IIRC, the original question was something like, "Why did the students react
differently to the homoerotic elements in Poppy Z. Brite than to those in
Samuel Delaney?"
I would suggest that the main reasons may be found in the books themselves.
1)Brite gets much more explicit in her sex scenes than Delaney does in the
Neveryona books (The Delaney of _Hogg_ is a different matter).
2)Brite's writing often falls into the category of splatterpunk aka
deathporn. For example, her most recent book, _Exquisite Corpse_ combines a
gay love story set in New Orleans with a loving reimagining of the crimes of
Jeffrey Dahmer. This genre has some passionate fans, but a lot of people
don't care for it.
3)Delaney is by far the better writer (I don't think this is a controversial
opinion, but I'm sure I'll be proven wrong.) His worlds are more real, his
stories are more serious, and I care about his characters far more. I will
follow his narrative almost anywhere, even through hundreds of plotless pages
of _Dhalgren_ and the rapes and near-rapes that take place in that book.
I think these three aspects of the two books explain the difference in
reaction without much reference to the gender of the author (in fact, I think
Brite got some slack for being a female in the publication of _Corpse_.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:06:28 PDT