When I meet someone who loves Samuel Delany, I more or less assume we’ll become friends. I attach this assumption to some other writers, but for Delany it’s often proven to be true. He’s like Roland Barthes in that I have trouble stopping myself from talking about him too much and also in that I occasionally search OKCupid to find potential dates who list him as an interest.
I was excited, then, to see that PennSound has posted the videos from the recent Motion of Light: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany’s Performance Poetics. The event was organized by Tracie Morris and Charles Bernstein, and includes a brilliant keynote by Fred Moten. In addition to the video, the transcription of the event can be read on Jacket2. A lot happens that is worth geeking out about, including Delany’s explanation that the dandruff-life powder in an early sex scene from Dhalgren is the result of using a diaphragm, leading to some musing on the character insight that is lost with time as diaphragm usage becomes less common. The entirety of Moten’s keynote also deserves sustained and repeated attention.
It’s the ongoing discussion of genre, however, that I’d like to focus on. The event, again, bills itself as a “tribute to Samuel R. Delany’s performance poetics.” This is interesting (and appropriate) in part because Delany works in almost every genre but poetry. He writes critically and sometimes academically, he of course writes some of the most brilliant science fiction of our time, he is accomplished in memoir and essay and the interview—he does all of this, and his work still rewards when read with the attention and expectations that poetry demands.
Delany’s discussion with Bernstein circles around genre, using it to talk through and about topics such as fantasy, imagination, and oppression. Referencing Raymond Chandler and the essay “The Simple Art of Murder,” Delany says “That is to say, there are no significant genres. There are different genres, yes. But they are not significant because they exist. He says there are no significant art forms, there’s only art, and precious little of that. And I think he was right.” This reminded me of what Ryan Van Meter said of genre in the “But is it an essay?” series, that “we like a thing to go into the box that has the thing’s name on it. Sometimes I wonder if we have too many boxes and not enough things.”
Most of the writers I talk to who work in hybrid or non-traditional genres spend a lot of time answering questions about what genre is and means, and most of these writers also find the questions of genre tedious. Genre is a powerful tool, for certain, in aligning our readers to a certain type of engagement and announcing a connection with a certain literary or artistic tradition. This is especially powerful when we are doing unconventional things with that engagement or tradition, and when we suspect readers might not always bring those readings on their own (I am tempted now, my attention so focused, to read my favorite of Delany’s works once more with a focus on their performance poetics).
But to lean too heavily on genre also creates problems, among them the narrowing of traditions and the rigidity of form. In his conversation with Bernstein, Delany goes on to talk about the relationship between genre and categorical power structures (such as race, gender, and sexuality). “So, what do you do? You think a lot. That’s how you start,” he says. And later, “I think there’s precious little art, there’s also precious little of this kind of, dare I call it, global or holistic or ecological thinking that goes on in the world.”
Precious little art. I find that exciting. It reminds me why I take another person’s love of Delany to be a sign of potential friendship, and why I should read more and write more and advocate more for good books. And as part of Delany’s broad and insightful answer to questions of genre, it reminds me how to deal with these questions myself, questions I might often want to avoid. We should answer them honestly and with full attention, because “what do you do? You think a lot. That’s how you start.” And if you commit to the project, to the thinking, you might get somewhere, regardless of all the rest of it.