Conference noted::sf

Don't bother.  It doesn't get any better.  The more you read, the less story
you'll find.  I tried to read Dhalgren several years ago, and ended up actually
throwing the book away.  (It wasn't worth giving to someone.)  I've read a
couple of other Delany books (whose titles escape me at the moment) that weren't
too bad, though.  Perhaps Delaney was trying to make a statement with this book.
(Whatever it was, he could have used ~500 fewer pages.)

							/mark sornson

Dhalgren is one of the few books I never finished. I just couldn't find it 
in myself to read the last 150 pages. I kept hoping for something to 
happen, but -- nothing.

I much preferred Delaney's "Babel-17".

					andrew

I finished it, and I was quite surprised(?) disappointed(?) shocked(?)
<don't really know what word to use; the rest of the book kind of numbs
you to some extent> at the lack of conclusion.
A "hard sf" writer like Clarke, Niven, Hogan, wouldn't get a way with
so little explanation about the condition of the city.
Delany didn't even resort to deus ex machina, he just ignored any resolution
at all.  
I can't say I'm glad I read it, but the experience it represented has had some
effect (the foremost effect is that I'll be VERY careful when I pick up
another Delaney; the last previous Delany I had read was Triton, which has
essentially the same lack of resolution, leaving depressed, depraved
characters hanging off the edge - two in row was too much).
I ocassionally find myself thinking about the book, not so much to think
about what did Delaney mean, but what could he have possibly have meant?

It's a high effort book to read, long and with those parallel journal tracks.
It's a low reward book if you're looking for SCIENCE fiction, but a real
thought provoker.  Go in with the right expectations, and some might 
even call it a "tour de force."

- tom]

While  it  took  me  about three tries to get started on DHALGREN, I finally
read the entire book once I managed to get past the first 50 pages or so. It
seemed  to  me that the book as a whole was not really successful and really
lacked a substantial plot, the writing was quite powerful. I was glad I read
DHALGREN,  and  probably  consider it Delany's best writing to date, but not
his most successful book considered as a whole. DHALGREN was the first novel
Delany  published  after  a gap of 3-4 years and struck me as a book written
to get something out of his system or resolve some point in his mind.

TRITON  appeared  relatively  shortly after DHALGREN, and while sharing some
similarities  in  style  with  it,  is  much less powerful but has a better
developed  plot.  TRITON  is  intended as an allegory for the development of
Science  Fiction from the hard science, adventure tales of the 30's and 40's
to  the  New Wave experiments of the 60's, and its final conclusion seems to
be  that  neither was truly successful, which should perhaps be taken as the
author's own opinion on the subject.

Delany's writings since DHALGREN and TRITON, NEVARYON TALES and NEVARYONIA
(I'm not sure on the spelling) seem a bit more "tame" in style and closer to
his   older  writings  (pre-DHALGREN),  but  still  don't  necessarily  feel
obligated to provide a fully developed and resolved plot.

As  far as finishing DHALGREN goes, my recommendation is to do so if you are
enjoying  the writing, and not to do so if what you are primarily interested
in is plot or character resolution.

							Rod Burr
 

Thanks to all who replied.  I also got a phone call from an old friend I hadn't
talked to in a few years - that was great!

I've put the book back on the shelf.  The next book is John Brunner's _Stand
on Zanzibar_...

Jim Stratton

Its a late answer; I agree with all the above. I read it maybe
10 years ago and failed to understand it, but images from it
often come back to me. So I say that it is worthwhile, although
I will have trouble ever starting another Delany book.
Matt

This is the first note on Delany I found so I'm moving a rathole from 236
here.

'Empire Star' was very normal for the first three quarters.  Then Delany
takes half a bottle of quaaludes, or the top of his paper curls over and
feeds back into his typewriter, or both, and the last section is a bunch
of half-sentences that don't make much sense, except perhaps in a semiotic
kind of way.  

'Nova' had a plot all the way through.  It had a lot of subplots, but it
did have a plot.  I agree with you about his ideas though, particularly the
one about plugging in to machines to make them work.  That's the kind of
thing that keeps me reading him.

If you quit 50 pages into 'Triton' you got the good part.  Delaney keeps
getting this notion that he should be 'relevant' or something, which causes
his worst disasters.

	HRB

    
    I know this a _real_ late reply to this note, but I just signed
    in to this conference.  And Delany is my *FAVORITE* SF author, so...
    
    I have to disagree about Dhalgren, naturally.  I picked it up and
    read it in a day. (Needless to say, I didn't do much else that day.)
    I really enjoyed it, but I guess I can understand why most people
    didn't like it.  Delany is a linguist, a post-structuralist to be
    precise.  His works tend to reflect his latest meanderings in
    linguistics.  If you are looking for traditional science fiction,
    you will not find it in any of Delany's work.  If you are looking
    for nifty endings, you will not find them.  Delany's novels do not
    have endings.  That's right, none.  That is part of the point of
    his writing style; the stories are for the telling of stories, not
    for the fabrications of pat endings.  Dhalgren (for those of you
    who didn't make it to the end) not only did not end, but the last
    chapter cycled right around to the beginning of the book (it was
    *nearly* identical to the first chapter...)!  James Joyce used the
    same technique for the beginning/ending of Ulysses.
    
    If you enjoy experimental writing styles, heavy symbolism, and prose
    that borders on poetry, AND are not angered by stories that have
    no endings (and what stories in real life actually end?) then give
    Dhalgren a try.  
    
    Rita
    
     

re: .8  (cyclical books)
>  *nearly* identical to the first chapter...)!  James Joyce used the
>  same technique for the beginning/ending of Ulysses.

Hmm...wasn't that "Finnegans Wake"?  (i had to cheat and read the
last page on that one--"Ulysses" i remember as readable by comparison)

There are a couple of science fiction/fantasy books that use the same
technique.  Seems to me "Silverlock" sort of fit that class.  Then
there are "helical" ones (time/dimensional travel involved) where the
protagonist ends up becoming a character he/she met on page 1.

The (old) New Wave author Robbe-Grillet had a book called "Maison de
Rendezvous" where scenes kept dissolving into other (archetypal?) scenes
that had already taken place one or more times.  The effect was kind of
like being stuck in one of those dreams you keep thinking you woke up
from but didn't.

(But my favorite Delany was "Jewels of Aptor", so whaddo i know?)

    Ahhh; I see.  Like Comet Jo...
    
    						Don

    re: .10
    
    Now THAT was an obscure reference ... or did you realize you were
    making it?
    
    (Triton had an ending, too)
    
    Dave W.

    I just finished The Einstein Intersection, the first book I have ever
    read by Delany.  All I can say is "Wow!".  He certainly does have a way
    with words, and he is probably the first storyteller (in the true sense
    of the word) that made me think.  I missed out on some of his
    references (mostly the modern day ones, my mythology is pretty good).
    I'm going to try to look up a couple of his other works. 

    Re: .11
    
    Of course.  Most meaning for minimum words.
    
    Re: .12
    
    If you start reading Delany, THE EINSTEIN INTERSECTION is a good
    one to start with.  (NOVA, incidentally, is better off read as the
    short story "House Afire".)                          
    
    						Don

    
    re. 8
    
    (gulp) you're absolutely right - it was Finnegan's Wake.
    
    I haven't read either Silverlock or Robbe-Grillet's "Maison de
    Rendezvous, but I will now!  Thanks for the pointers!
    
    As for some of Delany's works having endings, I will go (when I
    get some time to do it) and look up the ones that were mentioned,
    and see why it was that I felt they didn't end.  (I do remember
    thinking that at the time.)  Will let you know what I conclude;
    it's been a while since I read them.
    
    re: Jewels of Aptor:  I liked that, too.  The first Delany I read
    was Neveryona.  I liked it very much, and went back and read all
    of Delany's work in the order that he wrote them, starting with
    the trilogy that contains Jewels of Aptor.  If you like SRD and
    have a few weeks to spare, this is a nifty way to read him.  The
    development of his writing style over time becomes pretty clear,
    and makes the later, more obscure books much easier to understand.
    
    Rita
    
    

I only recently started reading this NOTES file. This is a pretty old 
note, but I can't resist adding one more downwardly directed digit 
(thumb) on the subject of Dhalgren. I couldn't finish it. It 
im(de?)pressed me as someone's drug-induced pretensions to literature, 
and presumably the publisher was smoking the same brand of weed.

My wife, Ruth, managed to plow through to the end. She still can't 
figure out why she bothered...

Otherwise, Delaney could be great. I'll never know. After Dhalgren, I 
have no desire whatsoever to pick up anything else by him.

- Richard

    Some earlier Delaney is very different albeit still spacey.  I enjoyed
    The Jewels of Aptor and The Einstein Intersection.
    
    len.
    

    Not to mention NOVA (a stretched out "House Afire), EMPIRE STAR,
    and THE FALL OF THE TOWERS trilogy.
    
    				      		Don

    	I must give the thumbs up....yes, I "plowed" through Dhalgren,
    not once, but three times in the last eight years.
            
    	It is not a book that can be ripped to pieces in a high school
    grammar class, but more of an exploration into experimental literature.
    Ithink he did a fine job at what he was trying to create; a piece
    of life on paper.
    
    	A note for those who wish to read it, pick it up, and read it.
    Don't put it down. When you are finished you will either hate it
    or you will have lived somewhere else for several hours (days).
    
    Try it - you may like it, and thats what counts....Charlie
    

    I've heard all kinds of theories on _Dhalgren_ - my pet one ties
    into the obvious interest Delany has in the literary philosphers
    who've come outa that wacky France in the last 20 years.
    
    _Dhalgren_ is science fiction about the science of fiction -
    the Kid is kicked around by being stuck into the (then most current)
    limits of critical speculation the same way that space travellers
    are kicked around by the latest speculations on physics.  Barthes
    and Derrida love to focus in on the tears inherent in the most
    carefully structured of texts - Barthes, in particular, points out
    the fascination of the "unnatural" peaks in "naturalistic" fiction.

    Bellona is a fictional city which suffers from the combined ills 
    and thrills of a '70s city, a hippy wetdream, and the fact that
    it only exists in a book.  The fact that the Kid only lives within
    a text explains most of his problems - unless you go down to the
    Robbe-Grillet level, a novel has to skip over _some_ time _somewhere_
    (the Kid's memory gaps); a novel has to be given structure (the
    itchy feeling of being controlled and deja vu); a Delany novel has
    to have certain signatures (the inadequately explained one bare
    foot, the move from artist to criminal)...
    
    The trouble sf readers have with Delany is not recognizing the s, I
    think. 

    I read this about 5 years ago, after listening to 2 co-workers argue
    over whether it was the worst or best book ever written.  I did finish
    it, and found it interesting, but I think I would've hated it if I
    hadn't been warned that it had no resolution/explanation.

    I find it interesting that I kept waffling between trying to figure out
    a coherent explanation and being sure there couldn't be one.  This book
    pushed me to examine the lines between reality, fantasy, and nonsense.

    Very surrealistic.

    I just finished reading Dhalgren, so I picked up this conference
    to see if I had missed something.  Apparently not - the consensus
    seems to be that you either loved it or hated it, and don't ask
    why.  I'm not sure if I'm disappointed or relieved about that; it
    was a lot of pages to plow through to end up nowhere.
    
    The only other Delany books I'd read prior to this were Nova (which
    I thought was great) and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand
    (which didn't have an ending but promised a sequel which doesn't
    seem to have materialized).  I thought reading an earlier Delany
    book would help me to figure out WHAT HAPPENED between Nova and
    Stars in My Pocket (they could have been written by two different
    people) but obviously Dhalgren was the wrong one to choose.
    
    The idea of reading all the Delany novels in the order they were
    written sounds good in theory, but after reading Dhalgren I have
    neither the enery nor the patience.  Aside from feeling like it
    was a colossal waste of time, I keep asking myself, "Why did he
    name it that?"
    
    Virginia
    

    The fastest way to find out "WHAT HAPPENED" is Delany's short story
    collection, _Driftglass_, whose first story is reminiscent of books
    like _Babel-17_ and _The Einstein Intersection_ and whose last story
    gets you into _Dhalgren_ / _Tides of Lust_ territory.
    
    Delany never wrote other sf like _Dhalgren_ - I guess he figured
    that at that length, he must've said what he wanted to with it.
    If you liked _Stars up my Nose Like..._, you might want to look
    up _Triton_.  Otherwise, stick to the '60s work.
    
    As far as _Dhalgren_ itself goes - with something that long, one does
    develop strong feelings. I wouldn't have done all the analytical work I
    do on it if it hadn't grabbed me, put me into its world, made me
    believe it, and even made me like it. If it left you cold, then further
    discussion is like a Republican presidential candidates' debate would
    be for me. 
    
    If it didn't, I'd be glad to pontificate some more...  8 >, 

    Re: -1
    
    I can't actually say that I LIKED Stars in my pocket, but I thought
    it was an interesting theory - if you can separate sex from gender,
    then what we consider deviations become the norm.  I wanted to read
    the sequel because I wanted to see where Delany took it (although
    after reading this and the Delany conference, I'm beginning to suspect
    that he's not going to take it anywhere).
    
    The problem I have with Dhalgren is that I don't know what to make
    of it.  I'm baffled, but I suspect that's the intent of the book.
    Is Bellona a post-nuclear city?  Or is it a drug induced fantasy?
    Does the end take you back to the beginning, or just back into the
    middle of "A Plague Journal"?  Having never read any of the French
    philosophers you refer to, I can't make any comparison there.
    
    I don't know if I even want to commit myself to saying I liked
    Dhalgren, but I didn't throw it in the trash when I finished it
    so that says something for it.  Or my reaction to it, anyway - I
    still feel like there was something there that I should have seen
    but I missed it somewhere along the line (maybe that was intent,
    too?)

    Pontification warning:
    
    As a Delany watcher from some time back, I'm pretty sure he'll
    eventually finish "Stars in My Spinach Like...".  Me and my girlfriend
    have been on the edge of our seats for a coupla years now, so you
    have to excuse me if I joke about it.
    
    I was baffled by _Dhalgren_ too - that's why I re-read it so much.
    And I've never felt ripped off by the re-reading.  That puts it
    in the class of littrachoor, like James Joyce, William Carlos Williams,
    Flaubert, Spenser, Hammett, Chandler, Russ...
    
    Bellona is a BIG city.  It is the end of the '60s commune dream,
    the fulfilment of the same, the way life looks to a dyslexic, the
    way cities look to an outsider, the way books work on characters,
    the way SF looks at cities, and we could go on.
    
    I'd say that it helps to know Delany's other books, but _Dhalgren_
    is largely responsible for how closely I've read Delany's other
    books, so that's not sufficient.
    
    I'll just make some notes on the twist at the end -
    
    A lot of people have pointed out that the book begins in the middle
    of the sentence and ends in the middle of a sentence.  A word repeats,
    but the Kid stutters when he gets excited, so that's OK for looping.
    As you noticed, the journal has multiple disconnections and loops
    as well.  Things are more complicated than a simple circle, though
    - for 878 pages you should at least get a Moebius strip.
    
    1)  The Kid enters the bridge, meets a girl gang, picks up his orchid,
    hears about the leader's art being destroyed
    
    2)  The Kid becomes an artist, meets a famous artist visitor, goes
    through a breakdown, and attempts to leave over the bridge
    
    3)  The Kid returns from the bridge, becomes a thief-adventurer,
    heads a commune, meets a famous adventurer
    
    4)  The Kid leaves across the bridge, passes his orchid to a woman
    who meets a boy gang and hears about his art being destroyed.
    
    There is also miscellaneous gossip about a woman sculptor of lions
    who (on the side) heads up the chief womans-only commune in Bellona,
    with similar ambiguity about when she stopped being an artist and
    became a gang leader.
    
    Personally, I think that the Kid leaves the city not to return
    immediately but to meet the incoming woman much as a woman met him.
    
    If you've read this far, I might as well do a one-sentence summary
    of modern French philosphy 8 >) - the important stuff in literature
    is the stuff that sneaks through the cracks.  The harder the writer
    works to control the material, the more interesting the cracks are.

    I read Dhalgren in, let me see, 1981.   I thought it was the best
    Delany book I had read, and I loved them all.   See, I had discovered
    him late, in 1978, and hadn't read them in chronological order (Triton
    was the first I tackled).   So I wasn't thrown by it, the way I
    might have been if I'd just read the early stuff.
    
    What has always given me a charge in Delany, is the intensity with
    which his precocious characters live their exotic lives, the
    intelligence they bring to bear on whatever confronts them, and
    the evident interest Delany has in words and language.   At the
    time, though, I didn't understand any of the meta-linguistic games that
    Delany was playing, that Ray Davis has ably sketched out in a couple
    of earlier replies.
    
    But if you read Ray's replies, you might get the idea that Delany
    is an austere, intellectual writer- not so.   He has a big emotional
    investment in many of the characters he builds: especially the
    archetypes that crop up time and again.   And Dhalgren, a fantasization
    of commune life as described in Heavenly Breakfast, seems to me
    to be the most personal of his books.
    
    However, the structuralist side of Delany appeared to me when I
    read Tales of Neveryon.   Now I really recommend that someone new
    to Delany reads *this* one *before* Dhalgren, cos it's shorter,
    tighter and altogether more digestible.   What was Delany's phrase:
    "A child's Introduction to Structuralism", or something like that.
    Now, at the beginning of Tales Of Neveryon are various off-puttingly
    pseudy quotes from various French literary critics.   I could not
    understand at all what they were on about.
    
    But the very next day at the Laundrette in Willesden Green, London,
    it just so happened that the guy sitting next to me what reading
    a literary magazine which just happened to include a review of the
    then recent translation into English of Derrida's "Of Grammatology".
    That was enough of a clue to get me going on one of the most enjoyable
    treasure hunts I've ever been on:  when you understand the game
    that Delany is playing in Tales Of Neveryon, it's like a crossword,
    trying to find out what he means by the various images and incidents
    that he describes.
    
    For example, one off the top of my head: why does Delany say tha
    the inventor of coinage is the same who invented the idea of a
    corridor?
    
    More in a later reply, but I'm off for a pizza.

    
    I managed to read Dhalgren at a single sitting about six years ago.
    Since then, every attempt at re-reading has ended in abject
    failure. Reading some of the later replies has stimulated me enough
    to try once more to read it. For this I may thank you. Any further
    explanations of Delany's aims/interests/thoughts would be most welcome.
    
    Clive 

    I'll try to keep this one short.  (Folks what want to discuss RAM
    drivers, hit KP-,)
    
    BUCHANAN hit it on the head.  Like with non-SF writers Flaubert & Joyce
    &tc, you can tell that the writer has to struggle with the writing - so
    it has to mean a whole lot to the writer to get it done at all. It has
    to be loaded personally but other ways as well. I don't like Dreiser,
    Niven, Disch, Eliot, or Mickey Spillane - you can tell they're being
    self indulgent or being professional. 
    
    _Dhalgren_ (like all Delany's books except the Neveryona series)
    drove me through a week at the wake-up-read-it-loop level because
    of the obvious personal commitment.
    
    Re-reading and re-...-reading is because of the sf-mystery-structure-
    rhyme-scheme level.  You _know_ that the characters ring true. 
    So what about all the stuff that bugged you the first time through?
    
    Try to scratch the itches...  I felt that something uncomfortable
    happened halfway through, and I got a kick out of figuring out some
    of the things responsible for that discomfort.  If it really bugs
    you that you don't know what the Kid's "scorpion" outfit was, re-read
    the book to track that down.  If the title bugs you, trace where
    it comes from.  Those are two places where I gave up - but that's
    no guarantee that there's no speculations to be made.

Here's my pennysworth.

Read DHALGREN a couple of times with several years gap between.

1st time I was young and impressionable and into "New Wave" SF. I didn't 
really understand the book (I hesitate to even call it a novel) but was
impressed with the landscape inside Bellona and various references to
things I didn't understand (but felt that I should). The raunchy parts
also added to the excitement , of course.

2nd time I'm older and (hopefully) wiser and (definitely) more widely
read. This time it seemed deliberately obscure and unconcerned with the
characters as people. I'll file it under "Failed Experiments".

		Humbly yours

				Paul
				----

    What the heck, thought I'd add my two cents, since the previous
    reply (.28) sparked some thoughts. First, it's been a *long* time
    since I read DHALGREN, but I have a similar feeling as was expressed
    in .28. The book made a helluva impression on me at first reading
    (I was around 21 or so when it was released), and I re-read it three
    or four more times in as many years. I tried picking it up a year
    or so ago (I'm now 35), and was unable to finish it. Maybe in some
    ways it's like the science fiction equivalent of A CATCHER IN THE
    RYE, a book that impresses you inordinately if you happen to catch
    it at the right time and mind-set, but never seems as good when
    you're older. :-)
    
    I also agree with a variation of an idea set forth in (I believe)
    .19, that DHALGREN isn't so much a science fiction novel, as a novel
    about (and in some ways a parody of) some of the conventions of
    science fiction (not science fiction conventions, a whole `nother
    animal :-)). To make a analogy, that's the way I always felt about
    STAR WARS, which I never really though of as a science fiction movie,
    but rather a movie *about* science fiction. There's a subtle difference.
    
    I'm dropping a form-feed in at this point, since I'll be mentioning
    spoilers:
    
    
    Back to the point. I think one of the "keys" to DHALGREN is the
    conversation that the Kid has with the astronaut about information
    overload. Again, it's been quite awhile since I read the passage,
    but it goes something like this:
    
    The astronaut relates the story about being tested to ostensibly
    see whether he could detect and separate patterns in sounds that
    were mixed together. After he finished the test, and indeed was
    able to track what he thought were patterns, he was told that he
    had actually been listening to "white noise." That is, that he had
    been listening to completely random sounds, but his mind had still
    tried to organize them into some arbitrary, and completely erroneous, 
    pattern.
    
    There's a parallel situation (minor spoiler coming> in the "blank
    eyes" incidents that the Kid keeps encountering. He comes up with
    increasingly fantastic theories to explain this ... and finally
    discovers a warehouse filled with split ping-pong balls.
    
    Similarly, the poet is bemused when he spins a rationale for the
    Kid's love of poetry, and finds out the Kid reads poetry because
    "it's shorter than fiction." 
    
    Patterns. Anyone ever notice the leonine motif throughout DHALGREN?
    Lion images pervade the book. There seems to be a pattern, but of
    what?
    
    The mother of the middle-class family that the Kid "works" for tries
    to impose a pattern on everything, including her family and the
    Kid.
    
    
    And, of course, there's the whole question about the Kid's search
    for his identity, ostensibly the "main" plot of the book. What the
    reader finds is that the Kid *defines* his identity in the course of 
    DHALGREN, evolving from a rather dumb "kid" at the beginning to
    a near-archetype by its end. When we finally discover he's "William 
    Dhalgren," it's just words. It doesn't mean anything.
    
    So, given that I'm in almost a Heisenberg-type situation, :-) I
    think what Delaney was trying to do - at least, in part - was show
    how readers, most especially readers of science fiction, will, when
    faced with anarchy, try to impose some rational pattern on what
    they're reading. Fictional characters, if left to their own devices,
    will be forced to evolve into "real" people. To digress for a second,
    I think that's what the scene in the department store "means" when
    the Kid looks into a mirror and sees the reflection of ... Samuel
    R. Delaney.
    
    DHALGREN is an intriguing, and frustrating, book at the same time.
    I think it was Ted Sturgeon (who loved the book) who said that he
    found it amusing that Delaney had been cited as the most probable
    person to break out of the science fiction "ghetto." And that when
    he finally accomplished it - with DHALGREN - everyone howled in
    horror. :-)
    
    I'm rambling, so I'll stop. Just thoughts for your consideration.
    And one more: did you know that DHALGREN is a bibliophiles (hi,
    jerry) nightmare, because there are subtle differences in the text in
    each of the first eight printings? 
    
    And I'm *still* in love with Lanya. :-)
    
    Fred

    Wait a minute - wasn't William Dhalgren the newvJ14w '*spaper reporter,
    and the Kid's real name was Mike Something - but he couldn't remember
    because Lanya squeezed his arm?  (Wow - the details stay with you
    whether you like it or not.)
    
    My big problem with Dhalgren, I've concluded, is that I approached
    it as science fiction when I should have been in "literature"
    mode (I was expecting other-worlds escapism and what I got was "Three
    Mile Island Revisited.")  I think .29 is right about having to be
    in the right mindset too, because I've found lately I'm not in the
    right frame of mind to read anything that makes me think ("Sword
    of Shannara" is all I can handle right now).  Then again, maybe
    it's the fact that a situation Delany speculated about has now become,
    if not commonplace, still a reality.
    
    It's a haunting novel.  Unfortunately (for me) it doesn't allow
    a surface reading because it's not neatly tied together and resolved
    at the end.
    

    Yep, the Kid was not William Dhalgren.  I think Delany anticipated that
    readers would try to "make sense" of the title that way and that's why
    he threw in that incredibly irritating moment when the Kid remembers
    part of his name.  (Same tactic as the "explanation" of the red
    eyeballs - the mystery is demeaned, not cleared up.)  Delany tries hard
    to give the feeling that "everything is being described" and that
    "everything is planned" while still keeping the reader from getting
    warm fuzzies about having figured everything out.
    
    Note that there's a hint that Dhalgren knew the former owner of
    the notebook (a variation of his name is in the list at the beginning)
    and the Kid has a momentary fear that Dhalgren was actually the
    former owner himself.  There's also the editorial comment that Dhalgren
    might be a former editor of the notebook.  But these details just
    help add to the itchy feeling about the title - they don't explain
    it.

    I've always wanted to talk to, or hear opinions from people who
    have read Dhalgren.  
    
    WHAT A BOOK!  I've had the book for 8 years.
    		  Tried to re-read it 10 or more times.
    		  I still can't bring myself to throw it away.
    		  Still find images from it coming back to me.
    		  I REALLY did like it... somehow... 
    
    Oh yah!- Did anybody notice that the weapon the Kid had (the Orchid)
    could be the model for Freddy's weapon in the Nightmare On Elm Street
    series of movies?
    
    Well anyway, I'm going to "gear up" and read it again one day.
    
    					betty

    
    	I guess the first time I read it, I was at the tender age of
    16 years; I didn't know what the hell to make of it. I again picked
    it up in my early twenties. Then again about three years ago...I
    was about 25 then.
    
    	Its kind of neat to note the different reactions to the book
    at various stages in ones life.
    
    	I guess when I cross the ol' three zero boundry I'll have to
    pick it up again.
    
    Charlie

        The comment which suggested that Dhalgren be classified as
        "literature" might be nearer the mark than you think!  I recently
        read "The Castle" by Franz Kaffka.  Just to give you a flavour:

        Strange character wanders into town, (throughout to book he is
        only referred to as "K" (K -> Kid gedit!)) although he appears to
        know why he is there and was invited it soon becomes apparent
        that this is not quite the case.

        Conversations with various characters reveal different slants,
        the carpet is constantly being pulled from under your feet.  The
        town has a dream like quality, distances and positions change.
        Similarly some of the actions are dream like.  K sets up home
        with a School teacher in her "class room" (no troilism, though).

        If you managed to read Dhalgren and are looking for a similar
        challenge try "The Castle", at least you might know what
        Kaffka'esk means at the end of it.  Some great writing as well
        "Where one might die of strangeness".

        BTW anyone know if Sam D acknowledged basing Dhalgren on "The
        Castle"?