Day Nine - Saturday (March 15)

Entre enfer et paradis, Malcolm Lowry à Vancouver

Director: Anne Worrall

Canada/2007/27 min/French

Lowry ended up in Vancouver in the late 1940’s, far from his overbearing father, after having fled Mexico and a failed marriage, and not being allowed into the U.S. because he was drunk at the border. Detesting the provincial British life of Vancouver, he bought a squatter’s shack a few miles outside of town, on the river, and moved in with his soon to be 2nd wife, and it is there that he wrote most of the only novel published while he was alive, Under The Volcano, considered one of the big novels of the 20th century. Extracts from the novel and other works, and first hand accounts from friends and neighbours (Earle Birney, the Canadian poet, among them) illustrate his loathing of crowds, city life, and society, and desire for simplicity, nature, and solitude.



The Polymath, or the Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman

Director: Fred Barney Taylor

United States/2007/75 min/English

As the director said in his pre-screening presentation, having made a documentary on New York City writers for the Discovery Channel and having met Chip Delany, as he is known, he realized that there was a lot more tto showcase than just twenty minutes censored by a “family” language restriction. Using Lawrence Sterne’s Tristan Shandy as a framework for the biography, Taylor lets Delany tell his own story. And what a story it is, and he does tell it, just about non-stop. And as to signal that this is most certainly not a “family” discourse (but one of the Sign, a small inside reference for fans of Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand), it starts with Delany outlining a typical day working on his writing for 8 to 10 hours, with regular sojourns outside to burn off the creative anxiety with some sexual release with a multitude of men. For those not familiar with Delany’s reputation as a science fiction writer, he had published five novels before he was 22. A giant of the New Wave period of the 1960’s and 70’s, with Dhalgren, Nova, the Einstein Intersection, and the Return to Nevèrÿon series being just a few examples of his prolific output, he’s continued with many other fiction and non-fiction works since. A university professor teaching literature and creative writing for almost twenty years, he’s a hyper- intelligent, intellectual, queer, sexual, black, speculative and literary writer, although all of these labels barely begin to inform the fullness of the man’s enormous abilities and interests. Echoes that came to mind were My Dinner with Andre, with Delany playing both roles, his own story poured into the mold of Spalding Gray's monologues. Taylor worked in some sequences from Atlantis, his 2006 film study of New York's bridges, to good effect. I had the privilege of meeting Professor Delany when he spoke to our Utopia, Dystopia and Anti-Dystopia literature class at Concordia University in the late 1980’s, the night before he gave the annual Lahey Lecture. However, I did not have sex with him. For those who want a good primer on Delany, by Delany, this documentary delivers aplenty.