Allan Gurganus and Marianne Hauser had stressed in their pieces the responsibility of the writer to cross boundaries and write about people other than themselves. Men must try to write from the position of women. Women must try to write from the position of men; rich, poor, and all other boundaries must be breached by the writer of fiction.
I made the point toward the end that, however these boundaries were crossed, we had to remember that these same boundaries represented differences in power relationships. Thus, a man writing from the position of a woman was crossing one power boundary and a woman writing from the point of view of a man was crossing another. Hauser had cited some of the criticism she had received in the forties when she’d written a first person novel as a man. I pointed out that what this criticism had actually meant was: “How dare you, a woman, usurp this particular male field of power.” And that a man writing as a woman seldom gets such criticism because the male writer assuming a firstperson female persona is moving down the power scale, not up.
On the aisle, toward the back of the ballroom in which all this was going on, a little brown woman in a red tam and bundled up in a lot of orange down coat was nodding intently at just about everything I said.
When the panel was over, a great young bear in glasses and a woolly sweater, with a mass of curly hair caught back in a small ponytail, came running up to the table, put his chin over the edge of the pale blue cloth (spotted now with water between the several microphones and Styrofoam cups), and said: “Mr. Delany, I just wanted to tell you: I’ve probably read everything you’ve published. And for years I’ve always thought you were one of the finest writers in America—and certainly the most underrated one. I’m so glad to get a chance to meet you. May I give you this?” and he handed me a copy of Mortal Splendor.
“Thank you,” I said. “Eh, what is it …?”
“It’s my book,” he said.
“Oh!” I said. “Well, thank you very much …”
Then said young bear turned around and dashed back off into the crowd.
That afternoon in my room I started reading the nicely printed trade paperback with the rather impressive encomiums on the back.
Fifty pages on, and I’d realized that (one) it was quite well written and (two) it was even better in its thinking. It’s an analysis of the “American Empire” with an extremely cogent set of suggestions on what the country might do to get it together.
The last program of the day was a reading with novelist Toby Olson and poet Sonia Sanchez. Olson is a six-foot-ten bearded, white-blond woodsman of a fellow (I exaggerate, but not by much). He was always at the center of an entourage—and seemed very much into himself. A couple of times I addressed friendly remarks to him, but he never answered. Perhaps because his head is so far above mine, he just didn’t hear me.
Alas, I don’t much like his work. It’s not awful. But it’s as sexist and as homophobic as one can get away with these days and still be taken seriously (by those who don’t think sexism and homophobia are all that serious after all …) and I listened to him with a mental blue pencil striking out excess verbal baggage in his prose on a pretty regular basis.
When Sanchez got up to read, I realized she was the brown woman in the orange coat who’d been nodding so enthusiastically in the back of the room during my panel.
Marilyn has mentioned her to me on several occasions—and has apparently arranged readings for her a few times. The mentions were always somewhat mysterious: “Have you ever heard Sonia Sanchez read?”
I’d say no.
And Marilyn would say: “You really should,” then go on to talk about something else.
I don’t have too much to say about the poems. I suspect they’re probably pretty good. Certainly I didn’t find myself editing them down the way I had done with Olson’s prose. But Sanchez’s performance was stunning.
First off, I use “performance” not in the sense of drama, but rather in the sense of the way poetry—not theater—should be performed. And I don’t mean that she was at all restrained. The energy level was jaw-dropping and electric. And, between the poems, she became a kind of political David Antin. She chanted the intra-poetic material at such a level that it almost came out stronger than the poems. Her message is straight Dickens:
Love one another, and we’ll all make the world a better place.
But it’s a nice one. And I think everyone left the ballroom feeling even taller than Toby Olson!
Outside in the hall, Toi Derricotte grabbed me by the shoulder and gave me a hug, just bubbling: “Isn’t it wonderful that she exists, Chip?”
And I had to allow that it was.
But everyone was simply babbling on about how moving she had been.
As I said to Peter Klappert when we found ourselves lingering together outside: “Talk about American Ecstatics …! Richard’s got a real live one, right here!”
Really, if she ever passes within a hundred miles of you, you must catch her. For someone under twenty-five years old, I wouldn’t be surprised if a single reading by Sanchez might change their lives forever.
That evening, when we were all gathered downstairs again, drinking and making friendly, I hunted out the burly Walter, still in jeans and his sweater, and, between buying each other far too many drinks, we got into a very interesting conversation about his work, about mine. The conversation continued through a banquet dinner (which ended in a sing-a-long with Allen Ginsberg and the Fugs [“And all the hills echoèd …” I sang into Ed Sanders’ mike as he roamed the hundred in the hall], who’d been reconvened by the AWP Program Director to entertain: it was nice to see Ed Sanders again, who’s on the Governing Board with me at New York Foundation for the Arts) in a homage to Blake, and on into the party afterwards.
Mr. Mead (Walter) is a very smart 35.
At one point when some of the other panelists had joined us, he explained that, as a political writer, people are just starting to call on him to testify in political hearings. He’s gay—and he’s wondering whether he should come out publicly or not. The general opinion was that he should probably not rush that, but that we couldn’t really advise him till we knew better what exactly his situation was.
Eventually the conversation thinned down again to the two of us. And then I did something that I have never done before at any SF con or academic convention of any sort. I asked him if he’d like to go to bed. He smiled and said: “Oh, I’d like that very much.” Then he asked me: “Is it my hands?” (He’d already mentioned that he’d read everything I’d ever published.)
I laughed. “No. It’s just you. But it’s a little odd to meet 50 perfect strangers who are quite so privy to all your sexual particularities.”
“I would probably have said something to you, first,” he said. “But because I don’t bite my nails, I figured you probably wouldn’t be interested.”
“Come on,” I said.
And we had a very pleasant night of it.
The next morning, after he showered, I took him to breakfast in the hotel’s overpriced mezzanine restaurant, then sent him off to his train back to whatever university he hails from. He’s not Maison Bailey,
