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A review by nickfourtimes
Aye, and Gomorrah: And Other Stories by Samuel R. Delany
5.0
1) "'Oh, fine!' Alegra said. 'I love to talk. I want to talk about love. Loving someone---' (an incredible yearning twisted my stomach, rose to block my throat) '---I mean really loving someone---' (the yearning brushed the edge of agony) '---means you are willing to admit the person you love is not what you first fell in love with, not the image you first had; and you must be able to like them still for being as close to that image as they are, and avoid disliking them for being so far away.'"
2) "'What...what is it?' She raised her cool hand to mine. For a moment the light through the milky gem and the pale film of my own webs pearled the screen of her palms. (Details like that. Yes, they are the important things, the points from which we suspend later pain.) A moment later wet fingers closed to the backs of mine."
3) "Gila Monster guts?
Three-quarters of a mile of corridors (much less than on some luxury ocean liners); two engine rooms to power the adjustable treads that carry us over land and sea; a kitchen, cafeteria, electrical room, navigation offices, office offices, tool repair shop, and cetera. With such in its belly, the Gila Monster crawls through the night (at about a hundred fifty k's cruising speed), sniffing along the great cables (courtesy the Global Power Commission) that net the world, web everything to night, dawn to day, and yesterday to morrow."
4) "By the streetlamp half a block down, I saw his hair was still pale as split pine. He could have been a nasty-grimy: very dirty black denim jacket, no shirt beneath; very ripe pair of black jeans---I mean in the dark you could tell. He went barefoot; and the only way you can tell on a dark street someone's been going barefoot for days in New York is to know already. As we reached the corner, he grinned up at me under the streetlamp and shrugged his jacket together over the welts and furrows marring his chest and belly. His eyes were very green. Do you recognize him? If by some failure of information dispersal throughout the worlds and worldlets you haven't, walking beside me beside the Hudson was Hawk the Singer."
5) "Notice that there is no water in any of the tapestries except through the artificial means of a fountain. No rivulet, no seascape in the distance, no dew or rain in any scene. And the fountain is not on a panel which shows blood, signifying that this is not a Christian allegory. Or is, at any rate, only supposed to look like one to the uninitiate. Blood as a Christian symbol must always be accompanied by water: Christ's pierced side, and the rains that followed; the water transubstantiated into blood at the Last Supper is only given its power through the water with which Christ washed the feet of the disciples. No, the women who designed these tapestries wove into them something other than religious mysteries, but, to avoid heresy, gave it a seeming religious cast by the Unicorn with the pierced side: the Christ crucified. Without the sea, the order of rivers, the royalty of waves, there is no true religious dignity. The Jordan, the Ganges, the Euphrates, or the Styx, the river through the Vale of Tempe, or the Boreal streams around Ultima Thule: and there is a lake at Nemi."
6) "Costa told Katina, the girl who served in the café, in two grunted sentences what had happened. She smashed her fingertips against her mouth to stop a sound, kneaded her lips, and stepped back against the whitewashed wall.
'So easy to die,' said an old man, swinging his beads into his fist and silencing them for the first time that day. 'So hard to grieve.'"
7) "Simply? You sit down to write a story. The excitement, the sweep, the wonder of narrative comes over you, and, writing as fast as you can, you try to keep up with it till the tale is told.
The complicated part?
Just try it. You see, what comes as well, along with the narrative wonder, is a lot of doubts, delays, and hesitations. Is it really that wondrous? Is it even a decent sentence? Does it have anything to do with the way you feel about the world? Does it say anything that would at all interest you were you reading it? Where will you find the energy to put down another word? What do you put down now? Narrative becomes a way of negotiating a path through, over, under, and around the whole bewildering, paralyzing, unstoppable succession of halts. The real wonder of narrative is that it can negotiate this obstacle course at all."
2) "'What...what is it?' She raised her cool hand to mine. For a moment the light through the milky gem and the pale film of my own webs pearled the screen of her palms. (Details like that. Yes, they are the important things, the points from which we suspend later pain.) A moment later wet fingers closed to the backs of mine."
3) "Gila Monster guts?
Three-quarters of a mile of corridors (much less than on some luxury ocean liners); two engine rooms to power the adjustable treads that carry us over land and sea; a kitchen, cafeteria, electrical room, navigation offices, office offices, tool repair shop, and cetera. With such in its belly, the Gila Monster crawls through the night (at about a hundred fifty k's cruising speed), sniffing along the great cables (courtesy the Global Power Commission) that net the world, web everything to night, dawn to day, and yesterday to morrow."
4) "By the streetlamp half a block down, I saw his hair was still pale as split pine. He could have been a nasty-grimy: very dirty black denim jacket, no shirt beneath; very ripe pair of black jeans---I mean in the dark you could tell. He went barefoot; and the only way you can tell on a dark street someone's been going barefoot for days in New York is to know already. As we reached the corner, he grinned up at me under the streetlamp and shrugged his jacket together over the welts and furrows marring his chest and belly. His eyes were very green. Do you recognize him? If by some failure of information dispersal throughout the worlds and worldlets you haven't, walking beside me beside the Hudson was Hawk the Singer."
5) "Notice that there is no water in any of the tapestries except through the artificial means of a fountain. No rivulet, no seascape in the distance, no dew or rain in any scene. And the fountain is not on a panel which shows blood, signifying that this is not a Christian allegory. Or is, at any rate, only supposed to look like one to the uninitiate. Blood as a Christian symbol must always be accompanied by water: Christ's pierced side, and the rains that followed; the water transubstantiated into blood at the Last Supper is only given its power through the water with which Christ washed the feet of the disciples. No, the women who designed these tapestries wove into them something other than religious mysteries, but, to avoid heresy, gave it a seeming religious cast by the Unicorn with the pierced side: the Christ crucified. Without the sea, the order of rivers, the royalty of waves, there is no true religious dignity. The Jordan, the Ganges, the Euphrates, or the Styx, the river through the Vale of Tempe, or the Boreal streams around Ultima Thule: and there is a lake at Nemi."
6) "Costa told Katina, the girl who served in the café, in two grunted sentences what had happened. She smashed her fingertips against her mouth to stop a sound, kneaded her lips, and stepped back against the whitewashed wall.
'So easy to die,' said an old man, swinging his beads into his fist and silencing them for the first time that day. 'So hard to grieve.'"
7) "Simply? You sit down to write a story. The excitement, the sweep, the wonder of narrative comes over you, and, writing as fast as you can, you try to keep up with it till the tale is told.
The complicated part?
Just try it. You see, what comes as well, along with the narrative wonder, is a lot of doubts, delays, and hesitations. Is it really that wondrous? Is it even a decent sentence? Does it have anything to do with the way you feel about the world? Does it say anything that would at all interest you were you reading it? Where will you find the energy to put down another word? What do you put down now? Narrative becomes a way of negotiating a path through, over, under, and around the whole bewildering, paralyzing, unstoppable succession of halts. The real wonder of narrative is that it can negotiate this obstacle course at all."