A somewhat confounding topic to me, mainly because it would take a lot of time to read widely and deeply. And many of these books and magazines exist only in paper, with very snall print. There criticism available, but a lot of it is dense and really requires having read the originals. You had to be there...
I have read around the edges of the scene all my life, having started reading science fiction when it was going strong but missing out on it because my tastes trended towards what Thomas Disch posted as the Golden Age: 12 yo.
By the time I got to more serious reading, it was mainly reprinted stories and discussions about past adventures, parsing in literary criticism outlets. I admit to being pretty obsessed with Cyberpunk in my ongoing reading. But I keep coming back to the New Wave writers - it's hard not to, if you're at all interested in 60s-80s LGBT/queer literature, since Delany, Russ, Tiptree, and the like were in the scrum with Disch and friends. And the classic 80s-90s writers were influenced by it, and homage and cite various authors and works.
A while ago, before the pandemic but probably after the Helsinki Worldcon - I'd have to look at old notebooks and let's just say that's a time trap - I read through much of the Minneapolis Public Library's holdings from Thomas M. Disch (not Tom Disch the poet so much). They had a pretty good collection at that point, before liquidating a lot of stuff and merging with the Hennepin County Library. (And getting rid of their standing book sale room - don't get me started... Though I'm thankful for the home space it and moving to ebooks for reading has saved over the years.)
So I read most of the major science fiction novels, and the whole Minnesota series, which is more horror / fantasy satire. They also had Disch's two big SF criticism books, which I remember taking a lot of notes on and think back on.
I thinking about Disch whenever people talk about "Queer SF" or whatever mental collectivity tends to be posited lately, because he tends to get left out, or mentioned in passing as a quaint artifact of the dim, dismal past.
Noone quite knows what to do with a suicide. Much less a curmudgeon who gets more bitter and narrow as they age. Highsmith somehow tends to get a pass, probably because her genre is mean and as much about antagonists and antiheroes as anything nice and proper. And because of The Price of Salt. But Disch was always fighting on the outskirts, tossing thought grenades. Apparently very nice and thoughtful IRL, and email, but corrosive and incisive as a critical presence and responder to The Conversation.
But I've always found myself drawn to The Difficult Ones, as I tend to think of the list of writers I come back to again and again. The bitter, cutting, dissatisfied, angry, hurtful and hurting in return. Murderous and hateful. Because of how deep and far the authors pushed, for whatever deep-seated reasons. I love a good Delany or [insert lauded author here] story, novel, and critical work, for the depth and skill. Yet something is missing in most of the more popular stuff for me. The way I go back to horror to leaven fantasy, or to Gregg Araki, Capote, and High Art to balance out newer queer treacle.
The Minnesota series is very mean, gross, over the top, and ridiculously blasphemous to the point it's almost embarrassing to read. Yet it was kind of comforting as a MN transplant to read - I'm not the only one who's thought these things about this place and its people... And Disch really went for the gusto in terms of doing something with a novel that wasn't just the usual pap. You done realize how polite, avoidant, and internally self-congratulatory the whole sff scene often is unless you sit on the sidelines of a con where you don't know many people and watch the dance with a skeptical eye, or read something that doesn't play that game.
There's something in the Minnesota series that ours the lie to all the talk about how high flying the field is at the moment. There's a lot of fresh exciting stuff, heirs of Le Guin, a few of Delany, many of the more mainstream names, some people who would like to be thought of as heiresses of Russ (a real 'watch what you wish for,' and frankly, I don't see the right combination of brightly burning anger, complex narrative structure, and layers in anything current to grant that title). But where Disch's spawn would rip a hole for themselves in the tent... the fabric is pretty smooth and shiny.
I guess I want to think about what we don't talk about, or respect, about the history and past of the field that leads to not talking about Disch. And what about the work itself makes it hard to read and grapple with, beyond the obvious biographical details of the author late in life. My Uncle the Author/ Activist was a similarly difficult and confounding figure, with complex views and two very different sides, close friends and bitter critics. Since his death, and the more recent suicide of an older cousin, and learning more about my own biological inheritance, I think a lot about the obsessives, depressives, the people who veered off into chemical imbalance and psychosis, and those who skirted the edge but held it together until the end. They're family, and familiar, to me.
(I'll get to rereading Tiptree. I wrote a lot on a piece about Tiptree and more, Raccoona Sheldon as mask for a certain subset of no-longer-quite-Tiptree stories. Before hitting a wall with the analysis. And have written about grappling with the contradictions of past lesbian literature figures more generally - hard to name anyone from before the 1970s who gets all perfect marks... But for now, I'm going to start with Disch. And then probably Russ. I bought Farah Mendelsohn's Russ critical anthology to read first, and have been reading recent articles that followed the publishing of the new collection on the web.)
In thinking about Disch, I'm going to try to delve deeper into the New Wave generally. It's a real gap in my knowledge of the field and its internal battles and conversations. And think again about his particular criticisms of the field as profession, the lliterature, and individual stories/novels.
At the moment, I'm currently about 100 pages into On Wings of Song, the core catalog/canon novel I haven't read before. It's more intriguing and odd than I figured, from what people say about it. There is some real old-fashioned joy of reading strange literature to be found in it, like the Minnesota series (this is more the Iowa series, the earliest influence). It's also serving up some strong 70s nostalgia, despite being about the future. I'm eager to see how it unfolds. More later. -p
