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Samuel R. Delany

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127-578: Samuel R. " Chip " Delany ( / d ə ˈ l eɪ n i / , də- LAY -nee ; born April 1, 1942) is an American writer and literary critic . His work includes fiction (especially science fiction), memoir, criticism, and essays on science fiction, literature, sexuality , and society. His fiction includes Babel-17 , The Einstein Intersection (winners of the Nebula Award for 1966 and 1967, respectively); Hogg , Nova , Dhalgren ,

254-672: A buffer between the Dutch and the Native Americans. One of the largest of these was located along the modern Bowery between Prince Street and Astor Place , as well as the "only separate enclave" of this type within Manhattan. These Black farmers were some of the earliest settlers of the area. There were several "boweries" within what is now the East Village. Bowery no.   2 passed through several inhabitants, before

381-474: A cemetery plot at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery . The Stuyvesants' estate later expanded to include two Georgian -style manors: the "Bowery House" to the south and "Petersfield" to the north. Many of these farms had become wealthy country estates by the middle of the 18th century. The Stuyvesant, DeLancey, and Rutgers families would come to own most of the land on the Lower East Side, including

508-534: A child, Delany envied children with nicknames. He took one for himself on the first day of a new summer camp, Camp Woodland, at the age of 11, by answering "Everybody calls me Chip!" when asked his name. Decades later, Frederik Pohl called him "a person who is never addressed by his friends as Sam, Samuel or any other variant of the name his parents gave him." Delany's name is one of the most misspelled in science fiction, having been misspelled on over 60 occasions in reviews. His publisher Doubleday misspelled his name on

635-503: A collection of critical essays that applied then-nascent literary theory to science fiction studies, he published several books of criticism, interviews, and essays. He was also a visiting fellow at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in 1977 and the University at Albany in 1978. His main literary project through the late 1970s and 1980s was Return to Nevèrÿon , a four-volume series of sword and sorcery tales. In 1987, Delany

762-598: A college dorm. over requests of community groups and elected officials. Furthermore, the LPC acts on no particular schedule, leaving open indefinitely some "calendared" requests for designation. Sometimes it simply declines requests for consideration, as it did regarding an intact Italianate tenement at 143 East 13th Street. In other cases the LPC has refused the expansion of existing historic districts, as in 2016 when it declined to add 264 East 7th Street (the former home of illustrator Felicia Bond ) and four neighboring rowhouses to

889-418: A drug-infested no man's land to the epicenter of downtown cool". This part of the neighborhood has long been an ethnic enclave for Manhattan's German , Polish , Hispanic , and Jewish populations. Crime went up in the area in the late 20th century but then declined in the 21st, as the area became gentrified . Alphabet City's alternate name Loisaida , which is also used as the alternate name for Avenue C,

1016-537: A form of hermeneutics : knowledge via interpretation to understand the meaning of human texts and symbolic expressions – including the interpretation of texts which themselves interpret other texts. In the British and American literary establishment, the New Criticism was more or less dominant until the late 1960s. Around that time Anglo-American university literature departments began to witness

1143-407: A hundred art galleries in the East Village by the mid-1980s. These included Patti Astor and Bill Stelling's Fun Gallery at 11th Street, as well as numerous galleries on 7th Street. By 1987 the visual arts scene was in decline. Many of these art galleries relocated to more profitable neighborhoods such as SoHo , or closed altogether. The arts scene had become a victim of its own success, since

1270-595: A label Delany himself uses. Novels such as Triton and the thousand-plus pages making up his four-volume Return to Nevèrÿon series explored in detail how sexuality and sexual attitudes relate to the socioeconomic underpinnings of a primitive – or, in Triton ' s case, futuristic – society. Even in works with no science fiction or fantasy content to speak of, such as Atlantis: Three Tales , The Mad Man , and Hogg , Delany pursued these questions by creating vivid pictures of New York and other American cities, now in

1397-531: A larger district focused around lower Second Avenue. before later being expanded. In January 2012 the East 10th Street Historic District was designated by the LPC, and that October, the larger East Village/Lower East Side Historic District was also designated by the LPC. Several notable buildings are designated as individual landmarks, some due to the GVSHP's efforts. These include: Landmark efforts have included

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1524-540: A memoir of his experiences with the band and communal life, which was eventually published as Heavenly Breakfast (1979). After he and Hacker briefly came together again, she moved to San Francisco. On New Year's Eve in 1968, Delany joined her; they then moved to London. In the summer of 1971 Delany returned to New York, where he lived at the Albert Hotel in Greenwich Village . In 1972, Delany directed

1651-600: A number of losses as well. For instance, although the GVSHP and allied groups asked in 2012 that the Mary Help of Christians school, church and rectory be designated as landmarks, the site was demolished starting in 2013. In 2011, an early 19th-century Federal house at 35 Cooper Square – one of the oldest on the Bowery and in the East Village ;– was approved for demolition to make way for

1778-414: A physician. In 1991, Delany entered a committed, nonexclusive relationship with Dennis Rickett, previously a homeless book vendor. Their courtship is chronicled in the graphic memoir Bread and Wine: An Erotic Tale of New York (1999), a collaboration with the writer and artist Mia Wolff . Delany is an atheist . Delany is a supporter of NAMBLA . Jewels, reflection, and refraction – not just

1905-502: A profound influence on the study of secular texts. This was particularly the case for the literary traditions of the three Abrahamic religions : Jewish literature , Christian literature and Islamic literature . Literary criticism was also employed in other forms of medieval Arabic literature and Arabic poetry from the 9th century, notably by Al-Jahiz in his al-Bayan wa-'l-tabyin and al-Hayawan , and by Abdullah ibn al-Mu'tazz in his Kitab al-Badi . The literary criticism of

2032-647: A range of differences across gender, sexuality, and ability. This proliferation of identities "takes place within a concerted effort to sustain a gendered social order and to deliver a stable reproductive futurity through language" in the Lo society's caging of the non-functional "kages" who are denied language and care. Both Nyong'o and Snorton connect Delany's work with Sylvia Wynter 's "genres of being human", underscoring Delany's sustained thematic engagement with difference, normativity, and their potential subversions or reifications, and placing him as an important interlocutor in

2159-468: A result of real-estate price increases following the success of the arts scene. In the 1970s, rents were extremely low and the neighborhood was considered one of the least desirable places in Manhattan to live in. However, as early as 1983, the Times reported that because of the influx of artists, many longtime establishments and immigrants were being forced to leave the East Village due to rising rents. By

2286-549: A rigorous line" a ring is nearly obsessively described at every twist and turn of the plot. Reflection and refraction in narrative are explored in Dhalgren and take center stage in his Return to Nevèrÿon series. Following the 1968 publication of Nova , there was not only a large gap in Delany's published work (after releasing eight novels and a novella between 1962 and 1968, his published output virtually stopped until 1973), there

2413-617: A rise of a more explicitly philosophical literary theory , influenced by structuralism , then post-structuralism , and other kinds of Continental philosophy . It continued until the mid-1980s, when interest in "theory" peaked. Many later critics, though undoubtedly still influenced by theoretical work, have been comfortable simply interpreting literature rather than writing explicitly about methodology and philosophical presumptions. Today, approaches based in literary theory and continental philosophy largely coexist in university literature departments, while conventional methods, some informed by

2540-501: A second set of laws was passed in 1879, requiring each room to have windows, resulting in the creation of air shafts between each building. Subsequent tenements built to the law's specifications were referred to as Old Law Tenements . Reform movements, such as the one started by Jacob Riis 's 1890 book How the Other Half Lives , continued to attempt to alleviate the problems of the area through settlement houses , such as

2667-551: A short film entitled The Orchid (originally titled The Science Fiction Film in the Latter Twentieth Century ), produced by Barbara Wise. Shot in 16 mm with color and sound, the production also employed David Wise, Adolfas Mekas , and was scored by John Herbert McDowell. That November, Delany was a visiting writer at Wesleyan University 's Center for the Humanities. That year, Delany wrote two issues of

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2794-843: A significant impact in the East Side, erecting houses of worship next to each other along 7th Street at the turn of the 20th century. American-born New Yorkers would build other churches and community institutions, including the Olivet Memorial Church at 59 East 2nd Street (built 1891), the Middle Collegiate Church at 112 Second Avenue (built 1891–1892), and the Society of the Music School Settlement, now Third Street Music School Settlement , at 53–55 East 3rd Street (converted 1903–1904). By

2921-480: A similar argument in his analysis of The Einstein Intersection . Citing Delany as a Queer theorist , Nyong'o highlights the novella's "extended study of the enduring power of norms, written during the precise moment – ' the 1960s ' – when antinormative, anti-systemic movements in the United States and worldwide were at their peak." Like Triton , The Einstein Intersection features characters that exist across

3048-539: Is often influenced by literary theory , which is the philosophical analysis of literature's goals and methods. Although the two activities are closely related, literary critics are not always, and have not always been, theorists. Whether or not literary criticism should be considered a separate field of inquiry from literary theory is a matter of some controversy. For example, The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism draws no distinction between literary theory and literary criticism, and almost always uses

3175-580: The London Review of Books , the Dublin Review of Books , The Nation , Bookforum , and The New Yorker . Literary criticism is thought to have existed as far back as the classical period. In the 4th century BC Aristotle wrote the Poetics , a typology and description of literary forms with many specific criticisms of contemporary works of art. Poetics developed for the first time

3302-693: The Return to Nevèrÿon series, and Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders . His nonfiction includes Times Square Red, Times Square Blue , About Writing , and eight books of essays. He has won four Nebula awards and two Hugo Awards , and he was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2002. From January 1975 to May 2015, he was a professor of English, Comparative Literature, and/or Creative Writing at SUNY Buffalo , SUNY Albany ,

3429-494: The Astor family and Stephen Whitney . The developers rarely involved themselves with the daily operations of the tenements, instead subcontracting landlords (many of them immigrants or their children) to run each building. Numerous tenements were erected, typically with footprints of 25 by 25 feet (7.6 by 7.6 m), before regulatory legislation was passed in the 1860s. To address concerns about unsafe and unsanitary conditions,

3556-775: The Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from Publishing Triangle in 1993; he has described this as the award of which he is proudest. After an invited stay at the artist's community Yaddo , he moved to the English Department of Temple University in January 2001, where he taught until his retirement in April 2015. In 2007, Delany was the subject of a documentary film, The Polymath, or, The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman , directed by Fred Barney Taylor . The film debuted on April 25 at

3683-529: The Dutch West India Company , who served as director-general of New Netherland . The population of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam was located primarily below the current Fulton Street , while north of it were a number of small plantations and large farms that were then called bouwerij (anglicized to "boweries"; modern Dutch : boerderij ). Around these farms were a number of enclaves of free or "half-free" Africans, which served as

3810-483: The Enlightenment period (1700s–1800s), literary criticism became more popular. During this time literacy rates started to rise in the public; no longer was reading exclusive for the wealthy or scholarly. With the rise of the literate public, the swiftness of printing and commercialization of literature, criticism arose too. Reading was no longer viewed solely as educational or as a sacred source of religion; it

3937-613: The Henry Street Settlement , and other welfare and service agencies. Because most of the new immigrants were German speakers, the East Village and the Lower East Side collectively became known as " Little Germany " (German: Kleindeutschland ). The neighborhood had the third largest urban population of Germans outside of Vienna and Berlin . It was America's first foreign language neighborhood; hundreds of political, social, sports and recreational clubs were set up during this period. Numerous churches were built in

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4064-671: The Jazz Age , now in the first decade of the AIDS epidemic , New York private schools in the 1950s, as well as Greece and Europe in the 1960s, and – in Hogg  – generalized small-town America. Phallos details the quest for happiness and security by a gay man from the island of Syracuse in the second-century reign of the Emperor Hadrian . Dark Reflections is a contemporary novel, dealing with themes of repression, old age, and

4191-487: The Lenape Native people, and was then divided into plantations by Dutch settlers. During the early 19th century, the East Village contained many of the city's most opulent estates. By the middle of the century, it grew to include a large immigrant population – including what was once referred to as Manhattan 's Little Germany  – and was considered part of the nearby Lower East Side . By

4318-564: The National Book Awards fiction category. His science fiction novel Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders was published by Magnus Books on his birthday in 2012. In 2013 he received the Brudner Prize from Yale University, for his contributions to gay literature. The same year, his comic book writer friend and planned literary executor, Robert Morales , died. He served as Critical Inquiry Visiting Professor at

4445-744: The New Critics , also remain active. Disagreements over the goals and methods of literary criticism, which characterized both sides taken by critics during the "rise" of theory, have declined. Some critics work largely with theoretical texts, while others read traditional literature; interest in the literary canon is still great, but many critics are also interested in nontraditional texts and women's literature , as elaborated on by certain academic journals such as Contemporary Women's Writing , while some critics influenced by cultural studies read popular texts like comic books or pulp / genre fiction . Ecocritics have drawn connections between literature and

4572-918: The Nuyorican literary movement. Multiple former Yiddish theaters were converted for use by Off-Broadway shows: for instance, the Public Theater at 66 Second Avenue became the Phyllis Anderson Theater. Numerous buildings on East 4th Street hosted Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway productions, including the Royal Playhouse, the Fourth Street Theatre, the Downtown Theatre, the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club , and

4699-473: The Nuyorican Poets Café . Some of the neighborhoods most iconic establishments such as Pyramid Club and Lucy's have since shuttered due to new ownership and subsequent evictions . Alphabet City also contains St. Marks Place , the continuation of Eighth Street between Third Avenue and Avenue A. The street contains a Japanese street culture; an aged punk culture and CBGB 's new store;

4826-500: The Renaissance developed classical ideas of unity of form and content into literary neoclassicism , proclaiming literature as central to culture, entrusting the poet and the author with preservation of a long literary tradition. The birth of Renaissance criticism was in 1498, with the recovery of classic texts, most notably, Giorgio Valla 's Latin translation of Aristotle 's Poetics . The work of Aristotle, especially Poetics ,

4953-495: The Third Avenue elevated railway above the Bowery and Third Avenue was removed. This in turn made the neighborhood more attractive to potential residents; in 1960 The New York Times reported: "This area is gradually becoming recognized as an extension of Greenwich Village   ... thereby extending New York's Bohemia from river to river." The 1960 Times article stated that rental agents were increasingly referring to

5080-690: The University of Chicago during the winter quarter of 2014. In 2015, the year Delany retired from teaching at Temple University, the Caribbean Philosophical Association awarded him its Nicolás Guillén Lifetime Achievement Award. Since 2018, his archive has been housed at the Beinecke Library at Yale, where it is currently being organized. Till then, his papers were housed at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center . As

5207-664: The University of Massachusetts Amherst , and Temple University . In 1997, he won the Kessler Award ; further, in 2010, he won the third J. Lloyd Eaton Lifetime Achievement Award in Science Fiction from the academic Eaton Science Fiction Conference at UCR Libraries . The Science Fiction Writers of America named him its 30th SFWA Grand Master in 2013, and in 2016, he was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame . Delany received

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5334-468: The West Village , the East Village is not located within Greenwich Village . The area that is today known as the East Village was originally occupied by the Lenape Native people. The Lenape relocated during different seasons, moving toward the shore to fish during the summers, and moving inland to hunt and grow crops during the fall and winter. Manhattan was purchased in 1626 by Peter Minuit of

5461-462: The history of the book is a field of interdisciplinary inquiry drawing on the methods of bibliography , cultural history , history of literature , and media theory . Principally concerned with the production, circulation, and reception of texts and their material forms, book history seeks to connect forms of textuality with their material aspects. Among the issues within the history of literature with which book history can be seen to intersect are:

5588-421: The 1790s, gave the city of New York the ability to plan out, open, and close streets. The final plan, published in 1811, resulted in the current street grid north of Houston Street  – and most of the streets in the modern East Village – were conformed to this plan, except for Stuyvesant Street. The north–south avenues within the Lower East Side were finished in the 1810s, followed by

5715-532: The 1880s that these families "look[ed] down with disdain upon the parvenus of Fifth avenue". In general, though, the wealthy population of the neighborhood started to decline as many moved northward. Immigrants from modern-day Ireland, Germany, and Austria moved into the rowhouses and manors. The population of Manhattan's 17th ward – which includes the western part of the East Village and Lower East Side – grew from 18,000 in 1840 to over 43,000 by 1850 and to 73,000 persons in 1860, becoming

5842-558: The 1890s tenements were being designed in the ornate Queen Anne and Romanesque Revival styles. Tenements built in the later part of the decade were built in the Renaissance Revival style. At the time, the area was increasingly being identified as part of the Lower East Side. By the 1890s and 1900s any remaining manors on Second Avenue had been demolished and replaced with tenements or apartment buildings. The New York State Tenement House Act of 1901 drastically changed

5969-709: The 2007 Tribeca Film Festival , and in 2008, it tied for Jury Award for Best Documentary at the International Philadelphia Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. Also in 2007, Delany was the April "calendar boy" in the "Legends of the Village" calendar put out by Village Care of New York. In 2008, his novel Dark Reflections was a winner of the Stonewall Book Award . In 2010, Delany was one of five judges (along with Andrei Codrescu , Sabina Murray , Joanna Scott and Carolyn See ) for

6096-633: The 2021 Anisfield-Wolf Lifetime Achievement Award . Samuel Ray Delany, Jr. was born on April 1, 1942, and raised in Harlem . His mother, Margaret Carey (Boyd) Delany (1916–1995), was a clerk in the New York Public Library system. His father, Samuel Ray Delany Sr. (1906–1960), ran the Levy & Delany Funeral Home on 7th Avenue in Harlem, from 1938 until his death in 1960. The family lived in

6223-617: The 20th century. A substantial portion of the neighborhood, including the Ukrainian enclave, was slated for demolition under the Cooper Square Urban Renewal Plan of 1956, which was to redevelop the area from Ninth to Delancey Streets from the Bowery/Third Avenue to Chrystie Street /Second Avenue with new privately owned cooperative housing . The United Housing Foundation was selected as

6350-496: The 21st century. The city first released a draft in July 2006, which concerned an area bounded by East 13th Street on the north, Third Avenue on the west, Delancey Street on the south, and Avenue D on the east. The rezoning proposal was done in response to concerns about the character and scale of some of the new buildings in the neighborhood. Despite protests and accusations of promoting gentrification and increased property values over

6477-401: The East Side and NoHo by the early 1830s. One set of Federal-style rowhouses was built in the 1830s by Thomas E. Davis on 8th Street between Second and Third Avenues . That block was renamed " St. Mark's Place " and is one of the few remaining terrace names in the East Village. In 1833 Davis and Arthur Bronson bought the entire block of 10th Street from Avenue A to Avenue B . The block

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6604-456: The East Side. It contained many theaters and other forms of entertainment for the Jewish immigrants of the city. While most of the early Yiddish theaters were located south of Houston Street, several theater producers were considering moving north along Second Avenue by the first decades of the 20th century. Second Avenue gained more prominence as a Yiddish theater destination in the 1910s with

6731-505: The East Side. One notable address was the twelve-house development called "Albion Place", located on Fourth Street between the Bowery and Second Avenue, built for Peck and Phelps in 1832–1833. Second Avenue also had its own concentration of mansions, though most residences on that avenue were row houses built by speculative land owners , including the Isaac T. Hopper House . One New York Evening Post article in 1846 said that Second Avenue

6858-523: The East Village/Lower East Side Historic District. On March 26, 2015, a gas explosion occurred on Second Avenue after a gas line was tapped. The explosion and resulting fire destroyed three buildings at 119, 121 and 123 Second Avenue, between East 7th Street and St. Marks Place . Two people were killed, and at least twenty-two people were injured, four critically. Three restaurants were also destroyed in

6985-513: The GVSHP are actively working to gain individual and district landmark designations for the East Village to preserve and protect the architectural and cultural identity of the neighborhood. In early 2011 the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) proposed two East Village historic districts: a small district along the block of 10th Street that lies north of Tompkins Square Park , and

7112-539: The Manhattan side of the East River" has shifted in part to new neighborhoods like Williamsburg in Brooklyn . There are still some performance spaces, such as Sidewalk Cafe on 6th Street and Avenue A , where downtown acts find space to exhibit their talent, as well as the poetry clubs Bowery Poetry Club and Nuyorican Poets Café . In the late 20th and early 21st centuries the East Village became gentrified as

7239-584: The Other Half Lives Riis wrote: "A map of the city, colored to designate nationalities, would show more stripes than on the skin of a zebra, and more colors than any rainbow." One of the first groups to populate the former Little Germany were Yiddish -speaking Ashkenazi Jews , who first settled south of Houston Street before moving northward. The Roman Catholic Poles as well as the Protestant Hungarians would also have

7366-473: The Truck & Warehouse Theater just on the block between Bowery and Second Avenue. By the 1970s and 1980s the city in general was in decline and nearing bankruptcy, especially after the 1975 New York City fiscal crisis . Residential buildings in the East Village suffered from high levels of neglect, as property owners did not properly maintain their buildings. The city purchased many of these buildings, but

7493-527: The United States at Fiedler's behest to teach at the University at Buffalo as Visiting Butler Professor of English for the spring 1975 semester. That summer he returned to New York City. Though he published two more major science fiction novels ( Triton and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand ) in the decade following Dhalgren , Delany began to work in fantasy and science fiction criticism. Beginning with The Jewel-Hinged Jaw (1977),

7620-548: The Yahoos". The British Romantic movement of the early nineteenth century introduced new aesthetic ideas to literary studies, including the idea that the object of literature need not always be beautiful, noble, or perfect, but that literature itself could elevate a common subject to the level of the sublime . German Romanticism , which followed closely after the late development of German classicism , emphasized an aesthetic of fragmentation that can appear startlingly modern to

7747-436: The area as "Village East" or "East Village". The new name was used to dissociate the area from the image of slums evoked by the Lower East Side. According to The New York Times , a 1964 guide called Earl Wilson's New York wrote: "Artists, poets and promoters of coffeehouses from Greenwich Village are trying to remelt the neighborhood under the high-sounding name of 'East Village'." Newcomers and real estate brokers popularized

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7874-437: The area's history and need for affordable housing, the rezoning was approved in 2008. Among other things, the zoning established height limits for new development throughout the affected area, modified allowable density of real estate, capped air rights transfers, eliminated the current zoning bonus for dorms and hotels, and created incentives for the creation and retention of affordable housing. Local community groups such as

8001-514: The author's psychology or biography, which became almost taboo subjects) or reader response : together known as Wimsatt and Beardsley's intentional fallacy and affective fallacy . This emphasis on form and precise attention to "the words themselves" has persisted, after the decline of these critical doctrines themselves. In 1957 Northrop Frye published the influential Anatomy of Criticism . In his works Frye noted that some critics tend to embrace an ideology, and to judge literary pieces on

8128-499: The basis for characters Elsie and Corry in "Atlantis: Model 1924", the opening novella in his semi-autobiographical collection Atlantis: Three Tales .) Other notable family members include his aunt, Harlem Renaissance poet Clarissa Scott Delany , and his uncle, judge Hubert Thomas Delany . Delany attended the private Dalton School and, from 1951 through 1956, spent summers at Camp Woodland in Phoenicia, New York. He studied at

8255-522: The basis of their adherence to such ideology. This has been a highly influential viewpoint among modern conservative thinkers. E. Michael Jones, for example, argues in his Degenerate Moderns that Stanley Fish was influenced by his own adulterous affairs to reject classic literature that condemned adultery. Jürgen Habermas , in Erkenntnis und Interesse [1968] ( Knowledge and Human Interests ), described literary critical theory in literary studies as

8382-472: The city's most highly populated ward at that time. As a result of the Panic of 1837 , the city had experienced less construction in the previous years, and so there was a dearth of units available for immigrants, resulting in the subdivision of many houses in lower Manhattan. Another solution was brand-new "tenant houses", or tenements , within the East Side. Clusters of these buildings were constructed by

8509-399: The comic book Wonder Woman , during a controversial period when the lead character abandoned her superpowers and became a secret agent. Delany scripted issues No. 202 and No. 203 of the series. He was initially supposed to write a six-issue story arc that would culminate in a battle over an abortion clinic, but the story arc was canceled after Gloria Steinem led a lobbying effort protesting

8636-455: The concepts of mimesis and catharsis , which are still crucial in literary studies. Plato 's attacks on poetry as imitative, secondary, and false were formative as well. The Sanskrit Natya Shastra includes literary criticism on ancient Indian literature and Sanskrit drama. Later classical and medieval criticism often focused on religious texts, and the several long religious traditions of hermeneutics and textual exegesis have had

8763-460: The context of increasing technologically determined biocentrism , where bodies are shaped into categories-cum-cartographies of (human) life, as determined by socially agreed-upon and scientifically mapped genetic routes." Triton questions social and political imperatives towards anti-normativity insofar that these projects do not challenge but actually reify the constrictive categories of the human. In his book Afro-Fabulations , Tavia Nyong'o makes

8890-546: The couple settled in New York's East Village neighborhood at 629 East 5th Street. Hacker was working as an assistant editor at Ace Books , and her intervention helped Delany become a published science fiction author by the age of 20. He had finished writing that first novel ( The Jewels of Aptor , published in 1962) while 19, shortly after dropping out of the City College of New York after one semester. His next work

9017-410: The development of authorship as a profession, the formation of reading audiences, the constraints of censorship and copyright, and the economics of literary form. East Village, Manhattan The East Village is a neighborhood on the East Side of Lower Manhattan in New York City , United States. It is roughly defined as the area east of the Bowery and Third Avenue , between 14th Street on

9144-461: The district's theaters hosted as many as twenty to thirty shows a night. After World War   II Yiddish theater became less popular, and by the mid-1950s few theaters were still extant in the District. The city built First Houses on the south side of East 3rd Street between First Avenue and Avenue A , and on the west side of Avenue A between East 2nd and East 3rd Streets in 1935–1936,

9271-579: The early 21st century some buildings in the area were torn down and replaced by newer buildings. Due to the gentrification of the neighborhood, parties including the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP), Manhattan Community Board 3 , the East Village Community Coalition, and City Councilmember Rosie Mendez , began calling for a change to the area's zoning in the first decade of

9398-401: The eastern half of the land was subdivided and given to Harmen Smeeman in 1647. Peter Stuyvesant , the director-general of New Netherland, owned adjacent bowery no.   1 and bought bowery no.   2 in 1656 for his farm . Stuyvesant's manor, also called Bowery, was near what is now 10th Street between Second and Third Avenues. Though the manor burned down in the 1770s, his family held onto

9525-565: The explosion. Landlord Maria Hrynenko and an unlicensed plumber and another employee were sentenced to prison time for their part in causing the explosion in New York State Supreme Court. Ms. Hrynenko allowed an illegal gas line to be constructed on her property. Neighboring the East Village are the Lower East Side to the south, NoHo to the west, Stuyvesant Park to the northwest, and Stuyvesant Town to

9652-559: The fields of Queer theory and Black studies . The Mad Man , Phallos , and Dark Reflections are linked in minor ways. The beast mentioned at the beginning of The Mad Man graces the cover of Phallos . repr. 2021 in Out of the Ruins ed. by Preston Grassmann Literary critic A genre of arts criticism , literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation , and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism

9779-533: The first displaced Greenwich Villagers to move to the area were writers Allen Ginsberg , W. H. Auden , and Norman Mailer , who all moved to the area in 1951–1953. A cluster of cooperative art galleries on East 10th Street (later collectively referred to as the 10th Street galleries ) were opened around the same time, starting with the Tanger and the Hansa which both opened in 1952. Further change came in 1955 when

9906-520: The first such public housing project in the United States. The neighborhood originally ended at the East River , to the east of where Avenue D was later located. In the mid-20th-century, landfill – including World War   II debris and rubble shipped from London – was used to extend the shoreline to provide foundation for the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive . In

10033-481: The following year, young professionals constituted a large portion of the neighborhood's demographics. Even so, crimes remained prevalent and there were often drug deals being held openly in Tompkins Square Park. Tensions over gentrification resulted in the 1988 Tompkins Square Park riot , which occurred following opposition to a proposed curfew that had targeted the park's homeless. The aftermath of

10160-433: The former location of one of New York City's only Automats ; and a portion of the "Mosaic Trail", a trail of eighty mosaic-encrusted lampposts that runs from Broadway down Eighth Street to Avenue A, to Fourth Street and then back to Eighth Street. Alphabet City was once the archetype of a dangerous New York City neighborhood. Its turn-around was cause for The New York Times to observe in 2005 that Alphabet City went "from

10287-502: The grid system that was ultimately laid out under the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 , which is offset by 28.9 degrees clockwise. Stuyvesant Street formed the border between former boweries 1   and 2, and the grid surrounding it included four north–south and nine west–east streets. Because each landowner had done their own survey, there were different street grids that did not align with each other. Various state laws, passed in

10414-430: The imagery but reflection and refraction of text and concepts – are also strong themes and metaphors in Delany's work. Titles such as The Jewels of Aptor , The Jewel-Hinged Jaw , "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones", Driftglass , and Dark Reflections , along with the optic chain of prisms, mirrors, and lenses worn by several characters in Dhalgren , are a few examples of this; as in "We (...) move on

10541-471: The land for over seven generations, until a descendant began selling off parcels in the early 19th century. Bowery no. 3 was located near today's 2nd Street between Second Avenue and the modern street named Bowery. It was owned by Gerrit Hendricksen in 1646 and later given to Philip Minthorne by 1732. The Minthorne and Stuyvesant families both held enslaved people on their farms. According to an 1803 deed, enslaved people held by Stuyvesant were to be buried in

10668-685: The last resident moved out of the Thomas E. Davis mansion at Second Avenue and St. Mark's Place, which The New York Times had called the "last fashionable residence" on Second Avenue. In 1916, the Slovenian community and Franciscans established the Slovenian Church of St. Cyril , which still operates. Simultaneously with the decline of the last manors, the Yiddish Theatre District or "Yiddish Rialto" developed within

10795-522: The late 1960s, many artists, musicians, students and hippies began to move into the area, and the East Village was given its own identity. Since at least the 2000s, gentrification has changed the character of the neighborhood. The East Village is part of Manhattan Community District 3 , and its primary ZIP Codes are 10003 and 10009. It is patrolled by the 9th Precinct of the New York City Police Department . Unlike

10922-685: The merit-based Bronx High School of Science , during which he was selected to attend Camp Rising Sun , the Louis August Jonas Foundation's international summer scholarship program. Delany's first published short story, "Salt", appeared in Dynamo , Bronx Science's literary magazine, in 1960. Delany's father died from lung cancer in October 1960. The following year, in August 1961, Delany married poet/translator Marilyn Hacker , and

11049-465: The mid-20th century Ukrainians created a Ukrainian enclave in the neighborhood, centered around Second Avenue and 6th and 7th Streets. The Polish enclave in the East Village persisted as well. Numerous other immigrant groups had moved out, and their former churches were sold and became Orthodox cathedrals . Latin American immigrants started to move to the East Side, settling in the eastern part of

11176-399: The natural sciences. Darwinian literary studies studies literature in the context of evolutionary influences on human nature. And postcritique has sought to develop new ways of reading and responding to literary texts that go beyond the interpretive methods of critique . Many literary critics also work in film criticism or media studies . Related to other forms of literary criticism,

11303-611: The neighborhood and creating an enclave that later came to be known as Loisaida . The East Side's population started to decline at the start of the Great Depression in the 1930s and the implementation of the Immigration Act of 1924 , and the expansion of the New York City Subway into the outer boroughs. Many old tenements, deemed to be "blighted" and unnecessary, were destroyed in the middle of

11430-541: The neighborhood, Manhattan's 17th ward was split from the 11th ward in 1837. The former covered the area from Avenue B to the Bowery, while the latter covered the area from Avenue B to the East River . By the middle of the 19th century, many of the wealthy had continued to move further northward to the Upper West Side and the Upper East Side . Some wealthy families remained, and one observer noted in

11557-712: The neighborhood, of which many are still extant. In addition, Little Germany also had its own library on Second Avenue, now the New York Public Library 's Ottendorfer branch. However, the community started to decline after the sinking of the General Slocum on June 15, 1904, in which more than a thousand German-Americans died. The Germans who moved out of the area were replaced by immigrants of many different nationalities. This included groups of Italians and Eastern European Jews, as well as Greeks, Hungarians, Poles, Romanians, Russians, Slovaks and Ukrainians, each of whom settled in relatively homogeneous enclaves. In How

11684-730: The neighborhood. These included the Fillmore East Music Hall (later a gay private nightclub called The Saint), which was located in a movie theater at 105 Second Avenue. The Phyllis Anderson Theatre was converted into Second Avenue Theater, an annex of the CBGB music club, and hosted musicians and bands such as Bruce Springsteen , Patti Smith , and Talking Heads . The Pyramid Club , which opened in 1979 at 101 Avenue A, hosted musical acts such as Nirvana and Red Hot Chili Peppers , as well as drag performers such as RuPaul and Ann Magnuson . In addition, there were more than

11811-587: The new direction taken in the early twentieth century. Early in the century the school of criticism known as Russian Formalism , and slightly later the New Criticism in Britain and in the United States, came to dominate the study and discussion of literature in the English-speaking world. Both schools emphasized the close reading of texts, elevating it far above generalizing discussion and speculation about either authorial intention (to say nothing of

11938-487: The new name, and the term was adopted by the popular media by the mid-1960s. A weekly newspaper with the neighborhood's new name, The East Village Other , started publication in 1966. The New York Times declared that the neighborhood "had come to be known" as the East Village in the edition of June 5, 1967. The East Village became a center of the counterculture in New York, and was the birthplace and historical home of many artistic movements, including punk rock and

12065-454: The north and Houston Street on the south. The East Village contains three subsections: Alphabet City , in reference to the single-letter-named avenues that are located to the east of First Avenue ; Little Ukraine , near Second Avenue and 6th and 7th Streets; and the Bowery , located around the street of the same name. Initially the location of the present-day East Village was occupied by

12192-492: The northeast. The East Village contains several smaller vibrant communities, each with its own character. Alphabet City is the eastern section of the East Village that is so named because it contains avenues with single-lettered names, e.g. Avenues A , B , C , and D . It is bordered by Houston Street to the south and 14th Street to the north. Notable places within Alphabet City include Tompkins Square Park and

12319-696: The opening of two theatres: the Second Avenue Theatre , which opened in 1911 at 35–37 Second Avenue, and the National Theater , which opened in 1912 at 111–117 East Houston Street. This was followed by the opening of several other theaters, such as the Louis N. Jaffe Theater and the Public Theatre in 1926 and 1927 respectively. Numerous movie houses also opened in the East Side, including six on Second Avenue. By World War   I

12446-438: The popularity of the art galleries had revived the East Village's real estate market. One club that tried to resurrect the neighborhood's past artistic prominence was Mo Pitkins' House of Satisfaction, part-owned by comedian Jimmy Fallon before it closed in 2007. A Fordham University study, examining the decline of the East Village performance and art scene, stated that "the young, liberal culture that once found its place on

12573-409: The portions that would later become the East Village. By the late 18th century Lower Manhattan estate owners started having their lands surveyed to facilitate the future growth of Lower Manhattan into a street grid system. The Stuyvesant plot, surveyed in the 1780s or 1790s, was planned to be developed with a new grid around Stuyvesant Street , a street that ran compass west–east. This contrasted with

12700-501: The publication of Emanuele Tesauro 's Il Cannocchiale aristotelico (The Aristotelian Telescope) in 1654. This seminal treatise – inspired by Giambattista Marino 's epic Adone and the work of the Spanish Jesuit philosopher Baltasar Gracián – developed a theory of metaphor as a universal language of images and as a supreme intellectual act, at once an artifice and an epistemologically privileged mode of access to truth. In

12827-447: The reader of English literature, and valued Witz – that is, "wit" or "humor" of a certain sort – more highly than the serious Anglophone Romanticism. The late nineteenth century brought renown to authors known more for their literary criticism than for their own literary work, such as Matthew Arnold . However important all of these aesthetic movements were as antecedents, current ideas about literary criticism derive almost entirely from

12954-405: The regulations to which tenement buildings had to conform. The early 20th century marked the creation of apartment houses, office buildings, and other commercial or institutional structures on Second Avenue. After the widening of Second Avenue's roadbed in the early 1910s, many of the front stoops on that road were eliminated. The symbolic demise of the old fashionable district came in 1912 when

13081-519: The removal of Wonder Woman's powers, a change predating Delany's involvement. Scholar Ann Matsuuchi concluded that Steinem's feedback was "conveniently used as an excuse" by DC management. From December 1972 to December 1974, Delany and Hacker lived in Marylebone , London. During this period, Delany began working with sexual themes in earnest and wrote two pornographic works, Equinox (originally published as The Tides of Lust ), and Hogg , which

13208-401: The riot slowed down the gentrification process somewhat as real estate prices declined. By the end of the 20th century, however, real estate prices had resumed their rapid rise. About half of the East Village's stores had opened within the decade since the riot, while vacancy rates in that period had dropped from 20% to 3%, indicating that many of the longtime merchants had been pushed out. By

13335-466: The science fiction or fantasy genres for many years. He also published his novel The Mad Man and several essay collections, including Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999), a pair of essays in which Delany drew on personal experience to examine the relationship between the effort to redevelop Times Square and the public sex lives of working-class men in New York City. Delany received

13462-500: The short stories " Aye, and Gomorrah " and "Dog in a Fisherman's Net". These works received critical praise: Algis Budrys called Delany a genius and poet and listed him with J. G. Ballard , Brian W. Aldiss , and Roger Zelazny as "an earthshaking new kind" of writer, while Judith Merril labeled him "TNT (The New Thing)". Babel-17 and The Einstein Intersection won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1966 and 1967, respectively. "The Star-Pit", Delany's first professional short story,

13589-403: The site of the old St. Nicholas Kirche . Until the mid-20th century the area was simply the northern part of the Lower East Side, with a similar culture of immigrant, working-class life. In the 1950s and 1960s the migration of Beatniks into the neighborhood later attracted hippies, musicians, writers, and artists who had been priced out of the rapidly gentrifying Greenwich Village . Among

13716-549: The sponsor for the project, and there was significant opposition to the plan, as it would have displaced thousands of people. Neither the original large-scale development nor a 1961 revised proposal were implemented and the city's government lost interest in performing such large-scale slum-clearance projects. Another redevelopment project that was completed was the Village View Houses on First Avenue between East 2nd and 6th Streets, which opened in 1964 partially on

13843-606: The terms together to describe the same concept. Some critics consider literary criticism a practical application of literary theory, because criticism always deals directly with particular literary works, while theory may be more general or abstract. Literary criticism is often published in essay or book form. Academic literary critics teach in literature departments and publish in academic journals , and more popular critics publish their reviews in broadly circulating periodicals such as The Times Literary Supplement , The New York Times Book Review , The New York Review of Books ,

13970-449: The title page of Driftglass , as did the organizers of Balticon in 1982 where Delany was guest of honor. Delany has identified as gay since adolescence. However, some observers have described him as bisexual due to his complicated 19-year marriage with poet/translator Marilyn Hacker , who was aware of Delany's orientation and has identified as a lesbian since their divorce. Delany and Hacker had one child in 1974, Iva Hacker-Delany, now

14097-623: The top two floors of a three-story private house between five- and six-story Harlem apartment buildings. Delany was born into an accomplished and ambitious family of the African American upper class . His grandfather, Henry Beard Delany (1858—1928), was born into slavery, but after emancipation became educated, a priest and the first black bishop of the Episcopal Church . Civil rights pioneers Sadie and Bessie Delany were among his paternal aunts. (He drew from their lives as

14224-402: The west–east streets in the 1820s. The Commissioners' Plan and resulting street grid was the catalyst for the northward expansion of the city, and for a short period, the portion of the Lower East Side that is now the East Village was one of the wealthiest residential neighborhoods in the city. Bond Street between the Bowery and Broadway, just west of the East Side within present-day NoHo ,

14351-472: The writer's unrewarded life. Writer and academic C. Riley Snorton has addressed Triton 's thematic engagement with gender, sexual, and racial difference and how their accommodations are instrumentalized in the state and institutional maintenance of social relations. Despite the novel's infinite number of subject positions and identities available through technological intervention, Snorton argues that Delany's proliferation of identities "take place within

14478-408: Was a form of entertainment. Literary criticism was influenced by the values and stylistic writing, including clear, bold, precise writing and the more controversial criteria of the author's religious beliefs. These critical reviews were published in many magazines, newspapers, and journals. The commercialization of literature and its mass production had its downside. The emergent literary market, which

14605-456: Was a visiting fellow at Cornell University . The next year, he became a professor of comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts Amherst . He held this post for 11 years, before spending a year and a half as an English professor at the University at Buffalo . Delany's works in the 1990s included They Fly at Çiron , a re-written and expanded version of an unpublished short story he had written in 1962, and his last novel in either

14732-508: Was also a notable addition to the themes found in the stories published after that time. It was at this point that Delany began dealing with sexual themes to an extent rarely equaled in serious writing. Dhalgren and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand include several sexually explicit passages, and several of his books such as Equinox (originally published as The Tides of Lust , a title that Delany does not endorse), The Mad Man , Hogg and Phallos can be considered pornography,

14859-528: Was also unable to maintain them due to a lack of funds. Following the publication of a revised Cooper Square renewal plan in 1986, some properties were given to the Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association as part of a 1991 agreement. In spite of the deterioration of the structures within the East Village, its music and arts scenes were doing well. By the 1970s gay dance halls and punk rock clubs had started to open in

14986-541: Was considered the most upscale street address in the city by the 1830s, with structures such as the Greek Revival -style Colonnade Row and Federal -style rowhouses . The neighborhood's prestigious nature could be attributed to several factors, including a rise in commerce and population following the Erie Canal 's opening in the 1820s. Following the grading of the streets, development of rowhouses came to

15113-608: Was expected to educate the public and keep them away from superstition and prejudice, increasingly diverged from the idealistic control of the Enlightenment theoreticians so that the business of Enlightenment became a business with the Enlightenment. This development – particularly of emergence of entertainment literature – was addressed through an intensification of criticism. Many works of Jonathan Swift , for instance, were criticized including his book Gulliver's Travels , which one critic described as "the detestable story of

15240-551: Was his last science fiction novel until Dhalgren in 1975. Weeks after Delany's return, he and Hacker began to live separately. Delany played and lived communally for five months on the Lower East Side with the Heavenly Breakfast, a folk-rock band whose other members were Susan Schweers, Steven Greenbaum (aka Wiseman), and Bert Lee (later a founding member of the Central Park Sheiks ). Delany wrote

15367-572: Was located adjacent to Tompkins Square Park , located between 7th and 10th Streets from Avenue A to Avenue B, designated the same year. Though the park was not in the original Commissioners' Plan of 1811, part of the land from 7th to 10th Streets east of First Avenue had been set aside for a marketplace that was ultimately never built. Rowhouses up to three stories were built on the side streets by such developers as Elisha Peck and Anson Green Phelps ; Ephraim H. Wentworth ; and Christopher S. Hubbard and Henry H. Casey . Mansions were also built on

15494-513: Was published by Frederick Pohl in the February 1967 issue of Worlds of Tomorrow , and he placed three more in other magazines that year. In 1968, he published four more short stories (including " Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones ", winner of the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1970) and Nova . This was published by Doubleday , marking Delany's departure from Ace; it

15621-536: Was the most important influence upon literary criticism until the late eighteenth century. Lodovico Castelvetro was one of the most influential Renaissance critics who wrote commentaries on Aristotle's Poetics in 1570. The seventeenth-century witnessed the first full-fledged crisis in modernity of the core critical-aesthetic principles inherited from classical antiquity , such as proportion, harmony, unity, decorum , that had long governed, guaranteed, and stabilized Western thinking about artworks. Although Classicism

15748-567: Was the trilogy The Fall of the Towers , followed by The Ballad of Beta-2 and Babel-17 ; he described his writing in this period, and his marriage to Hacker, in his memoir The Motion of Light in Water . In 1966, while Hacker remained in New York, Delany took a five-month trip to France, England, Italy, Greece, and Turkey. During this period, he wrote The Einstein Intersection . He drew on these locales in several works, including Nova and

15875-617: Was to become one of "the two great avenues for elegant residences" in Manhattan, the other being Fifth Avenue . Two marble cemeteries were also built on the East Side: the New York City Marble Cemetery , built in 1831 on 2nd Street between First and Second Avenues, and the New York Marble Cemetery , built in 1830 within the backlots of the block to the west. Following the rapid growth of

16002-409: Was unpublishable at the time due to its transgressive content; it did not find print until 1995. Delany's eleventh novel, Dhalgren , was published in 1975 to both literary acclaim (from both inside and outside the science fiction community) and derision (mostly from within the community). It sold more than one million copies. After a lengthy exchange of letters with Leslie Fiedler , Delany returned to

16129-557: Was very far from spent as a cultural force, it was to be gradually challenged by a rival movement, namely Baroque, that favoured the transgressive and the extreme, without laying claim to the unity, harmony, or decorum that supposedly distinguished both nature and its greatest imitator, namely ancient art. The key concepts of the Baroque aesthetic, such as " conceit ' ( concetto ), " wit " ( acutezza , ingegno ), and " wonder " ( meraviglia ), were not fully developed in literary theory until

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