The Motion of Light in Water

An autobiographical memoir covering the formative years of one of science fiction's intellectual heavyweights, the author of Dhalgren, The Einstein Intersection, the Neveryon sagas, etc., and only incidentally one of the few black writers to have won popular acclaim in a competitive, demanding, and often incestuous field. Young "Chip" (he chose the nickname himself at summer camp, and it stuck), son of a Harlem funeral director, attended the Bronx High School of Science (for gifted students) in the 1950's, where he displayed astonishing creative energy and eclecticism, and his dyslexia went undiagnosed if not unremarked. The years 1960-61 were crucial: his father died, he dropped out of school (City College, N.Y.), and hastily married the poet Marilyn Hacker, "pregnant with our second sexual experiment," despite the fact that she was white, he was black and avowedly gay. Despite the hostility of Marilyn's mother, the relationship endured past Marilyn's later miscarriage. Thereafter, Chip's obsession with life and art intensified: he wrote and wrote (and excised whole pages at random from his first published novel, The Jewels of Aptor, in order to fit the publisher's format); he pursued homosexual sex (he writes of orgies in bathhouses and track parks) while enjoying a heterosexual relationship with Marilyn. The couple invited W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman to dinner; they drank gin from paper cups and discussed poetry until the garbage caught fire. In order to make ends meet, Chip performed as a folk singer in Village coffeehouses, and was once billed above a young Bob Dylan; Dylan showed up, became abusive, and left without performing. A wealth of fascinating material, then, set forth in Delany's precise, elegant prose. Indeed, many readers will find Delany more accessible here than in his often over-dense, rariffed novels. The single drawback: Delany is so controlled a writer that you learn exactly what he wants you to learn - and no more. (Kirkus Reviews)