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language: English
country: USA
year: 1983
form: novel
genre(s): fantasy
series: Return to Nevèrÿon, #1
dates read: 24.9.16-2.10.16 // 15.1.23-24.1.23
first off, the prose in Samuel Delany’s Tales of Nevèrÿon is gorgeous. the intricate syntax! the exquisite and excruciatingly precise descriptions! Delany writes by sitting with every sentence until he’s confident it’s perfect before he moves on to the next one, and reading this book you can tell — and it pays off.
Tales of Nevèrÿon is a collection of linked short fiction — framed by two short academic essays by Delany’s alter egos, one about the text and one about its ostensible source material, the “Culhar’ fragment” — that’s as elusive as Lord Aldamir, which is a funny joke that you will understand if you read the book. every time you think you have it pinned down, it moves unexpectedly but also, I find, inevitably in a new direction.
sometimes it is incisive (even brutal) deconstruction of sword and sorcery: the racism, the sexism, the inattention to class and (especially) to slavery, every aspect of the ideological underpinnings of the subgenre; sometimes it is, unabashedly, a theoretical laboratory, as characters explore in dialogue with each other core concepts of Marxism and deconstruction; sometimes it’s an extended exploration of — again — different societies and what it means to (try to) understand someone else’s world (the appendix is part of “Some Informal Remarks Towards the Modular Calculus”); sometimes it’s just a good story — of education, of adventure, of corrupt court politics, of sex and sexuality, of rebellion against slavery.
Tales of Nevèrÿon pushes the limits of what fantasy — often seen as backward-looking, if not actively reactionary — can be and do, how it can (must) engage with politics and with the world in which it’s written. it suffers only in that the handling of money is built on the conventional but incorrect wisdom that once upon a time people used barter and then coinage was invented. I’m really looking forward to rereading Neveryóna, of which my memories are much vaguer.
moods: adventurous, informative, reflective