PDF Times Square Red; Times Square Blue by Samuel R. Delany in History

Review

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. A Personal Times SquareBy JAKSamuel Delany is best known as the author of science fiction novels such as Dhalgren. He is also the author of a brilliant memoir ; The Motion of Light in Water.This book is ostensibly about the transformation of Times Square but it's also an extension and updating of Delany's memoir. Delany is not a disinterested observer.He's a participant in the activities he describes.That gives the book a power it would otherwise lack.Delany's focus is narrow. He is not writing so much about Times Square as he is about what I'll call "Porn World".That is the pornographic movie theaters;sex emporiums and bars that served the patrons of these places.The HQ of this Porn World is Times Square but its substation was around 3rd Ave and 14th St.(If you never saw it in the flesh ; you may have seen it in Taxi Driver).Delany a brilliant highly educated intellectual; apparently loved these places.They were always doomed.There was no way the powers that be were going to allow Times Square a transportation hub and the nations premiere theater district to forever remain the domain of Jack The Stripper and Teenage Nurses.As for 14th St; once the East Village became hip and trendy and NYU needed land; that was it for the unusual forms of entertainment that thrived on the east side(along with a very low life drug culture).The book is made up of two essays .I enjoyed the first one more.It's basically a collection of musings and observations; usually interesting ; sometimes funny.The second essay put me off at first.It is "theoretical ". However I had a slightly revelatory experience after I started reading it.I was looking at THE SPECTATOR and I came across an article where the author talked about meeting a former manager of Roxy Music and later one of the Sex Pistols through drinking in pubs.I said to myself; an example of contact rather than networking.In otherwords I picked up on a key concept from Delany and used it without even thinking about it .So what at first stuck me as an utterly abstruse essay turned out to be analytically useful.You could probably dismiss Delany as crazed and weird and maybe you'd be right but mixed in with the craziness is considerable wisdom.4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. Delany on the BrainBy Peter ChiykowskiDelany manages to weave together the genres of personal memoir and political essay in both "Times Square Red" and "Times Square Blue;" two pieces of writing that together offer a unique and compelling dialogue on the sexual culture of New York in the Times Square area before its gentrification.The material gets explicit about Delany's sexual encounters; so be prepared to read some graphically described scenes.26 of 27 people found the following review helpful. Wounding the autumnal cityBy Phelps GatesChip Delany; the writer/critic with the eight-inch... beard; has done it again. Two books in one; and both will give you lots to think about.The first ("warm") half is an account of the now-vanished culture of random sexual encounters that once flourished in the Times Square area; especially in the porno theaters: alternately funny and tragic; and quite authentic; as I can attest from my own visits to the Adonis in ancient times.The second ("cool") half is (indirectly) on the same subject: it's an essay dealing with the difference between "contact" and "networking" (I won't try to explain... read the book). Even though it never mentions the Internet by name; it says a lot about what the Internet is about; and what it's doing to us.