"I hope ... to sketch, as honestly and as effectively as I can, something I can recognize as my own, aware as I do so that even as I work after honesty and accuracy, memory will make this only one possible fiction among the myriad--many in open conflict--anyone might write of any of us, as convinced as any other that what he or she wrote was the truth." [15-16]

Incredible.  Samuel R. Delany's The Motion of Light in Water is both a self-reflexive account of one young author's early forays into science fiction writing and an exploration of gay working class life + the artistic milieus of early 1960s New York City.  I'd had this book on my 'to read' list for a long time, having enjoyed some of Delaney's fiction; attending an online interview with him recently moved it straight to the top of that list.  Delaney is a fantastic SF writer, and a fantastic memoirist too -- here, in short numbered fragments, he offers glimpses, many intensely personal and detailed, into his experiences; the result is definitely not always easy to read, but it is an important account particularly of pre-Stonewall queer life and culture.