![]() ![]() While it deliberately does not intend to ape its ancestor, having different goals in mind, it shares a spiritual kinship with that illustrious forerunner. I am chuffed to report that Blackfish City is a worthy descendant of Dhalgren. In line with this aesthetic prejudice, when I opened Sam Miller’s first book for a non-YA audience (his actual debut novel was The Art of Starving from 2017) and saw the lines from Delany’s masterpiece–a little passage relating to the nature of Bellona, that surreal, gritty city of Delany’s imagination–I was keen to learn if Miller’s own book had the same kind of emotional resonance, conceptual inventiveness and intellectual heft as Dhalgren. Of course, this trick does not work if there is a huge dissonance between epigram and text regarding quality and goals, so be careful! ![]() Not only will I instantly respect your taste and cultural leanings, but I will be excited to see if your own book can possibly be worthy of bearing such an imprimatur. I’m going to confess to an idiosyncratic critical weakness: if you want me to be immediately predisposed towards your novel, preface it with an epigram from Dhalgren. ![]()
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