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ALSO BY SAMUEL R. DELANY
FICTION
The Jewels of Aptor (1962)
The Fall of the Towers
Out of the Dead City (1963)
The Towers of Toron (1964)
City of a Thousand Suns (1965)
The Ballad of Beta-2 (1965)
Babel-17 (1966)
Empire Star (1966)
The Einstein Intersection (1967)
Nova (1968)
Driftglass (1969)
Equinox (1973)
Dhalgren (1975)
Trouble on Triton (1976)
Return to Nevèrÿon
Tales of Nevèrÿon (1979)
Neveryóna (1982)
Flight from Nevèrÿon (1985)
Return to Nevèrÿon (1987)
Distant Stars (1981)
Stars in My Pocket Like
Grains of Sand (1984)
Driftglass/Starshards
(collected stories, Great Britain, 1993)
They Fly at Çiron (1993)
The Mad Man (1994)
Hogg (1995)
Atlantis: Three Tales (1995)
Aye, and Gomorrah, and Other Stories (2003)
Phallos (2004; revised 2013)
Dark Reflections (2007)
Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders (2012)
GRAPHIC NOVELS
Empire (artist, Howard Chaykin, 1980)
Bread & Wine (artist, Mia Wolff, 1999; revised 2013)
NONFICTION
The Jewel-Hinged Jaw (1978; revised 2009)
The American Shore (1978; 2014)
Heavenly Breakfast (1979)
Starboard Wine (1984; revised 2012)
The Motion of Light in Water (1988; revised 2004)
Wagner/Artaud (1988)
The Straits of Messina (1990)
Silent Interviews (1994)
Longer Views (1996)
Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999)
Shorter Views (1999)
1984: Selected Letters (2000)
About Writing (2005)
THE AMERICAN SHORE
Meditations on a Tale of Science Fiction
by Thomas M. Disch—“Angouleme”
Samuel R. Delany
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS
Middletown, Connecticut
Wesleyan University Press
Middletown CT 06459
Wesleyan edition © 2014 Samuel R. Delany
Introduction © 2014 Matthew Cheney
Original edition © 1978 Samuel R. Delany
The short story “Angouleme,” © 1974 Thomas M. Disch, appears here by permission, through the kindness and courtesy of Gregory Feeley, literary executor of the estate of Thomas M. Disch.
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Typeset in Trump Medieval by Integrated Publishing Solutions
Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green Press
Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Delany, Samuel R.
The American Shore: Meditations on a Tale of Science Fiction by Thomas M. Disch—“Angouleme” / Samuel R. Delany.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-8195-6718-5 (pbk.: alk. paper)—isbn 978-0-8195-7420-6 (ebook)
1. Disch, Thomas M. Angouleme. 2. Science fiction—History and criticism—Theory, etc. I. Disch, Thomas M. Angouleme. 1978. II. Title.
PS3554.I8A8232 2014
813'.54—dc23 2013050545
5 4 3 2 1
Cover illustration: The vintage map of North America, © Olga Rutko.
For Dorothy & Heywood Jones
The dual system of syntagmatic and paradigmatic solidarities proves to be applicable to the developing studies in the make-up of multi-sentential utterances and dialogues. The philological hermeneutic of entire texts enters gradually into the orbit of linguistics; the chasm between the two sciences—linguistics and philology—signalled in the Cours [Ferdinand de Saussure, Cours de linguistique générale (“Course in General Linguistics”), Geneva, 1916] becomes obliterated; and on the level of discourse the question of the relation between the signans (expressed) and the signatum (meant) obtains a new face and relevance.
—Roman Jakobson, Main Trends in the Science of Language
Acknowledgments
I must thank Brian Stableford, first for his lucid essays on the sociology of science fiction, which have appeared all too infrequently over the past decade, then for his supportive correspondence over the past year; also, had he not given me a chance to read in manuscript his exhaustive survey, The Scientific Imagination in Literature, I would never have had the insight that prompted “Exotext 4.” Monte Davis generously provided half-a-dozen pages single-space typed commentary on my own, which proved inexpressibly valuable in organizing this present draft. I must also thank Jean Marc Gawron, Marilyn Hacker, and Joanna Russ, who, for the year I have been engaged in this study, subjected me to an astute and unremitting criticism of the entire concept of difficult discourse, a criticism that, even when it reaches (or especially when it reaches) its most antagonistic, is inestimably useful to any writer who would essay such discourse, if the play such discourse allows is not to become polysyllabic silliness in its search for either the accurate or the ironic—a trespass every difficult writer risks. I must thank David Hartwell, medieval scholar, contemporary poetry entrepreneur, and science fiction editor extraordinary, who supported me in the most generous way an editor can. He said: “Write your book. I shall publish it.” My typist, Daniel Neudell, rendered services far above monetary value, correcting my erratic spelling and generally performing those endless intelligences needed to render the illegible lisible. I have known psychiatrists to show, for ten times the fee, less insight and discretion. Camilla Decarnin of San Francisco has, once again, been more generous and helpful