First written thirty-five years ago and completed days before the Stonewall riots in New York, Hogg is one of America's most famous "unpublishable" novels. It recounts three horrifically violent days in 1969 in the life of truck driver and rapist-for-hire, Franklin Hargus. Narrated by his young accomplice, this novel portrays a descent into unimaginable depravity, a hell comprised of the filth and brutality civilization exists to forget. What transforms this nightmare into literature is Delany's refusal, faced with our moral anxieties, to mutilate his appalling creation. Hogg's monsters wear our faces, possessing the human complexities of intense loyalty, perverse admiration, and an integrity of pure that pity becomes betrayal. No reader can be prepared for such a story. It is a stunning achievement.
First written thirty-five years ago and completed days before the Stonewall riots in New York, Hogg is one of America's most famous "unpublishable" novels. It recounts three horrifically violent days in 1969 in the life of truck driver and rapist-for-hire, Franklin Hargus. Narrated by his young accomplice, this novel portrays a descent into unimaginable depravity, a hell comprised of the filth and brutality civilization exists to forget. What transforms this nightmare into literature is Delany's refusal, faced with our moral anxieties, to mutilate his appalling creation. Hogg's monsters wear our faces, possessing the human complexities of intense loyalty, perverse admiration, and an integrity of pure that pity becomes betrayal. No reader can be prepared for such a story. It is a stunning achievement.
