Phallos (novella)
OCLC 57233463 | |
Phallos (2004) is a novella by American writer Samuel R. Delany, published by Bamberger Books. It was reissued by Wesleyan University Press in 2013.
Phallos takes the form of a modern online essay recounting the history and giving a synopsis of a nonexistent novel also called Phallos, set in the
Plot summary
As does Delany's
Pederson goes on to synopsize Phallos — a pornograhic novella from which he omits the explicit sex but tells at least some of the plot; now and again, Pederson quotes from it, which gives the reader a sense of its style. That synopsis, along with the footnotes — some as extensive as five or six pages — provided by his friends, recent Ph.D.'s Binky and Phyllis, make up the novel within the novella, Phallos.
Fictional novel
Phallos proper begins with a Greek epigraph — the "Anaximander fragment," presumably the oldest piece of written Greek philosophy extant from the Ionian presocratics, dating from the last years of the 6th century BCE. This is glossed by a footnote from Binky, who, in four pages, gives his version of Nietzsche's, Hegel's, Heidegger's, and finally Sir Karl Popper's take on Anaximander, with a few potshots by Phyllis (virtually footnotes to the footnote).
Pederson reproduces Phallos’s whole first chapter. It serves as a prologue to the novel proper as well as to his own synopsis. Also, it introduces us to our narrator, Neoptolomus, the son of a gentleman farmer on the island of
After several years of the hero's wanderings, the novel's middle third finds Neoptolomus back in Rome. Once more he is working for his Roman patron, now as a broker of warehouse space in his patron's several Roman warehouses. After his early education in the sex life of the desert and the barbarian outlands, Neoptolomus finds himself sampling the intricacies of civilized urban sex — as well as negotiating the complexities that arise for him as a gay man trying to have friendships with — and work among — straight men. His several attempts to retrieve the phallos are shown, from Rome to Byzantium, back to Syracuse, and even to the volcanic slopes of Mount Etna. The central third include a drugged Walpurgisnacht among the volcanic peaks and the sad history of a Roman street boy, Maximin, who Neoptolomus wrongly decides is trying to steal from him, though in reality he has been the victim of one of Neoptolomus's jealous lovers.
In the final third, years later an older and wiser Neoptolomus returns to Hermopolis, where he meets a young black African, Nivek, sent to the Temple of the nameless god, much as Neoptolomus had been, also to acquire rights to the land across the Nile at Hir-wer — which, since Antinous's death, Hadrian has transformed into the city of Antinoöpolis, now a shrine to the memory of the emperor's late lover, who has officially been declared a god. Here history would seem to repeat itself, only Neoptolomus is in a different role from the one he occupied as a youth. Through this switch in position, Neoptolomus comes to understand a great deal about some of the mysteries around his earlier visit to Hermopolis.
Soon, under the pleasures of his committed life-partnership with Nivek, Neoptolomus gives up his search for the phallos. Because of his success both in business and in life — and because they know how much energy in the past Neoptolomus has put into searching for the phallos — many of the couple's friends, however, including a poet, a Christian priest, and a horse-loving adventurer, assume the two, now successful merchants on their own, have secretly found it. Their friends cleave to them in the hopes that they will learn more of the phallos and can perhaps share in its power.
Nivek and Neoptolomus run into problems holding their annual orgies in their own summer villa in the
Publication history
The original 2004 edition of Phallos was published by small press Bamberger Books. The 2013 "enhanced and revised edition," published by Wesleyan University Press, was edited by Robert Reid-Pharr and includes scholarly essays by the editor, Steven Shaviro, Kenneth James, and Darieck Scott.[1]
Reception
In Literary Hub, Ian Dreiblatt recommends Phallos on a list of modern fictional works on the ancient world, praising Delany's use of "polyphonic form to exhilarating effect, foreshortening the distances between ancient character and modern reader while meditating on pursuit, mystique, textuality, and, indeed, dick."[2]
Sources
- Brown, Charles N.; William G. Contento. "The Locus Index to Science Fiction (2005)". Retrieved 2008-01-01.
References
- ^ Porter, Lavelle (3 October 2013). "The Strange Career of Samuel R. Delany - The Advocate". The Advocate: Graduate Center, CUNY. CUNY Doctoral Students Council. Retrieved 22 August 2018.
- ^ Dreiblatt, Ian (2021-05-12). "Reimagining the Ancient World: A Reading List ‹ Literary Hub". Archived from the original on 2021-08-04. Retrieved 2021-08-04.