How Does Samuel R. Delany Work?

As he proposes, all writing may, in one way or another, be an expression of desire. "I always assumed that probably Marx had some kind of fetish for workmen, which is why he wanted more of them in the world," he jokes. In his own case, that means that his personal fetishes--most famously, his attraction to men with heavily bitten nails--often find their way into his stories. "That's always what I wrote about," he says, claiming that the practice goes back to childhood. "I started by writing my masturbation fantasies down in a notebook."