Dhalgren

Dhalgren - Samuel R. Delany’s maddening combination of, to name just three, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, South American magical realism and an American poetic rendition of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting. One of the strangest, most bizarre, weirdest novels ever to rise to cult classic status - a kind of x-rated fairy tale covered in soot. Yet there something epic, even mythic running through its nine hundred pages that makes this work truly compelling.Delany penned five published novels prior to his twenty-third birthday and shortly thereafter was hospitalized having suffered a nervous breakdown. Lying in his mental health ward bed for days, his imagination molded and shaped vast charred sections of a hidden city. Reading Dhalgren, my sense is the novel’s post-apocalyptic Bellona was that city. And the author continued revisiting its smoldering precincts in the ensuing years as he wrote his massive work published in 1975 when age thirty-three.Not a conventional storyline so much as a series of images and events swirling up from the author's inner vision, a novel spun from the fantasies and daydreams of youth as if expressing the repressed desires of legions of stoned college sophomores combined with the steamrolling fury of angry 1960s countercultural, all heaped up into a colossal explosion scorching prim, prissy middle class, consumerist America into oblivion. No wonder Delany's radical, eccentric novel amassed a cult following both then and now.Our main character is Kid, age twenty-seven, and we follow his odyssey from the day of arrival roaming around burned out, isolated, cutoff, mostly deserted Bellona, a city located on a map at very center of this futuristic, surreal America, far out and spaced out on the plains of a state that might be Kansas. Kid and author Samuel Delany share much in common: 1) mixed racial identity: Kid is half-white, half American Indian, 2) fluid, gender hopping sexuality - Kid has oodles of sex with both men and women, and 3) a past bout of mental illness resulting in hospitalization.Kid is also a drifter who suffers from partial amnesia – he can’t recall his own or his parent’s name although he remembers his mother was an American Indian. All-in-all, irrespective of a reader’s racial background, sexual orientation, intellectual acumen or mental stability, nearly anyone can identify with Kid both to their heart’s content and heartache's content.Similar to others gang members in Bellona, Kid wears an “orchid,” that is, seven curved blades, each about ten inches long held in place over hand and fingers by an adjustable metal wristband. Yet kid is a poet. The combination of hard and soft, violence and sensitivity is reminiscent of the sixties rock group Iron Butterfly - hard like iron, delicate like a butterfly. And the kid walks with one bare foot and a sandal on his other foot. Along with the widespread importation of yoga, meditation, chanting mantras and other Eastern practices, wearing sandals and going barefoot were very much part of sixties youth culture.Bellona is complete freedom – the ideas from Jerry Rubin’s Do IT! are taken to heart. Why not? This is a city without babies or toddlers or snot nosed kids, without spouses or parents or police, a city where nobody has to work for money since food can be stolen from abandoned houses and one can always sleep free in the park and have access to an unlimited supply of dope. Although somewhat forgivable since spawned from the imagination of author as young man, I myself found all the many sexual scenes both puerile and ungracious. Delany’s Bellona forms a fantasy world of perpetually healthy, sexually charged twentysomethings, where there is never any need for doctors, dentists or pharmacists, where women never have periods or get pregnant and sex is nothing more than the sheer pleasure and intensity of the act itself.Three of my favorite parts: discussions on the nature of poetry, art and literature with Ernest Newboy, aged poet and Bellona’s version of Obi-Wan Kenobi; the magical mystery tour aspect of the scorpions, those colorful, vivid, holographic images enveloping certain gang members; the postmodern twists in the long concluding chapter undercutting, questioning and challenging any sense of normality in our perceiving the world and reading Dhalgren, the very novel we hold in our hands.I agree with a number of other reviewers - there isn’t that much middle ground; this is one novel you will either love or hate. Philip K. Dick complained it was trash and threw it away. Perhaps he was thrown off by the foul language and explicit sex scenes. Yet I can see how for many readers disgruntled with all the nasty, tawdry, overly judgmental, superficial crap thrown in their faces, reading Dhalgren is always a satisfying, joyful hit. Lastly, my advice: don’t give up on the novel too soon as it does get better the further you read. And if you get bogged down, play some good old sixties music like Kenny Rogers singing Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Condition Was In or Santana’s Soul Sacrifice or, as a last resort, the long version of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.

It may be said that the novel that most reflects what Samuel R. Delany preaches in his 2005 compilation About Writing is his 1974 tour-de-force Dhalgren.I took up Dhalgren several years ago, but only got about half way through before dropping it despite the fact that I’ve read at least ten of his other works. This time, after reading some sections in About Writing, I stuck with it––in part because I had a better idea of what Delany was after.It’s easy to get caught up in the story––the nameless young man wandering into a large city in middle America that has been cut off from the outside, the unusual circumstances of life in Bellona, the sexual adventurism, the protagonist’s Joycean minute-by-minute portrait of sights, sounds and feelings. As interesting, however, if not more so, if it can be separated from the story, is what Dhalgren teaches us about the novel.Dhalgren exemplifies Delany’s three rules about fiction writing, which are “don’t overwrite,” “don’t let your writing become thin or superficial,” and “don’t indulge clichés.” In particular, Delany’s prescribed writing process is exposed in Dhalgren in the way he incorporates into the text the protagonist’s self-edits, showing his search for the precise word or phrase that describes what he has seen, heard and felt.What makes the novel difficult reading is that Delany seems to invent circumstances as he goes. Although there are recurring themes and situations, he is lightly bound to them; sometimes they repeat, sometimes they do not. Time has little efficacy––the local newspaper appears with arbitrary dates. The physical characteristics of the city shift without warning or explanation: things once near become far, fires break out and devour blocks, street names change. The outside world does not impinge except one day there are two moons, another day a huge sun fills up most of the sky and then sets.In Bellona, bereft of social institutions from police to money, things boil down to their essence. Without the need to work for a living, residents take what they need and do what they feel like doing. Throughout the novel there are no food or water shortages that cannot be remedied by moving to a new location. People form groups for protection, comradeship and power. Sex can occur with anyone or several people at any time day or night.In the midst of this chaos, the protagonist, Kid (or Kidd or The Kid), writes poetry and later keeps a journal. Dhalgren reflects Delany’s ongoing interest in the role of language––written and spoken––in society. Part six is entitled Palimpsest, the definition of which describes The Kid’s journal style––borrowing from and writing over previous entries. It also suggests a lack of linearity which is what the reader has to deal with in the final section, The Anathamata, where pages are divided into columns, each containing unconnected entries, only the last of which is chronologically fixed.One is tempted to interpret Dhalgren as a social commentary, having been written during the counter-cultural revolution that produced protests, Hippie communities, love-ins, and the like. But other than an implied defense of bi-sexual relationships, Dhalgren does not read either as a defense or condemnation of the Hippie life-style. Neither is it an Americanized Lord of the Flies. Civilization breaks down, but not to the point where the weak are systematically exploited by the strong. As the leader of the nest, the building where a group that call themselves scorpions live, Kid defends and protects oddballs, including one who has committed murder.What makes Dhalgren worth reading forty years after its publication? Imagine yourself in a world where all boundaries have disappeared, where your past doesn’t define who you are. On that level, Dhalgren is an adventure story that can be read to see how people deal with these circumstances. It’s also a mystery in which the reader searches for clues to make sense of what’s going on and it is a treatise on art and literature, a disquisition on sexual and race relations, a study of human nature and an imaginative portrait of an alternative reality.Like the best works of fiction, Dhalgren has not aged. It is still in many ways ahead of its time––an exploration of the American landscape, stripped of social conventions, including labels (names), stripped of the structures technology, time and place impose on human interaction. Dhalgren asks who we are and how far will we go when free to act when unencumbered from quotidian considerations. Delany offers hints, but with his usual sense of modesty, he does not try to impose answers. He allows us to explore these questions by his side, pointing out landmarks along with way, but letting each of us try to make sense out of the chaos.

I thought I'd love this, as I've enjoyed many books that have scared others away due to their density, complexity, or experimental style - Hubert Selby Jnr, Bernhard's 'Extinction,' and Philip K. Dick's 'Exegesis', to name but a few. As such, I expected much from Dhalgren. It did not deliver. Far from being a complex work of vision, as some have said, this book is an obsessively inward-looking, pretentious, and wilfully obscure novel with little attempt to plot, characterise, or even generate a basic coherent setting. Delany is clearly desperate to be thought of as 'clever', but ultimately makes a fool of himself with this failed novel. But not only that, looking at the sales figures, it seems that he's managed to make fools out of millions of consumers, who presumably are likewise desperate to be thought of as clever. One of the worst books I have ever read.

I put off reading this book for too long, but also feel I have benefitted from coming to it after more life and reading. Somehow it is inexplicable without being frustrating and in fact is oddly fulfilling precisely because it cannot be explained. The writing is in itself awesome. The breadth and depth of its ideas is inspiring. Right now it stands as my favourite novel ever and while I know that awe is partly due to having just emerged from it, it is just too huge an experience not to leave a lifelong mark.

Despite getting positive reviews from Penhouse and Telluride Times-Journal, this book is heavy going. After 55 pages (of more than 700) I was still not really enjoying it. I gave up at that point.It IS strange and sometimes interesting, but not at all compelling. I found myself struggling to pick up the book and carry on.

This is definitely a more difficult read that most science fiction. Even the good stuff, like Philip K Dick.Having said that, it's well written and compelling. Delany draws you into his world and gives you a something filled with detail and interest.If you're finding most science fiction a bit light, then give this a go. It's definitely towards Literary and away from Space Opera. You won't find the 'hard' science fiction of mathematics and physics, but something much more beautiful.

one of the most bizarre, complex and fascinating books ever written.