Times Square Red, Times Square Blue

Hosted by Chris Piuma and Suzanne Conklin Akbari

Despite moments of infatuation on both sides, these were not love relationships. The few hustlers excepted, they were not business relationships. They were encounters whose most important aspect was that mutual pleasure was exchanged—an aspect that, yes, colored all other aspects, but that did not involve any sort of life commitment. Most were affable but brief because, beyond pleasure, these were people you had little in common with. Yet what greater field and force than pleasure can human beings share?

Times Square Red, Times Square Blue is a book that’s half memoir, half theoretical argument. It’s about Samuel R. Delany’s experiences in the adult theatres of New York City (which he often frequented, and which, as the book was written, were being torn down and replaced with the “family-friendly” version of Times Square we know today) and about the nature of contact in a vibrant city. It begins our cluster of books on sex with astonishing frankness, nuanced thought, and vast empathy—and it’s gorgeously written as well.

37. Times Square Red, Times Square Blue.

The Spouter-Inn Samuel R. Delany's memoir/theoretical tract about sex and the city. More episodes

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Show Notes.

Samuel R. Delany: Times Square Red, Times Square Blue. [Bookshop.]

Other books by Delany that we mention: Dhalgren; In Search of Silence: The Journals of Samuel R. Delany, Volume I, 1957-1969; Return to Nevèrÿon; The Motion of Light in Water; Heavenly Breakfast; Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders.

Jane Jacobs: The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

Our episodes on Middlemarch, A Moveable Feast, and Memory Serves.

Anne Carson: Nox.

Julia Kristeva: Stabat Mater. [JSTOR, paywalled, but you can see the layout of the first page, at least.]

Walter Benjamin: The Arcades Project.

Delany’s website has long included a robust page of errata he’s found in his books, which often get updated in reprints (though the page seems to be broken right now).

The Poetry Project has some videos of Delany talking about and reading from the 20th anniversary edition of the book.

Next: The Mahabharata. [Bookshop.]

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