Elizabeth Hand: Icarus Descending

Flash forward to 1999, shortly after Black Light was published. I was visiting my folks in Pound Ridge when the phone rang: I picked it up and a voice asked, ‘Is this Elizabeth Hand?’ It turned out to be the guy who’d picked us up—he’d seen a copy of Black Light in his local bookstore and remembered my name (which was in the journal). And, when he went back and read the journal again (which he’d done back in 1976 as well—hey, I would have, too), he realized that some of the people and places I’d written about in the journal ended up in Black Light .”

Hand in proto-punk mode with some friends at their second New Year’s gathering at the Hotel Empire in New York City —at the time a “total dump” (just the way they liked it). Left to right: Michael, Oscar, Julie, Elizabeth, and Steve. Hand says: “The red blodge by my nose is actually my crimson fingernail and a cigarette. I was a chain smoker, also an early do-rag adapter. Oscar inspired Oliver in Waking the Moon; the book was dedicated to him.”

Hand in the early 1980s.

Hand read Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren when it first came out in 1975, and it was a huge influence on her early works, such as Winterlong . In spring 2012, Hand visited Washington, DC, and saw her dear friend Rafael Sa’adah, who had an amazing surprise in store: one of the original manuscripts of Dhalgren , which he’d acquired from a book dealer. Hand says, “Raf unwrapped it for the first time and we went through it page by page. Like entering a literary Tutankhamun’s tomb.” Hand took many photos of the text, including this shot of the novel’s epigraph, which she has always loved.

Thanks to my brother Brian, for the inspiration for Icarus. Also, profound thanks to Geoffrey Chester of the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, for his technical advice. Any errors of fact or judgment contained herein are, of course, the author’s.