She Said She Said
posted 8 February 06 by J.S. Vodalarius
I work the late shift at the library on Wednesdays, which is fortunate, because it gave me the chance to finish Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand, by Samuel R. Delany, in the humming silence of library night. Before it I read Heavenly Breakfast (which barely took me a day), and before that I read Triton. Breakfast was a somewhat pleasant interlude between two major items, and I have no patience with Bron Helstrom, the infuriating main character of the brilliant Triton, so I’m just going to talk about what I just finished.
It changed my brain. Which is to say, I read it and now my mind feels different, which is very cool but at the same time very disorienting. Mostly this was due to the use of language (because for me there were really only three men in the book – Marq Dyeth, Rat Korga, and Clym), but a lot of it also had to do with the idea of so many people, so many cultures, so many variations on motions and words and languages. Most disorienting, possibly, was the chaotic formal dinner at Dyethshome, but everything seemed very alien. Not a bad alien, though. A pleasant alien. A comfortable alien. And speaking of aliens, I liked the evelm a lot. I have this lovely picture of them as many-legged, many-tongued dragon types with purple scales and red underwings. And I liked the dragon hunt. It was overwhelming.
Coming off my crankiness at Bron Helstrom (of Triton), it was nice to read a book where I couldn’t sincerely dislike really anyone, except possibly George Thant, who just irritated me. I liked Small Maxa particularly, having as I do a mild weakness for albinos of any sort, and I think I may be in love with Rat Korga and his glorious glass eyes. I didn’t understand what people kept saying about him being unattractive. Sure, he had bad acne, but I just graduated from high school last year – acne’s not going to bother me. I didn’t have it, but I knew plenty of people who did. Sure, he bit his nails, but I do that too, sometimes, and he sounded very handsome with his height and his eyes and his wonderful large hands. Particularly his eyes. I read about them and wished I had a pair of my own, except that I’m deadly afraid of eye injuries and that’s the only way to get a pair, and besides, I don’t live in those worlds.
The language thing was very cool. Seeing everyone referred to as women, as “she,” it made Rat stand out. Rat was “he.” That meant something. Clym was also “he,” briefly, and I liked him, even though he wigged me out.
And oh, the words. Describing the words with my own words would not do justice to the beauty of what Delany has written. Reading them was like going up on a height and looking out at the stars. Oddly enough, in my favorite passage (in the epilogue, on a ship, looking out at a giant star while in conversation with some strange alien being), his words made me think of something I haven’t thought of for years. He describes the horizon fading off into a curving purple infinity (not his precise description: my words), and I remembered that two or three times, years ago, I looked up at the sky and it was purple. Not black or dark blue like the night, and not the heartbreaking deep blue of a really clear summer day, but purple, just for an instant. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that each time I saw this I was standing in cold pool water, but I like to think that momentarily I looked up through the blankets of atmosphere and almost saw the stars. (Also, once I saw something else beautiful in the sky, but that is for me, just as everyone sees shapes of their own in the clouds.)
Looking back I doubt that this coheres terribly well as a review. It is entirely emotional and personal, not at all objective, but it’s not like I ever aim at objectivity here. I just try to say what I feel, and what I feel, I suppose, is this: I just finished Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand, and it was glorious, and overwhelming, and dizzying, and beautiful.