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Originally published 15 July 1999 in a slightly different version; content has been edited to remove dated references and links
Bread and Wine: an erotic tale of New York
story by Samuel Delany; art by Mia Wolff
Juno Books (March 1, 1999)
80 p.
$14.99, if you can find it.
I've just been reading the most remarkable book.
Comic book, actually.
Samuel Delany is an author of many acclaimed works, in several genres, including science fiction, biography and essays, among others. He also happens to be gay and black.
Bread and Wine: an erotic tale of New York constitutes the most recently published chapter of Samuel Delany's autobiography, published as a full graphic biography, rather than as a prose book. Of course biographies frequently have photos, pictures, other things, but these are always either publicity photos, or other things that are somehow public moments, family photos or school photographs and the like. Oh, maybe your mother delights in showing that picture of you running naked down the street when you were two, or maybe you're having a bad hair day in that picture, or you've got teminal red-eye, but still and all, those photographs, even the very personal ones, are still somehow of public moments. Sometime when others were looking at you.
The drawings in this book are frequently of much more intimate moments.
The general synopsis of it would be: college professor meets and befriends homeless man and they eventually become lovers. But the synopsis would leave out just about everything important: the feel of the book, how well the emotions come through.
Delany notes that his publisher didn't quite understand why he wanted to make it into a comic book. I confess, in some ways, it does seem like an odd choice. However, there are moments illustrated in this book--moments where, one assumes, no photographs exist or would exist--that somehow gain power from being forced to see them in exactly the way that the author sees them. (Or rather, the artist's rendering of the author's memories, but still, I think it works out the same way.) Some of the drawings are thoroughly surreal, as in Dennis' (the homeless man) view of Central Park. Some of them are fairly straightforward. There's also the plain fact that a straight-ahead prose retelling of just the time when he met and fell in love with Dennis would be, frankly, terribly short.
What startled me, what seems to be the most powerful, were the moments showing him and Dennis when they first go to a hotel, when they first make love. I mean, in a more conventional autobiography might have used the same words he used to describe it, but your concept of what Dennis looked like, what the bath was like -- Dennis, having been homeless and on the street for a while, was staggeringly filthy -- it would all have been more of a hybrid of what you brought to it and what he gave you. Doing it this way forces what he gives you and your impressions into consonance in a way that simply might not happen.
The book is, as noted, billed as an erotic tale, and there's certainly sex in it, but it's not simply erotic as in "boy, that gets my engine running!" It's erotic as in, it's a love story with sex in it.
Another odd bit is the interview at the end, where the artist, Delany, Dennis, and Delany's now-adult daughter talk about the book, and what some of the events were like, how their memories differ. That's when you realize that his daughter has actually read this, that she's seen those drawings of her father and his lover together. It's a very strange moment for the reader; I can't imagine how strange it would have been for his daughter.
For those of you who might have read Delany's The Mad Man, reading this will bring one of those great moments of enlightenment, when you realize where at least some of it came from. (I don't know if all of it came from this relationship, and I don't want to know, thank you very much. I don't know how much his life informed his writing in that case.)
I suppose, if I were talking about this to someone (as I guess I may be, right?) I'd say: I recommend it, but know that you may not actually like it. It's fascinating and it's interesting, and if you like Delany and his work, it's certainly illuminating.
At the recent 2008 Reeling Chicago Lesbian and Gay International Film Festival, I saw a screening of The Polymath, or the Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman (I'll note that the Frameline site has a better description; "highly sexually active", inDEED!). A short clip from the documentary is available at the filmmaker's website (NOT WORKSAFE! NOT EVEN VAGUELY WORK SAFE AUDIO! ... unless your workplace is entirely comfortable with hearing a gentleman talk about the perigrinations of his sex life, in which case, go right ahead!) As far as I could tell, the relationship in Bread and Wine is never explicitly referenced, though there may be some more oblique mentions.
Bread and Wine: an erotic tale of New York
story by Samuel Delany; art by Mia Wolff
Juno Books (March 1, 1999)
80 p.
$14.99, if you can find it.
I've just been reading the most remarkable book.
Comic book, actually.
Samuel Delany is an author of many acclaimed works, in several genres, including science fiction, biography and essays, among others. He also happens to be gay and black.
Bread and Wine: an erotic tale of New York constitutes the most recently published chapter of Samuel Delany's autobiography, published as a full graphic biography, rather than as a prose book. Of course biographies frequently have photos, pictures, other things, but these are always either publicity photos, or other things that are somehow public moments, family photos or school photographs and the like. Oh, maybe your mother delights in showing that picture of you running naked down the street when you were two, or maybe you're having a bad hair day in that picture, or you've got teminal red-eye, but still and all, those photographs, even the very personal ones, are still somehow of public moments. Sometime when others were looking at you.
The drawings in this book are frequently of much more intimate moments.
The general synopsis of it would be: college professor meets and befriends homeless man and they eventually become lovers. But the synopsis would leave out just about everything important: the feel of the book, how well the emotions come through.
Delany notes that his publisher didn't quite understand why he wanted to make it into a comic book. I confess, in some ways, it does seem like an odd choice. However, there are moments illustrated in this book--moments where, one assumes, no photographs exist or would exist--that somehow gain power from being forced to see them in exactly the way that the author sees them. (Or rather, the artist's rendering of the author's memories, but still, I think it works out the same way.) Some of the drawings are thoroughly surreal, as in Dennis' (the homeless man) view of Central Park. Some of them are fairly straightforward. There's also the plain fact that a straight-ahead prose retelling of just the time when he met and fell in love with Dennis would be, frankly, terribly short.
What startled me, what seems to be the most powerful, were the moments showing him and Dennis when they first go to a hotel, when they first make love. I mean, in a more conventional autobiography might have used the same words he used to describe it, but your concept of what Dennis looked like, what the bath was like -- Dennis, having been homeless and on the street for a while, was staggeringly filthy -- it would all have been more of a hybrid of what you brought to it and what he gave you. Doing it this way forces what he gives you and your impressions into consonance in a way that simply might not happen.
The book is, as noted, billed as an erotic tale, and there's certainly sex in it, but it's not simply erotic as in "boy, that gets my engine running!" It's erotic as in, it's a love story with sex in it.
Another odd bit is the interview at the end, where the artist, Delany, Dennis, and Delany's now-adult daughter talk about the book, and what some of the events were like, how their memories differ. That's when you realize that his daughter has actually read this, that she's seen those drawings of her father and his lover together. It's a very strange moment for the reader; I can't imagine how strange it would have been for his daughter.
For those of you who might have read Delany's The Mad Man, reading this will bring one of those great moments of enlightenment, when you realize where at least some of it came from. (I don't know if all of it came from this relationship, and I don't want to know, thank you very much. I don't know how much his life informed his writing in that case.)
I suppose, if I were talking about this to someone (as I guess I may be, right?) I'd say: I recommend it, but know that you may not actually like it. It's fascinating and it's interesting, and if you like Delany and his work, it's certainly illuminating.
At the recent 2008 Reeling Chicago Lesbian and Gay International Film Festival, I saw a screening of The Polymath, or the Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman (I'll note that the Frameline site has a better description; "highly sexually active", inDEED!). A short clip from the documentary is available at the filmmaker's website (NOT WORKSAFE! NOT EVEN VAGUELY WORK SAFE AUDIO! ... unless your workplace is entirely comfortable with hearing a gentleman talk about the perigrinations of his sex life, in which case, go right ahead!) As far as I could tell, the relationship in Bread and Wine is never explicitly referenced, though there may be some more oblique mentions.