A fascinating memoir of Delany's early years, focussing on the period from 1961-1966 when he was living in a poor district of New York City, married to his schoolfriend and writing partner the poet Marilyn Hacker, singing folk-music in coffee houses, getting started as a published science-fiction writer, and making the most of the many opportunities that the city offered for casual gay sex (the Trucks, the Baths, the Rambles, ...). In between times, we also hear quite a lot about his middle-class black childhood in Harlem. He came from a distinguished family, with a grandfather who became the first black Episcopalian bishop in the US, and aunts and uncles who were practically all civil rights pioneers.

Delany mocks the tendency of memoirists to drop names, but he still manages to slip quite a few in himself, even if most of them are ironically elusive contacts: Einstein helps the child Delany with his toy sailing boat in Central Park; Bob Dylan was meant to appear as his supporting act in a folk venue but pulls out; someone offers to introduce him to Andy Warhol but it never happens; one of his aunts slips him James Baldwin's phone number just as he's leaving for Europe. And so on.

But the real fascination of the book is mostly in Delany's description of his sexual adventures, which he describes with what feels like simple nostalgic pleasure. Even though he's writing in the midst of the AIDS crisis, he doesn't turn his recollections into the kind of elegy or outburst of political rage you find in most gay writers of that time, nor does he apply any kind of retrospective moral judgment. They were having fun, and it was good fun, and he sees no reason to apologise for that. All kinds of bad things could have happened to him, but they didn't (he compares the risk of being picked up by a serial killer to the risk of being involved in an air crash).

There is obviously also Hacker's story going on here, told mostly in excerpts from her own poetry: Delany doesn't presume to speak for her, but it does become fairly clear that she must have been getting rather less pleasure and more worry out of the sexual freedom of the sixties than Delany did, apart from the short happy time when they were living in a ménage-à-trois with the Melville-reading ex-convict Bob. And even then Delany manages to go off on a road-trip to Texas with Bob, leaving Hacker sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring.

Lively and enjoyable, a marvellous snapshot of what must have been a fascinating and exciting time to live through. ( )

Provides insight not only into Delany's life, but also the times he lived in and how they influenced his writing. His candor is refeshing (and surprising). ( )

Reviewed here.

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, and some welcome insight into the life of a writer. ( )

http://www.amazon.com/review/R3VC3SECATO4Z5/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm/ ( )