Gone are the halcyon days Samuel R. Delaney writes of in his memoir, The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village, when his full-time but fairly relaxed (and low-paying) job as a Strand Bookstore clerk was enough to support him and his wife, poet Marilyn Hacker, in an East Village loft while they began their writing careers. True, the loft was cold and seedy, but who cared? They were young, passionate, and living in one of the most energetic and creative communities in the world.
That was way back in the 1960s. Since then, the price of urban real estate has skyrocketed and incomes (in real terms) have plummeted: this makes it much harder to live as an activist, artist or other ambitious dreamer.
