Bread & Wine: An Erotic Tale of New York [Paperback]

Samuel R. Delaney (Author), Mia Wolff (Illustrator), Alan Moore (Introduction), Samuel R. Delany (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Unusually touching, this comics memoir presents the beginnings of an unlikely but loving relationship between Delany (Times Square Red, Forecasts, May 31), a distinguished African-American novelist, essayist and professor, and Dennis, a white homeless man barely scraping by on the streets of Manhattan. Delany first notices Dennis, grime-covered and clad in filthy clothes, around his Upper West Side neighborhood selling used books on the street, his possessions packed in a shopping cart. But beneath the dirt and stink, Dennis is funny, honest and caringAand, like Delany, he is gay. Before long, Delany invites him to share a motel room and then (after much consideration by both of them) to visit him in Massachusetts, where Delany teaches. Told simply and methodically like Delany's 1996 memoir, The Motion of Light in Water, the story is subdued yet acutely emotional. It reaches across the boundaries of race and classAas well as across hilariously opposed standards of personal hygieneAto capture two people in the process of building a life together. Wolff's b&w drawings are awkward, even crudely rendered, but they manage to convey the sincerity and candor of a delightful and eccentric urban love story. (July)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

A lot of malodorous prejudices that still lurk in your psychic crawlspaces will have a tough time surviving if you let Delany and Wolffs surprisingly gentle reminiscence have its way with you. -- Howard Cruse, author of Stuck Rubber Baby

Samuel R. Delany breaks all the taboos in Bread & Wine-sex with the homeless; male homosexuality in the home with a teenage daughter under the same roof; interracial love in a period of growing racial isolation; a cheerful disregard for physical filth in a nation that has raised hygiene to the level of sterility. The comic strip illustrations by Mia Wolff add just the right fairy-tale atmosphere to this improbable tale of true love. How Jean Genet would have loved it! -- Edmund White, author of The Farewell Symphony

Samuel R. Delany is one of the finest living American writers. In this revealing autobiographical love story, told in collaboration with fine artist Mia Wolff, Delanys brilliance shines. Its filthy and earthy and beautiful, like an orchid in a gutter; it tells you more than you wanted to know, and makes you glad it did. -- Neil Gaiman, author of Sandman and Neverwhere

Wildly eccentric artwork, a storyline that'd make Capote blush...Bread & Wine is smoking-gun proof that comics can go anywhere-and do anything. -- Frank Miller, author of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Sin City

Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: Juno Books; First edition. edition (March 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1890451029
• ISBN-13: 978-1890451028
• Product Dimensions: 10.5 x 7.7 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,849,864 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Delany's love story isn't like anyone else's., December 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Bread & Wine: An Erotic Tale of New York (Paperback)

This is a "graphic novel" put out by Juno Books, which in an earlier incarnation (Re/Search) put out some of the most unusual and interesting large format takes on fringe culture in the last decade. Delany has done a autobiographical account of his romance with a homeless man, but being Delany, he offers quite a bit more than that. The book is as much the artist's, Mia Wolff's, in that her visualization of the relationship establishes much of what the reader/viewer makes of it. Her style is not complex, but it has depth and at times surprising jumps of fantasy. Throughout the book, Delany reminds us his title is taken from a famous poem by Holderlin (a German Romantic who wrote brilliantly and then went mad); by quoting several passages from Holderlin's meditation on the inevitable failure of reconciling the classical past to the present, he gets a postmodern buzz into an otherwise straightforward love story. Anyone bothered by (literally) graphic depictions of sex between men should probably pass on the book, but that should still leave quite a few of us. What finally predominates is a touching depiction of unlikely lovers. Much of what happens would be cliched if the partners were hetero, but the gay version puts a spin on the material. Anyone who really likes Delany should be interested, and anyone concerned with the progressive edge of the graphic novel format will enjoy it. My only quibble is that at times Wolff depicts Delany like a fond Santa Claus, and that seems a bit much considering the material presented.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Motion of Love in Winter, July 15, 2007

By 

Greg - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bread & Wine: An Erotic Tale of New York (Paperback)

Bread and Wine was my first introduction to the writings of Samuel R. Delany, an introduction made under the auspice of the Alan Moore introduction. I knew OF Delany, the result of a lifetime spent in the warm shadows of literature of all stripes, but had never actually picked up one of his works. Within the first page of the story I was introduced to Dennis, Delany's homeless boyfriend and to the German poet Holderlin, whose piece 'Bread and Wine' is quoted throughout the book. Delany himself doesn't make an appearance until the second page, appearing only a few seconds of reading into the book, and yet somehow the six years of Dennis's life on the street can be felt before the appearance of our author.

Comics do funny things to time. And vice versa.

I'm a sucker for biographies. Always have been. People are fascinating to me, and no matter how dull and mundane anyone may seem, there is that moment when something that drives them, that empassions their soul suddenly comes out. This book is a window into the attraction that comes about between Delany and Dennis, a collage of the moments, celestial and commonplace, that make up the Mandelbrot Fresco of how two people come together.

Mia Wolff's art and layout convey the conversational and ethereal tone in which much of the story is lain out in. Yet there are moments, where without breaking style or tone, everything suddenly becomes so real and so present. One such moment is when almost an entire page is spent focused on the gestures of Dennis's hand, when he makes one of the first truly intimate commitments that occur in the book. Having read through several more of Delany's memoirs at the time of this writing, I know that men's hands, rough and strong, with bitten nails, are a key icon in the libidinal cosmology of Delany's life, and Wolff plays to this at key points. The visuals in this book feel less like photographs and more like sketches from memory. If Delany were telling this tale to you over the phone, this is how you'd see it in your mind.

Of the things I appreciate in Delany's writing, sexual honesty ranks within the top three. There is an unspoken reluctance in much of literture to get into the nuts and bolts of attraction and arousal. There are those who will look at the relation ship between these two, a homeless man selling books off a blanket and a university professor with a slew of published and acclaimed science fiction novels under his belt, and be confused. This is not a movie of the week story wherein the character of the homeless man would be taken in and rehabilitated, nor is this a Good Will Hunting/ With Honors/ Stand and Deliver story of wherein Dennis would be revealed as a closet genius, thereby validating his relationship with a man from a different intellectual class, and thus validating the sneering elitists in the audience belief that attraction and satisfaction can only come from a percieved equality of societally approved intellect. This is the story of two men's lives coming together in the strange world of real life, and it is not meant to be neat and tidy and organized. It is only meant to be true, and that alone makes it all the more fantastic.

10 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars What was the goal here ?, November 1, 1999

By 

Marianne Frye (Nashua, N.H., USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bread & Wine: An Erotic Tale of New York (Paperback)

I am rather ambivalent about the graphic format, so perhaps I was destined to feel disappointed in this book. But after reading this incredibly short work -- I am left mostly with a feeling of confusion. Who is this work aimed at, what was it trying to convey ?

The blurbs and the introduction talk about the idea that Delany is presenting a radical or even revolutionary idea: love with a dirty, homeless man. Yet the ideas presented are familiar territory to any Delany reader who has read his more provocative works. The truth in Bread and Wine is a tame, cleaned-up version of the harrowing fiction presented in both Hogg and the Mad Man. There is also not much new material introduced for those who have read his autobiography, and any of his autobiographical short stories. We learn almost nothing more of Delany the man, or Delany the writer. Although it has been written in Salon that Delany has become an exhibitionist by sharing so much, he appears to be using exhibitionism in place of true sharing or self-revelation. This work is much closer to the clam-like Heavenly Breakfast than it is to the self-revelation found in Motion of Light and Water. With Delany so closed up, the work suffers from a lack of emotion regarding Delany as a character, and as the other half of the relationship. If Delany is unwilling to share -- why tell such an intimate tale ?

If you are new to Delany as a writer, a critic, a gay man, there is very little meat or detail about him presented at all. In fact we learn more about Dennis the homeless lover, than we do about Delany. Most importantly we never learn what keeps Delany with this homeless man. The male objects of desire running through many of Delany's works have been down and out, working class, and decidedly grubby, so Delany's initial interest is understandable. But what common ground can they occupy years later that allows such a relationship to endure ? Perhaps it is love, but that too seemed missing from this book. There seemed to be companionship, and lust -- but little else other than watching Delany rescue a homelss man. Dennis got a home and a life, and Delany got -- what ? It was left to the illustrator in the written comments to mention that they act like they are in love. I felt that whole aspect was missing from the graphic portion of the book.

The shortcomings of the graphic portion of the book were so obvious that a written dialog was included where the various characters chime in and try to flesh this work out -- but it falls flat. Why use the graphic format if it didn't work. If a written text was to be added, why not some of the writing that Delany is famous for.

The result is that this book seems like something that was put together by committee, during a rainy day at summer camp, or during a pajama party when the popcorn ran out, and the card games paled. In the end it lacks purpose, voice and presence.