{"id":1052,"date":"2013-03-05T17:33:16","date_gmt":"2013-03-05T23:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/?p=1052"},"modified":"2013-03-02T17:35:28","modified_gmt":"2013-03-02T23:35:28","slug":"through-the-valley-of-the-nest-of-spiders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/through-the-valley-of-the-nest-of-spiders\/","title":{"rendered":"Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Cover<\/a><\/p>\n

Samuel R. Delany.\u00a0Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders.\u00a0Magnus Books, 2012. Paperback. 804p. $21.95 978-1-936833-14-6.<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This novel is a masterpiece, a magnus opus, not only for its length but because of its stature as a magnificent literary work.\u00a0\u00a0Delany is one of our most famous and prolific contemporary American writers who also happens to be black and gay.\u00a0 Among his 47 works, the most famous are Nova<\/em> (1968), Dhalgren<\/em> (1975), Return to Nev\u00e8r\u00ffon<\/em>(1979-87),\u00a0The Mad Man<\/em>\u00a0(1995), and\u00a0Dark Reflections<\/em>\u00a0(2007).<\/p>\n

Written between 2004 and 2011, this is a life-long saga that can be compared to earliest classics like Homer\u2019s Iliad and Odyssey. Instead of wide-ranging travel adventures, this portrays a life-long loving relationship between a young white boy and a slightly older black or mixed-race boy.<\/p>\n

They meet in a T-room on the day Eric, the white boy, arrives with his black stepfather to his mother\u2019s small community on the Georgia coast.\u00a0\u00a0In the T-room he meets Morgan (whom everyone calls \u201cShit\u201d) and his father \u201cDynamite,\u201d and almost immediately they create the beginning of a relationship that lasts their entire lives.<\/p>\n

The saga here is this relationship and their mutual adventures in and around a black gay utopia called \u201cThe Dump,\u201d created and financed by a wealthy black gay man.\u00a0\u00a0First they are garbage men, then they manage (and enjoy) a gay porn theater, and finally the two men (after Dynamite\u2019s death) retire to an off-shore island dominated (nicely) by lesbians.<\/p>\n

The best review of Valley is Steven Shaviro\u2019s<\/a> which proclaims \u201cIt is the best English-language novel that I know of, of the 21st century so far.”\u00a0\u00a0The up-and-coming Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Junot D\u00edaz writes, \u201cA deeply affecting chronicle of a lifelong partnership \u2026 by turns generous, unsparing and bursting with life (and sex) in all its difficult, rousing, prismatic splendor.\u00a0\u00a0A truly staggering achievement \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

The title is an homage to Italo Calvino\u2019s 1947 novel\u00a0The Path to the Nest of Spiders<\/em>, which, in that coming-of-age novel during World War II in Italy, the boy has a secret hideout for protection from the Fascists.\u00a0\u00a0Yet Delaney\u2019s book has no nest of spiders and no hide-outs; instead a loving and free relationship extends to a large circle of friends, family, and neighbors.<\/p>\n

The boys meet in 2007, and their relationship extends to at least 2077 when Shit dies, close to the age of 90.\u00a0\u00a0With little sense of science fiction, the book simply depicts down home in a small George coastal community with minor hints of future technologies.<\/p>\n

By the end we have multiple partner marriages and young people of both sexes often uncovering their tops and genitals.\u00a0\u00a0A side theme is Eric\u2019s obsession with a difficult book of philosophy, Spinoza\u2019s\u00a0Ethica<\/em>, which he reads over and over again throughout the novel.<\/p>\n

Every library serious about American literature and specializing in LGBT literature must have it.<\/p>\n

Reviewer: James Doig Anderson<\/strong>, Professor Emeritus Library and Information Science, Rutgers University<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Samuel R. Delany.\u00a0Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders.\u00a0Magnus Books, 2012. Paperback. 804p. $21.95 978-1-936833-14-6.   This novel is a masterpiece, a magnus opus, not only for its length but because of its stature as a magnificent literary work.\u00a0\u00a0Delany is one of our most famous and prolific contemporary American writers who also happens to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1164,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[27,18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}