I’m going to the library to find a book by Samuel R. Delany.
I don’t read much science fiction. When I found an interesting idea attributed to Delany, I had to look him up. That’s how I found his essay “Why I Write.”
The essay is short, just 12 notes about why one writer writes. Delany says he was bad at board games. Had he been better at chess or Scrabble, he might not have made a game of developing episodes into complicated plots.
He also says he’s written because he was afraid of death. The story about how Delany, age 5, conceived a fear of death is wonderful. (Delany grew up in a family of undertakers. The standard line to a child’s question was that the child wouldn’t have to worry about it for a long time. That’s never a satisfying answer.)
Delany is fun. But I’m going in search of one of Delany’s books because of his riffs on two other writers.
First, he quotes the critic Harold Bloom that artists create in rebellion against the failure to create. I read a book. I’m not satisfied. I arrogantly declare that the writer has failed in some way and that I can do better.
Second, he quotes William Blake: “Eternity is in love with the productions of time.” We create. We destroy the old in trying to replace it with something better. We then become dissatisfied with our new creation and try to replace it. It’s an endless — that is, eternal — cycle.
I think those two points are expressions of the same idea.
But I’ve been thinking about that for days. I’m curious what else Delany might have said that I missed.
https://yalereview.org/article/samuel-r-delany-science-fiction-why-i-write
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