Customer Reviews

About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, & Five Interviews

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Delany has one of the most penetrating minds of anyone writing in English. This book should be a first resource for anyone considering writing novels--Delany discusses it as the serious pursuit that it is. I find myself reconsidering many aspects of my own writing, and not always comfortably. I'll be a better writer for it.

I had the pleasure of reading this book before it reached the final draft. I have found the book almost as valuable as the teaching I recieved from the man himself. Though this is not a book for the light reader, if you give it time Delany will reveal many truths about writing and writers. Yes, it's academic, because this book is aimed at those who seek to become writers, and that is as much an academic pursuit as an artistic one. Delany won't coddle you and won't give you feel good platitudes about what it takes to be a writer. What he will give you is a solid basis for starting a writing career. It's not a pretty road to travel, and certainly not an easy one. This is an excellent roadmap.

For writers, About Writing is a drop-everything-and-read-right-now kind of book that can be used while you're going over your outline, while you're writing a scene or a chapter, and while you're revising that scene or chapter. This is not the kind of book you'll want to wait until the end of writing to read, rather you should consider using About Writing as a reference during the process. For teachers, his Introduction, essays, and appendix could be useful tools in an intermediate to advanced fiction writing course--although not as hand outs but as points of discussion.

Do not skip the Preface or the Introduction, as both are packed with ideas on good writing versus talented writing, which will make you study each paragraph of your writing for clarity and language. Of his essays, "Some Notes for the Intermediate and Advanced Creative Writing Student" is the most inspired and inspiring. This essay is on narrative structure, but more than that, it is about breaking away from the formulaic narrative structures that can hold a novel to mediocre writing. He advocates knowing the old structure in order to revise or subvert it. He makes a point of differentiating plot and structure: "Plot exists as a synopsis that often has no correspondence to text.... Structure exists, however, only in terms of a particular text, so that to talk about it in any specificity or detail you must constantly be pointing to one part of a page or another, at these words or at those: structure is specifically the organization of various and varied textual units." (p. 144)

Of his letters, read Letter to Q--. It is a criticism of Toni Morrison's Bluest Eye, from the intention of the writer to the failure of the historical milieu to the biased discussion on intra-racial discrimination. It's a brilliant rant: "I begrudge no one his or her enjoyment of Morrison's novel. Still, I feel obliged to say: If a reader thinks this story gives an accurate or even a meaningful portrait either of the subjective lives of dark-skinned black or of light-skinned blacks, that reader knows none of us. And that goes for black readers as well as white." (p. 176)

His interviews were included because he sees them as a form of written work, because he received the questions in writing and answered them in writing. This section could have been strengthened with the interview, "Black to the Future," which discusses William Gibson's critically acclaimed and popular Cyberpunk novel, Neuromancer.

About Writing ends with an appendix on various topics, from POV to punctuation to a discussion of the axiom: write what you know. If you only read the appendix, you'd still be better off now that where you were as a writer before.

The primary strength of About Writing is the many ways Delany discusses writing from the point of view of writer, reader, a teacher, and a critic.

The primary weakness is that the package deal of Delany's experience, success, and knowledge comes with a tone that can be off-putting, a tone supported by his edict in the Preface that only serious writers should read About Writing.

I am of the opinion that Samuel Delany's Dhalgren is one of the most important novels of the last forty years. It is as challenging as Gravity's Rainbow, but much more rewarding and politically complicated. And as a friend said once, it makes you feel kind of funny when you read it.

I love most of Delany's work, the essays on French theory, the memoirs on growing up black, queer and dyslexic in New York City, the science fiction, most of the gay erotica (though not even I can stomach Hogg) just about all of it really. So, when I saw this volume of his collected writings on writing, I had high hopes. I was disappointed. Delany on just about anything is an interesting, but here, I think he fell short. Good books on writing are hard to come by, beyond the technical nature of writing, there is little that can really be imparted in an essay, and especially an essay by a guy who is more comfortable with Lacan and spaceships than he is with self help talk of finding the writers voice.

That is not to say there are not some helpful tidbits in here, there are. There is some solid technical advice, and some interesting rambling about what it means to be a writer, creating worlds day in and day out. Unfortunately, though much of this I found below the usual level of Delany brilliance. If you're looking for some good Delany, instead of About Writing, read Dhalgren, Nova, Longer Views, The Motion of Light in Water and 1984

Delany is a writer's writer and has a lot of useful insights. He tends to become a bit conservative though, but it doesn't hurt the book. You just have to remember to preserve your own vision while reading.

About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, And Five Interviews by literary critic, writers workshop teacher, and world renowned science fiction author Samuel R Delany (Professor of English and Creative Writing, Temple University, Philadelphia) is an informed and informative study of the expertise necessary for a writer in any genre to become more organized, more knowledgeable, and more effective with the ultimate goal of profitable publication. As an analysis of modern and contemporary writing styles, About Writing informs the aspiring author of the ins and outs of technique, ideals, and styles for the most effective writing. About Writing is very strongly recommended to all literature enthusiasts, readers, writers, and students.

Samuel R. Delany has proven himself to be a polymath of the highest rank during a brilliant career that's expanded the bounds of every genre he has touched. His work in the Seventies helped shape my own desire to join the ranks of published writers and I read this book at a point when I've already written a novel, had numerous nonfiction articles published and continue to hone my craft as a fiction writer.

I've read numerous texts in recent years about writing and it's not easy to say very much that is new, given the many titles in the space. But I did find a lot of value in this book. Like most of Delany's work, the reader has to work pretty hard, but then is rewarded by various gems. For example, I found his section on the nits of grammar in the back to be very helpful, as he provided clear examples of how to use various subtle techniques such as the em-dash properly. I've kept this section close at hand during some recent editing sessions.

Delany does not say that we are all made to be writers (quite the opposite) and his thesis that the decisive factor for success is Talent will upset some readers. Nonetheless, Delany has much to say about what it takes to become a published writer and I believe this book will be valuable for writers at various levels along the path to publication and beyond who want to become better writers.

An impressive book by one of my favorite authors, this provides abundant food for thought. Delany's writing is truly intelligent, at a level well beyond what's found in most books on the subject of writing. Delany is primarily a writer of science fiction, but my opinion is that his work falls into the category of 'literature' due to its quality. The book covers science fiction, but also far more.

Frankly, I found this deeply disappointing. I read a few of Delany's books a few years ago and liked them for their full-on romanticism, their vision and enthusiasm. But these essays are fundamentally dull. Maybe it's their subjects. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone but Dr Dryasdust and his colleagues. How did this fine Romantic become such a dreary academic ?