The Mad Man - Major Themes

Major Themes

The Mad Man, spanning 501 pages in its first hardcover edition, is Delany's longest and most ambitious novel since Dhalgren (1975). As such, it combines a number of perspectives: a realistic portrayal of academic research, New York street life and both pre- and post-HIV gay activity, as well as explicit portrayals of fellatio, coprophilia, urophilia, and mysophilia. It also contains magic realist elements, such as the bull-like monster that appears in Marr's nightmares. Also, it employs autobiographical aspects distinctive to Delany's work, having to do with his more recent life as an academic. The relationship between the intellectual Marr and a street person, Leaky Sowps, mirrors those in many of his previous novels, as well as his real-life partnership of 17 years (as of 2007) with Dennis Rickett, formerly homeless for six years, before they met. Scenes in The Mad Man occur during "wet night" at the Mine Shaft, a gay bar that actually existed in New York's meat-packing district in the 'seventies and 'eighties, which actually held such a monthly event. Other scenes detail visits to the pornographic movie theaters in the 42nd Street area, where much gay activity occurred from the sixties until they were shut down in the mid-nineties. Marr writes letters to friends containing passages that are verbatim transcripts of actual letters Delany wrote at the time; some of the originals are collected in his 1984: Selected Letters (Voytant, 2000). As such, the novel has great value as a gay history of the passage between the seventies and nineties in New York, as well as portrayals of the complex and changing attitudes towards AIDS by sexually active gay men over those years.