If you are a science fiction fan or like to browse in bookstores, you probably know his name. His novels have been critically acclaimed and award-winning. And if you lived in New York City’s East Village in the early ‘60s, you may have had a close encounter with him (his energetic sexual adventure at its peak included about 100 partners a week). You may have taken one of his college courses in Amherst, Buffalo, or Philadelphia, where he is still a professor.
This experimental, imagistic documentary is the captivating chronicle of Samuel R. Delany. The grandson of a slave, he grew up in Harlem above a funeral parlor and was a published author by age 20. A prolific writer, literary and social critic, gay activist, scholar, straight talker, and raconteur, the world has been a more colorful place because of his many novels, short stories, anthologies, literary criticisms, and memoirs.
THE POLYMATH touches on the sexual revolution, porn, and scholarship, using home movies of Delany’s middle-class Harlem childhood and a crazy art film he directed in the early ’70s. Age 64 at the time of the film’s making, Delany resembles an African-American Walt Whitman: still energetic, opinionated, and endlessly fascinating.
people who liked this also liked
people who added this also added
834 people viewed this page
Like it? Share it with friends
