Customer Reviews

Dhalgren

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

I'm suprised that after reading all the other reviews, no one mentions how central race is to this book, especially given Delany's decision, as a black author, to deliberately write about the black characters from the perspective of an outsider.

There is a lot going on in the book, but for me, the central conceit seemed very clear (SPOILERS FOLLOW), although brilliantly unorthodox:

The disaster that creates Bellona (a post-apocalyptic city) is the coming together of two equal and opposite forces - a black man (George) and a white girl (not a woman-- June). Each has an stereotypical aspect: George is the sexually insatiatiable rampaging black rapist, June the helplessly vulnerable innocent white victim. But each has a more hidden aspect that runs counter-stereotype. George is a hero who saves children from a burning building, while June is a hypocrite who murders her own brother to cover over her appetites.

They come together in an act that appears to be rape, but which may actually be an piece of playacting created for the pleasure of the participants. This transgression is what warps time and space in Bellona, setting off a series of events in which a white sniper kills black children, the black residents riot and burn the city, anarchy sets in and people flee, armed gangs take over the streets, middle-class residents take refuge in fortresses of delusion, June stalks George in a combination of attraction and repulsion and the entire cycle repeats over and over, endlessly.

In this way the book is a psychological portrait, not only of the Kid --a racially and sexually ambigious artist --but also of the American city --a racially and sexually-obsessed powder keg --during a certain moment in history.

This book is not for the sqeamish. Stay away if you are (insert here) - phobic. Homo-phobic, eroto-phobic, claustra-phobic, agora-phobic, reviewa-phobic, editoria-phobic....

This book has a lot to say, if you've got the stomach for it, read this book. Just don't expect to understand it while you read it. Understanding only comes after finishing the book, reflecting on it, tripping on it, sleeping on it, then re-reading it only to discover you got it all wrong.

Don't expect to know what is going on all the time (or even most of the time). As in Catch-22, the scenes aren't always chronological, they are not organized by theme, nor will one necessarily explain the next. Consider: imagine yourself with several college buddies with one or two you knew from high school, and another you meet at work last month. Will the telling of tales be ordered - chronologically or thematically? Or will one tale remind one person of something which he blurts out and starts to tell, leaving someone else with a tale she was reminded of but will wait until she gets a chance to tell? Will the tale of the high school prom necessarily be told before the tale of the panty raid, or the party during finals week? Yet, once all the stories are told, the new guy still comes away with some understanding of who these people were, what they were like, and the kind of world they came from. Analogy over.

I would give this book 6 out of 5 stars if (I could). It is the experience of a lifetime. A completely self-contained universe that parallels ours closely enough to frighten. Other reviewers have compared it (both favorably and unfavorably) to Herbert's Dune. Themes of coping in hostile environments is the only similarity. Delany's world actively seeks to screw with the heads of the readers and the inhabitants alike.

In the opening pages, as the half-shod, half-barefoot drifter who comes to be known as Kid (he cannot remember his given name) approaches Bellona, he thinks, 'Very few suspect the existence of this city. It is as if not only the media but the laws of perspective themselves have redesigned knowledge and perception to pass it by. Rumor says there is practically no power there. Neither television cameras nor on-the-spot broadcasts function: that such a catastrophe as this should be opaque, and therefore dull, to the electric nation! It is a city of inner discordances and retinal distortions.'

The nature of the disaster that has crippled communication and stripped the city's population down to about a thousand is never articulated although there are intimations aplenty. Once inside, Kid discovers the city ... or whatever has wreaked devastation upon it--is capricious: a building in pristine condition might stand next to one tilted on its foundation and gutted by fire. During what is supposed to be day, the light is gray, the sky and the tops of buildings are hidden by cloud and by smoke that drifts lethargically like fine mist. Ensconced in a perpetual twilight, Bellona is evasive, presenting not the straight edges and clean lines of Euclidean geometry, but the hazy flux at the heart of quantum mechanics.

In a notebook that he picks up on his first night in Bellona, Kid (presumably) writes: 'There is no articulate resonance ... That is why I am hunting in these desiccated streets. The smoke hides the sky's variety, stains consciousness, covers the holocaust with something safe and insubstantial. It protects from greater flame. It indicates fire, but obscures the source.'

Delany's mostly abandoned, half-wrecked city is meticulously laid out, detailed down to the rivets holding up street signs ... hard to pin down Bellona may be, but arbitrary it is not. As Delany once explained in a long letter, 'Our landscape, entirely true for any urban environment ... is made up totally of emblems of former human actions. From the sky (overcast because of the industrial effect or the greenhouse phenomenon), to each tree or glass blade in the city parks (the trees are there because someone put them there, or because someone left them there while clearing away others), the landscape is a dense interlocked web of the detritus of haphazard human action and/or intentional human undertaking.'

By the time you get used to living in Bellona, to the two moons that appear in its sky, you are no longer the same person. Reverend Amy, the only church leader left in the city, states in one of her typically concept-loaded sermons, 'Oh my poor, inaccurate hands and eyes! Don't you know that once you have transgressed that boundary, every atom, the interior of every point of reality, has shifted its relation to every other you've left behind, shaken and jangled within the field of time, so that if you cross back, you return to a very different space than the one you left? You have crossed the river to come to this city? Do you really think you can cross back to world where a blue sky goes violet in the evening, buttered over with the light of a single, silver moon?'

'Dhalgren' is, along with William Gaddis's 'The Recognitions' and Julio Cortazar's 'Hopscotch,' one of the few contemporary works of genuine genius. I've read it three times now and yes, it literally changed my life ... I have never crossed back over. Needless to say, I can't recommend it highly enough. However, readers ... 'Dhalgren' fans especially---should also be aware of Delany's '1984', a collection of letters in which some fascinating details about the construction of 'Dhalgren' come to light ... locations in San Francisco and New York on which Delany based descriptions as well as answers to some of the numerous enigmas enshrouded in the narrative. Your bookshelf shouldn't be without either one.

I approached this book many times before I finished it-- at the ages of 13, 15, 17, and finally, 19. No book has done more to shape my perception of the way language can work in tandem with or independently of plot. Those who approach Dhalgren for the plot will be disappointed. Those who approach Dhalgren for a rollicking good science fiction tale will be disappointed. Those who approach Dhalgren with the idea that written language should be compact, linear, and stark against the page will be disappointed. However, those who come to this book with an open mind will never forget it. In this post-modern world, we as a culture have become obsessed with the idea of a central identity. As we begin to identify ourselves according to groups and relations, we lose that essential grasp on self-identity-- and that, I think, is the central struggle in Dhalgren. How do we find ourselves in a world that makes no sense? Following The Kidd is like following a road-map through the human psyche. Dreams and reality blend and coalesce to form the world The Kidd lives in. Delany, a master of the written word, combines narration, stream of consciousness, and some techniques that likely do not have a name in order to serve as our tour-guide through this realm. I came to Dhalgren expecting a good science fiction read-- I came away with brand new eyes through which to view literature. I recommend this book to anyone who loves a good story, who isn't afraid to think and imagine those details the author does not provide, and, perhaps most importantly, is in love with the language. For that is the true beauty of Dhalgren, sleeping inside the words and howling through the desert, screaming for a name.

In my humble opinion "Dhalgren" is one of the finest pieces of modern epic fiction ever written. I first read this work some 19 years ago, on a friend's referral (Hi "Punk", wherever you are, thanks again - God bless you), when I was an English major in college, and frankly it changed my life - it just shattered any previous concepts I had about the creative process of writing (& reading, for that matter). I have never read anything like it before or since - I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the prose - almost as though every page was a piece of stream-of-consciousness blank verse - soaked in super-real imagery the likes of which are simply mind-boggling. "Dhalgren" is a work that is steeped in questions - most of them left up to the reader's imagination - so if you're the type of reader who must leave "no stone unturned" in terms of resolving such enigmas, you'd probably be disappointed in this work. On the other hand, if you want to take your mind on a trip and simply wallow in some of the finest, most surrealistic imagery ever composed in the English language (not to mention some of the most iconoclastic writing techniques), then you would dig this book (if you're like me and are fascinated with words and their often beautiful, ominous and breath-taking capabilities, you will find this a great read). There are so many layers to this story, so many ways to appreciate this work, it is hard to encapsulate them all here. If I can formulate a fragment of an idea based on the title of the first chapter ("Prism, Mirror, Lens"), it is as though you are viewing this landscape - this forgotten city, wounded by some inexplicable catastrophy - through a prism, your vision being splintered into a dozen distorted views of the same thing -the fabric of time is in a constant state of flux, and, as in a dreamstate, you can not quite put your finger on the pulse of what is reality. It is almost as though, upon completion of the first reading, you can go back to this novel and re-read it (or portions thereof) completly out of sequence and gain further insight into its characters and events - the text itself seems to "work" completly out of sync with itself, if you will. All in all, a fantastic & thought-provoking journey, an enigma rooted in a not-too-far-out reality, a mind-game, a beautifully disturbing dream for the adventurous reader who might prefer something other than the standard "sci-fi" fare. I have often thought that David Lynch might be capable of making this into a film, and perhaps Brian Eno could score it, but this work is ultimately best left to blossom in the mind of the reader, for the rest of their lives (and it will, believe me).

It's hard to write a review for this book. The first time I read was like ten years ago. I was around 15 or 16. It looks intimidating. Thick, and as hard to get into as a bar on Sunset on Friday night.

I was an English major in college and I have never read anything like it. I've read it two or three times since then and I still don't get it all. Am I supposed to? I would love to meet Delany and ask him what it all means, but I'm sure he would say that would ruin the whole point.

One of the things that stands out most is the dialogue. It's amazingly written. Pick out any piece of dialogue (without the speaker's name) and anyone familiar with the text would know exactly who was speaking. That's very difficult to accomplish. His characters are so real, so convincing, it's seem like they are alive somethere, still living.

I think the loop of the beginning and end, "... to wound..." is one of the strengths of the novel. It's better to not know the answers. If everything was spelled out, what fun would that be? The ambiguity gives it depth and intrigue.

I think about aspects of this story with frightening regularity. Everytime I go under a street light, I think of Dhalgren. I swear one pulses and dies just because I am looking. Everytime I look at the moon, I think of George.

An interesting part sticks with me. I'll paraphrase: in a week, I can't remember five days. In a year, how many days will YOU never think of again. How true is that? Wow. What were you doing on Sep. 9th, 1994? If it's your B-day, anniversary, or whatever think of another date. How insignificant mundane, day-to-day things are in the grand sceme of time. Nothing matters, only hugely significant things are remembered or important. Delany goes into many other social, literary and cultural questions which would be too numberous to mention here. But they ALL matter to this book. Everything means something here and to cram in so many ideas and fit them together so well with such simple language is incredible.

What does it all mean? The red eye caps? The optic chains? The light projectors? The scratch on her leg? The notebook? Bill's name-is it William Dhalgren? I always thought that was Kid's name, because of the title. What year is it? What happened to the sun? Why can't he remember everything? Does Kid have multiple personalities? What's going on here?

I honestly don't know and really don't want to. It would spoil the wonder of it all. This novel is a remarkable peice of literature. It, along with The Lord of the Rings, has influenced me greatly. I know I might not have chosen to become a writer myself if it were not for this. To emulate and possibly achieve this level. If only I

SF in the 70's was characterized by Lifestyle SF (as termed by Brian Aldiss) as opposed to Hard scientific SF for example. Dhalgren was simply the best among the lifestyle genre. Samuel Delany's rendering of characters paints a large canvass full of subtle ambiguities and surreal landscapes of a ruined city, Bellona, that defies rationale but engages the reader's emotion, making him or her participate in its creation. It's a book about waking and dreaming, about counter culture society and about the possibilities of language and how you mold the world with it and vice versa. What strikes you most is the use of words and style to evoke nameless complex emotions. Let me give you an example, a passage in Dhalgren:

' How jealous I am of those I have known, afraid to sleep for dreaming. I fear those moments before sleep when words tear from the nervous matrix and like sparks, light what responses they may. That fragmented vision, seductive with joy and terror, robs rest of itself. Gratefully sunk in nightmare, where at least the anxious brain freed from knowing its own decay can flesh those skeletal epiphanies with visual or aural coherence, if not rationale: better those landscapes where terror is experienced as terror and rage as rage than this, where either is merely a pain in the gut or a throb above the eye, where a nerve spasm in the shin crumbles a city of bone, where a twitch in the eyelid detonates both the sun and the heart. ' (chapter 4, p. 342)

This passage typifies the book in general. A tour de force of visual and literary imagination that waxes poetic often in painfully unsettling and disturbing ways. Complex characterization, no plot apparently - but here lies it's strength for it is composed of layers upon layers of varied experiences, past and future mixing together, memory loss (the protagonist) and circularity, (the book's end is the beginning). Dhalgren belongs to the group of novels that typefies 20th century miasma like Joyce's Ulysses, Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow or Herbert's Dune. I've read the book 12 years ago and still Bellona's images visit my dreamscape from time to time. Dhalgren is a Masterpiece in any genre.

I am obsessed with Delany, and I probably always will be. I still bite my fingernails because of him. I first read Dhalgren at 19, while living in Philadelphia, living in a city for the first time, no plans, no goals, no ambitions. I was in my own Bellona, squatting with fellow scorpions, having the magical edges of my reality dictated to me by this incredible book. Dhalgren is real in a way that most of my life hasn't been, and when I feel nostalgia, what I miss is the psychotopographies of Bellona as laid out in Dhalgren. It is the greatest novel about a city ever written; any one of the Surrealists (Breton especially) would slit his throat to write a book half as good, but wouldn't have the balls to stomach the finished result. People who have not read Dhalgren are inferior to those of us who have, but there is a clear remedy for this. Read the book. And read Heavenly Breakfast too, so you can see where Delany first walked into Bellona.

Before there was Neuromancer and The Matrix there was Dhalgren. I've read the negative reviews on this site and I have to say that the people who were expecting the usual blithe, fluff and puff were of course disappointed and blamed the writer. But Dhalgren is so much more comprehensive than simply science fictional. It is a journey of self-discovery and quite possibly the best book I've ever read. It is so much more than what I can write here and is best left up to the reader to discover....

Before picking up this monster of a book, ask yourself, when almost everyone walks away from this book (Gibson included), and says that they're not sure they understood it or got it all, then how truly great can it be?

Because we're dealing with a famous book here. It could just be that there is nothing there to get. That is possibly the unsatisfying truth behind the various shadows and games that this book throws at the reader.

I enjoyed the creative "difference" of this book, but found myself sometimes flipping through sections where it just read about as interesting as what I did today. An author like Zelazny would be smart enough to make this book, he would also be smart enough to do it in less than 500 pages, instead of bloating close to 1000.

And the sex scenes... oh the sex scenes. I gritted my teeth through them so many times I have to go to the dentist. Mr. Delaney, we get it. Your character likes kinky sex with everything that moves, and possibly some things that do not. Half of them could have been stripped out and still it would have been like bashing the reader over the head with it.

I would get through a few more pages and then groan, right back to having sex.

That is my major criticism with this book. The prose is wonderful, but through major sections I felt like I was watching a juggler who was purposefully showing me how many balls he can keep in the air. Clever sentence follows clever sentence follows clever sentence. If I had written this for my English teacher, she would have bopped me on the head and said, "Yes, I know you are clever, you don't have to keep showing me."

And that in the end was how this book was for me. It is too much of some very good things. Because it plays the game of not telling you what anything is, and loading you down with a thousand unresolved little guessing games, it feels empty.

It's the diary of a guy who likes to suck and screw men women and children. It's the writing of a very smart man who is telling you with this book that he is a very smart man. I frankly find it long, drawn out and boring.

If he had been brave enough to cut out 40% of it, it would have made a better story. If he had been brave enough to drop some of his beautiful lines and language, the ebb and flow of his brilliance would bring it balance.

I don't listen to my music with the volume knob turned to 10, I don't drink from a firehose, and I don't drive at 200mph. And that's what reading this book is like. To me anyway.

I will take Hemingway over this any day of the week. As brilliant as Delany is, as "classic" as this book is, it missed greatness by being too much of everything.