The American Shore by Samuel R. Delany from Wesleyan University Press

Now available for pre-order. Here's the Wesleyan University Press page for it.

Here's an excerpt from the introduction, should your appetite need whetting:

It may, on a quick glance, appear to be a book about a short story. On further examination, it may appear to be a book about how science fiction works, or a contribution to the literary and cultural theory of its day. It is those things, but not only those things. Like so much of Delany’s writing, its strategies and concerns nudge our view wider. Much as the best science fiction’s trivalent discourse easily lures us into considering the meaning produced by the intersections of world and text, and thus provides a powerful space for reflection on both, so Delany’s dive over and between the lines of “Angouleme” stands as a model for and instigator of various levels of thought about all the signs and languages that produce and obscure our lives. No great text ever ends if there are still readers to read it and re-read it, to diffuse it and re-fuse it, reveling in the possibilities of polysemy and dissemination. Even the briefest moment of meaning can be, itself, a meaning machine.  Signifiers and signifieds want to dance till the end of time.

The Uncanny Familiarity of Mr. Disch

David Auerbach on Thomas M. Disch:

Look at the big social novels of the 1960s. You find conspiracy theories in Pynchon and Mailer, suburban hells in Cheever and Yates and (in its apotheosis) Heller, solipsistic nihilism and self-indulgence in Barth and Wurlitzer, beatnik dropout fantasies in countless other authors. Even Gore Vidal was writing historical novels rather than anything set in the present day.

Disch, though, was ahead of his time. The American heartland of his novels, contemporary or future, now seems eerily prescient. It’s not that these trends weren’t visible in the 60s and 70s, but Disch foresaw their eventual impact in the post-Cold War age that his peers mostly did not. Frequently evoking the American grotesques of Poe and Lovecraft, he brought out the ghastly ignorance that increasingly defines American political life. He exaggerates, but the uncanny familiarity of the caricature is scary.

And some of what got left on the cutting room floor...

I rate Disch above the suburban disenchantments of Yates, Cheever, and Updike because their work was so ineffective as cultural commmentary. It showed no engagement with the greater meaning of these enclaves in the American political environment of the Cold War. Likewise, the capitalist critiques of Gaddis seem way off the mark because they assume a certain amount of rational action on the part of the characters. Who is closer to Ken Lay, J.R. or Grandison Whiting? The best American authors have, I think, understood that America does not lend itself to highbrow cultural theorizing in the way that Germany does, and so inhabit the more gothic and grotesque modes.

"Descending" by Thomas M. Disch

I haven't read as much of the short fiction of Thomas M. Disch as I should. I have read a couple of his novels and a lot of his poetry, and have admired and enjoyed much of it. Yet I've only read parts of 334, a collection of linked stories some people consider his masterpiece, and at most two or three other stories.

Now that I have read "Descending", one of his earliest published stories, I am amazed that I haven't paid more attention to Disch before. It is good, perhaps, to discover writers with large bodies of wonderful work that is unfamiliar to you, because it means there are tremendous riches to be encountered, but there is also a certain sadness, even an anger: How could I have been so stupid as not to appreciate this work until now?

James Schoffstall has written perceptively about this story already, and so I don't feel compelled to revisit its themes and subject matter, because why add to what has already been done so well? What I'd like to point out about "Descending" is how excellent it is purely on a technical level, because this is a story I would use with aspiring writers as an exemplary model.

What most impresses me about "Descending" is how much Disch wrings from his premise. Often the difference for me between short stories that impress me and short stories that seem merely competent is not the difference between a good idea and a bad idea, but rather it is the difference between a story that has a good idea and doesn't do a lot with it and a story that takes an idea -- perhaps even a somewhat lackluster idea -- and explores it to the utmost. Of course, other things matter -- style, characterization, etc. -- but those other things are intimately related to the complexity with which the premise is handled.

Cleverness is not enough. None of us need to read any more stories that are merely clever. A less sophisticated writer than Disch would have created a clever and inconsequential story from the central idea of "Descending": a man gets on an escalator that never ends. From this idea, Disch builds a story that can be seen as an allegory, as a study of psychological breakdown, as a social critique. It does not scream a meaning at us, but it is rich with careful details that suggest as much as they say. Samuel Delany, in his introduction to Fundamental Disch, points out how well lists are used as a method of characterization, and this is, indeed, true, but the virtues of the story don't simply rest on that technique, because the situation of "Descending" enhances the characterization as well, and the choice of complications all reveal more about the character's personality. The lists are not only for characterization; as Schoffstall points out, they support the themes as well. Many elements of the story similarly serve multiple purposes -- they keep the action moving, they reveal aspects of character, they lend texture to ideas and implications, they evoke mystery from concrete imagery. "Descending" is a little bit more than 4,000 words long, but it is vastly more fulfilling than many stories of 10,000 words, and that is entirely because the premise is elaborated so carefully.

After first reading "Descending", I thought immediately of Kafka's "Metamorphosis", not because I think Disch's story is the equal of it, but rather because Kafka's is a story I have long considered a perfect example of a tale that explores its premise fully. "Descending" is perfect in its own, more modest, way. It is consistently surprising and yet rewards rereading.