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language: English
country: USA
year: 1983
form: novel
genre(s): fantasy
series: Return to Nevèrÿon, #2
dates read: 27.5.17-1.6.17 // 4.6.23-14.6.23
Samuel Delany’s Neveryóna, or: The Tale of Signs and Cities (usually just called Neveryóna) is both the second book in his Return to Nevèrÿon sequence and the fourth part of “Some Informal Remarks Towards the Modular Calculus” which began with Trouble on Triton. it continues, as such, the exploration of the central problem of the modular calculus: whether and how it is possible to understand a different world, social, individual, political, historical, planetary.
the prose has gotten, if anything, even more exquisite and excruciatingly attentive to detail, and it still pays off. the novel follows Pryn, a girl from the mountain town-village-city of Ellamon, who leaves her home astride a dragon and makes her way first to the fabled city of Kolhari, capital of the land of Nevèrÿon, and then — after a tumultuous visit that occupies the first more-than-half of the book — south into (more) “barbarian” lands.
plot-wise, the novel is a Bildungsroman: Pryn begins in ignorance, save that she (mostly) knows how to read and write, and over the course of the novel learns a great deal about the world, about cities, about reading and writing, and — first and foremost — about power, which is the central theoretical concept around which the novel moves. I don’t think it’s quite as thoroughly successful as Tales of Nevèrÿon, in part because there are some things that are just slightly too on the nose, beginning from the fact that Pryn’s father is absent and, as far as I can remember, nameless — we are situated firmly in the Lacanian Imaginary, with no recourse to the Real father (absent) or the Symbolic name-of-the-father (because the Symbolic is itself in some ways still coalescing, as the novel frequently reminds us). even if I didn’t hate Lacan, I think this would still be a bit too much, lol.
nonetheless, if some of its (post)structuralism doesn’t quite land for me, its exploration of perspectives — Gorgik’s narrated tour of Kolhari vs. Pryn’s impression of it vs. Madame Keyne’s commentary on Kolhari vs. the absolute disconnect between Pryn’s experience and the earl’s family’s (presumed) knowledge of the city, to pick just the most obvious example — is extremely effective; it makes Trouble on Triton’s treatment of the ways gender shapes our experiences of the world look amateurish (which it definitely isn’t, although it’s unquestionably flawed) — perhaps we might say, with Empire Star, that Trouble on Triton offered an example of complexity and Neveryóna offers us multiplexity.
I’m really looking forward to Flight from Nevèrÿon, although I’m not going to read it just yet.
moods: adventurous, mysterious, reflective