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How long does it take to read The Mad Man?

A Novel

Samuel R. Delany

The Mad Man by Samuel R. Delany takes about 9 hours 18 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 9 hours 18 minutes

A week or two of reading

First published 1994. 507 pages, about 139,425 words.

19 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 15 hours 30 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 9 hours 18 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 5 hours 49 minutes

The page count is the median across 6 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

For his thesis, graduate student John Marr researches the life and work of the brilliant Timothy Hasler--a philosopher whose career was cut tragically short over a decade earlier. Marr encounters numerous obstacles as other researchers turn up evidence of Hasler's personal life that is deemed simply too unpleasant and disillusioning for the rarified air of academe. On another front, Marr finds himself increasingly drawn toward more shocking, depraved sexual entanglements with the homeless men of his neighborhood, until it begins to seem that Hasler's death might hold some key to his own life as a gay man in the age of AIDS. As John Marr learns more about the enigma that was Timothy Hasler, his own increasing sexual debasement leads him to a point where his and the philosopher's lives collide violently...

Subjects: Fiction, erotica, general, Fiction, gay, Gay men, Gay men, fiction, Fiction, Fiction, lgbtq+, gay

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