A review by macroscopicentric
The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village by Samuel R. Delany

informative reflective slow-paced

4.0

From anyone else, in all honesty, I don’t think I would have enjoyed the sheer level of navel-gazing we get from Delany here. Delany is absolutely obsessed with trying to make himself understood to the reader, which is part of why the book is so long, and is also equally obsessed with his own reflections on the limits of memory, semantics, and communicating his experiences to another person through writing. But for some reason from Delany these things felt charming to me rather than annoying or grandiose or self-obsessive. I think part of it is the kindness with which he treats others, even when they’ve perhaps misused him. His reflections on his relationship with Marilyn, especially, are stupendously generous in a way I wouldn’t necessarily have expected from someone in that situation (even though he didn’t find it unpleasant). I think another part of it is that he turns the obsession with the failures of memory on himself, and openly and enthusiastically interrogates the failures of his own memory. In the end I really enjoyed this, and it didn’t necessarily make me more inclined to read his science fiction but it did make me want to read his other nonfiction. Delany has permanently endeared himself to me as a self-conscious and highly verbal (sometimes excessively so) optimistic documenter of human behavior, which is just extremely relatable all around.