And that’s five dimensions that you - and that’s kind of where we live, every moment that we live through is a combination of all of that. And it’s got a future and it’s got a past and it’s got possibilities of things that didn’t happen that might happen. Which is to say, it’s got dimensionality and depth and what have you. Language … is this … we live in a - three-, four-, possibly five-dimensional world. It’s because of the way that language itself works. So my question, really is about the dyslexia, but there’s a lot going on there and I just wondered if you could comment on why it was so easy in the psychiatric hospital to tell your story without including these fundamental things about you. And how many people whom I’d just met and who’d ask me ‘what do you do?,’ did I answer disingenuously, ‘Oh I type manuscripts for people.’” You could put together a whole book full of anecdotes about yourself without ever revealing you were dyslexic. “It was so simple to write about yourself, and just not to say you were black. “As I walked home, I thought about the hospital again” - this is described earlier in the “It was so easy to tell your story and not mention you were homosexual.” I assume he means to tell your story in the clinic. A video recording of the entire conversation can be viewed here.Īl FILREIS (begins by quoting Delany’s novel Dhalgren)

Regina Salmons has done the work of transcription. The discussion took place on February 16 that year. Delany was a Kelly Writers House Fellow in 2016.

Here is an excerpt from an seventy-minute interview/conversation with Samuel. Delany at the Kelly Writers House, February 2016

Dhalgren by samuel r delany