's experience, to simulate the experience of total immersion into a whole new foreign world and all the cycles of frustration and amazement, confusion and brief flashes of insight, that entails.
Assorted ramblings for my own elucidation/indulgence, as I attempt to make sense of anything:
There's a moment I held onto like a lifeline where Korga (the most obvious outsider within the narrative) talks about how everyone asks him "what is it like to lose a world?" but how a more relevant question is "what is it like to be presented with a new one?" and how interconnected that is. Being immersed in an entirely new way of life, being given new knowledge that changes how you view the world, being introduced to conceptual frameworks that upends everything you've ever been taught -- this is losing your entire world as it was (beyond the literal planet/culture that Korga lost), by way of gaining a possible new one. There's another repeated line that I held onto -- "worlds are big, but the universe is small". There's infinite variation between people and their inner worlds, between groups of people across geographies & cultures, but there are the same basic struggles that play out across all humanity; namely the struggle between a willful desire to hold onto that known lost world & the rigid outdated order it places on everything (the Family), vs accepting a new world of different experiences, of other people, of new knowledge and how that changes what you've known (the Sygn). What actually causes the feared Cultural Fugue was unclear, but it might be a result of a downward spiral of willful ignorance within a society that leads to its own destruction.
There's a strong ethical thrust in the book towards a liberal, open-minded perspective -- "or is it likely that women are just more complex than can be made out by starlight alone?" -- and acceptance of diversity. What most fascinated me, however, was how even the semi-utopian world that Marq inhabits had its cultural blindspots, to the point of itself being threatened by Cultural Fugue upon Korga's presence (due to their very curiosity/open-mindedness, rather than willful ignorance?). Marq is supposed to be a capable diplomat, but I was continually disconcerted by his inability to ease Korga into his society, at the constant difficulty an outsider like Korga would face upon dealing with all the cultural expectations and subtextual decorum that foreign culture seemed to demand. There's also the matter of the Thants, and Marq's bewilderment at reading their signals and smoothing relations between them and his family. This was most exemplified at the formal dinner, of course, where Marq has a rare moment of putting himself in the struggling offworld guest's shoes and how alien the dinner's customs would be. Korga, by his peculiar history and nature, seemed to make out okay emotionally, but putting myself in his place no matter how fascinating and spectacular it all was (elaborate meals! alternate family structures! lack of gender signifiers! general equality!), I felt continually off-balance, overwhelmed. And of course, the Thants openly reacted in opposition to Marq's culture-- which leads me to wonder if it was Marq and his family's fault for not being better at bridging the cultural gaps between them, for all their supposed generations of diplomacy skill. Maybe this is just a human limitation, that diversity is so wide that no matter how open-minded a culture is, it's still hard to truly accept and understand otherness.
The dragon hunting scene, for example, was a rare moment of pure delight for Korga, but some of the implications nag at me. Through the hunt, they inhabit the dragon's bodies briefly (as the Old Hunter inhabit Korga/Marq), getting a full sensory taste of this different world... but I wonder about the limitations of that. It's a shallow taste, it's mere seconds/minutes as a recreational diversion -- you can taste other people's experiences / other cultures, but you can never fully inhabit or Know what it's like entirely. That must be better than blanket ignorance, but the possible shallowness also seemed reminiscent of the way people mistake cultural appropriation for multiculturalism.
Inhabiting another person's body and the rush/delight of the dragon hunting brings me to how there's also the whole layer of sexuality and desire throughout the book... how society oppresses and forms an individual's desire, what parts are central to who a person is inside vs what would change when your whole world changes -- the fact that Korga's sexuality is a constant regardless of the extreme situations he's confronted with for example. I'm not entirely sure of what to make of how Marq deals with everything in the Epilogue, which seems central to understanding this component... There's a lot to chew on -- perhaps if I manage to reread this someday.
Assorted ramblings for my own elucidation/indulgence, as I attempt to make sense of anything:
There's a moment I held onto like a lifeline where Korga (the most obvious outsider within the narrative) talks about how everyone asks him "what is it like to lose a world?" but how a more relevant question is "what is it like to be presented with a new one?" and how interconnected that is. Being immersed in an entirely new way of life, being given new knowledge that changes how you view the world, being introduced to conceptual frameworks that upends everything you've ever been taught -- this is losing your entire world as it was (beyond the literal planet/culture that Korga lost), by way of gaining a possible new one. There's another repeated line that I held onto -- "worlds are big, but the universe is small". There's infinite variation between people and their inner worlds, between groups of people across geographies & cultures, but there are the same basic struggles that play out across all humanity; namely the struggle between a willful desire to hold onto that known lost world & the rigid outdated order it places on everything (the Family), vs accepting a new world of different experiences, of other people, of new knowledge and how that changes what you've known (the Sygn). What actually causes the feared Cultural Fugue was unclear, but it might be a result of a downward spiral of willful ignorance within a society that leads to its own destruction.
There's a strong ethical thrust in the book towards a liberal, open-minded perspective -- "or is it likely that women are just more complex than can be made out by starlight alone?" -- and acceptance of diversity. What most fascinated me, however, was how even the semi-utopian world that Marq inhabits had its cultural blindspots, to the point of itself being threatened by Cultural Fugue upon Korga's presence (due to their very curiosity/open-mindedness, rather than willful ignorance?). Marq is supposed to be a capable diplomat, but I was continually disconcerted by his inability to ease Korga into his society, at the constant difficulty an outsider like Korga would face upon dealing with all the cultural expectations and subtextual decorum that foreign culture seemed to demand. There's also the matter of the Thants, and Marq's bewilderment at reading their signals and smoothing relations between them and his family. This was most exemplified at the formal dinner, of course, where Marq has a rare moment of putting himself in the struggling offworld guest's shoes and how alien the dinner's customs would be. Korga, by his peculiar history and nature, seemed to make out okay emotionally, but putting myself in his place no matter how fascinating and spectacular it all was (elaborate meals! alternate family structures! lack of gender signifiers! general equality!), I felt continually off-balance, overwhelmed. And of course, the Thants openly reacted in opposition to Marq's culture-- which leads me to wonder if it was Marq and his family's fault for not being better at bridging the cultural gaps between them, for all their supposed generations of diplomacy skill. Maybe this is just a human limitation, that diversity is so wide that no matter how open-minded a culture is, it's still hard to truly accept and understand otherness.
The dragon hunting scene, for example, was a rare moment of pure delight for Korga, but some of the implications nag at me. Through the hunt, they inhabit the dragon's bodies briefly (as the Old Hunter inhabit Korga/Marq), getting a full sensory taste of this different world... but I wonder about the limitations of that. It's a shallow taste, it's mere seconds/minutes as a recreational diversion -- you can taste other people's experiences / other cultures, but you can never fully inhabit or Know what it's like entirely. That must be better than blanket ignorance, but the possible shallowness also seemed reminiscent of the way people mistake cultural appropriation for multiculturalism.
Inhabiting another person's body and the rush/delight of the dragon hunting brings me to how there's also the whole layer of sexuality and desire throughout the book... how society oppresses and forms an individual's desire, what parts are central to who a person is inside vs what would change when your whole world changes -- the fact that Korga's sexuality is a constant regardless of the extreme situations he's confronted with for example. I'm not entirely sure of what to make of how Marq deals with everything in the Epilogue, which seems central to understanding this component... There's a lot to chew on -- perhaps if I manage to reread this someday.