Among many cultural events of the decade that he witnessed, Delany recounts his attendance at the first New York City performance of the artist Allan Kaprow's 18 Happenings in 6 Parts, the 1959 performance piece that, for many, marked the end of modernism and the beginning of postmodernism.[1] In section 17.4 of the University of Minnesota Press edition, he describes the event and its venue, and speculates on its artistic significance.[2] The introduction puts an emphasis on the idea of the unreliable narrator; Delany's accounts often contrast his life as it "felt" to ways in which it actually occurred.
Hazel Carby called it one of two contemporary autobiographies that are "absolutely central to any consideration of black manhood" (the other being that of Miles Davis).[4]
In the chapter, "The Future Is in the Present" of the book Cruising Utopia by José Esteban Munoz, Delany's The Motion of Light in the Water serves to explain how the future, as a form of utopia, can be "glimpsed" in the present through what Delany employed as "the massed bodies" of sexual dissidence.[5]
Masha Gessen in O, The Oprah Magazine selected this title as a pick for the "Best LGBTQ Books of All Time", describing it as "a textbook in observing the self, thinking about sex and love, and the best writing manual I know".[6]
The first edition is subtitled "1957–1965", the revised 1993 edition is subtitled "1960–1965".
References
^"Many times now Kaprow's piece (today we would call it 'performance art') has been cited by art historians as the (equally arbitrary) transition between the modern and the postmodern in cultural developments" (Delany, Samuel R. (1988), The Motion of Light in Water (1st ed.), New York: Arbor House, p. 110, ISBN0877959471).
