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Dhalgren Samuel R Delany 9780553148619 Books

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Dhalgren Samuel R Delany 9780553148619 Books

In The Recombinant City, A Foreward, William Gibson says of Dhalgren:

"It is a literary singularity ... a work of sustained conceptual daring, executed by the most remarkable prose stylist to have emerged from the culture of American science fiction.

I have never understood it. I have sometimes felt that I partially understood it, or that I was nearing the verge of understanding it. This has never caused me the least discomfort, or interfered in any way with my pleasure in the text."

It bothered me. A lot.

Maybe if I'd read Dhalgren in 1975, I'd have liked it more. I was 28, part of the youth culture, active politically and close enough to my college days that Dhalgren would have resonated and had context. But that was nearly 40 years ago. The world and I have come a long way since then.

When Dhalgren was originally published, I didn't read it. I was working, taking care of my son, possibly too stoned to focus on a page. It was like that. Back then. Hey, how old are you? Have you qualified for Social Security? Almost there? Minimally, you have your AARP card? If not, you probably won't understand this novel -- and even if you are old enough to have been there back when, you may find -- as I did -- that the time for this book has passed.

To use an analogy, I read Thomas Wolf's Look Homeward Angel when I was 14. I adored it. Pure poetry end to end. Five years later, you couldn't have paid me to read it. The story was perfect for an adolescent trying to grow up in a world that didn't understand her but was irrelevant to a young, married woman in the suburbs. Context counts.

The writing is beautiful and the analogy to Wolfe not accidental. Like Wolfe, Samuel Delaney wrote prose that is pure poetry, rich with symbolism. Nonetheless, this isn't a book I would have chosen at this point in my life. I might have loved it at a different age and stage.

The story centers on a bunch of kids in a city called Bellona in which something very strange and evil occurred. Exactly what? Well, something. The TV, radio and telephones don't work. Signals don't work. People have reverted to a sort of feral hunting society, in an urban way. The Kid (whose name may or may not be Kidd) comes down from the mountain. He meets other kids. They talk about stuff. Poetry. People. Random events. Think Thomas Wolfe on purple haze with a beer chaser. Beautiful words, haunting images. Poetry that never ends and a plot that never begins.

The publisher puts it this way:

In Dhalgren, perhaps one of the most profound and bestselling science fiction novels of all time, Samuel R. Delany has produced a novel "to stand with the best American fiction of the 1970s" (Jonathan Lethem).

"Bellona is a city at the dead center of the United States. Something has happened there.... The population has fled. Madmen and criminals wander the streets. Strange portents appear in the cloud-covered sky. And into this disaster zone comes a young man-poet, lover, and adventurer-known only as the Kid. Tackling questions of race, gender, and sexuality, Dhalgren is a literary marvel and groundbreaking work of American magical realism."

It may be all those things and I'm not sufficiently intellectual or appreciative of art to enjoy it. After the first couple of hundred pages, I found it meandering and more than a bit pretentious. But to be fair, it's a matter of taste. I have friends who really liked James Joyce and actually read Ulysses, not the Cliff Notes. Go figure, right?

This edition includes a foreword by William Gibson as well as a new illustrated biography of Samuel Delaney.


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Dhalgren Samuel R Delany 9780553148619 Books Reviews

Although it seemed endless, it only took me nine months to finish this. It's not a book that can be read easily. It's better to read a little bit here and there, and return to it after you've had a break.

I didn't like this book, but I had read the reviews and knew what I was getting into. The story goes absolutely nowhere. I knew that going in, but that doesn't make the experience any less annoying.

Speaking of annoying things... Here are the number of times that these words/phrases show up in this

"Sucked his teeth" 22 times
"Sucked her teeth" 11
"Finger" 307
"Thumb" 111
"Hand" 963

The book should be called "Pointless Conversations", because that's pretty much all you get here. That and lots of sex. Then people talking about sex. Food. And people talking about food. Awful beat poetry. And people talking about awful beat poetry. It just drags on and on. And as it goes on, the writing gets more and more creative(?), experimental(?), but not in any kind of enjoyable way.

The reason I give it 2 stars is because although I personally didn't like it, it is still a quite unique and memorable work. Plus, you have to admire an author who can write this long a story, period.

I don't get the rave reviewers. This is not one I'd recommend. Sorry.

P.S. The William Gibson intro was painful to read, in a "trying to be cool like Delaney too" sort of way. Read at your own peril!
As others have said, some love Dhalgren and some hate it. I fall into the "hate it" camp. I found the concept to be interesting; I just didn't care for the execution. Too much of the exposition had a feeling of trying to be '60s counter-culture edgy/daring/experimental/anti-establishment. For me, that feeling hasn't worn well; it seemed dated. I found the repeated explicit sex to be a turn-off. Someone else described the poet character Newboy as the "wise Yoda". I found his endless ramblings about poetry and meaning to be tiresome. I actually expected the protagonist to decide Newboy was a pointless blow-hard. I got really tired of the "Whoooooa Man! Like, it's all toooo INTENSE for me" emotions from the protagonist. That said, there must be a reason so many people like the book. I liked the unconventional sentence structure and language and the way it mirrored the "what is real and what is not and what is going on?" feeling. I liked the snippets of reveal, but I found there to be just too much I didn't care about in between.
In The Recombinant City, A Foreward, William Gibson says of Dhalgren

"It is a literary singularity ... a work of sustained conceptual daring, executed by the most remarkable prose stylist to have emerged from the culture of American science fiction.

I have never understood it. I have sometimes felt that I partially understood it, or that I was nearing the verge of understanding it. This has never caused me the least discomfort, or interfered in any way with my pleasure in the text."

It bothered me. A lot.

Maybe if I'd read Dhalgren in 1975, I'd have liked it more. I was 28, part of the youth culture, active politically and close enough to my college days that Dhalgren would have resonated and had context. But that was nearly 40 years ago. The world and I have come a long way since then.

When Dhalgren was originally published, I didn't read it. I was working, taking care of my son, possibly too stoned to focus on a page. It was like that. Back then. Hey, how old are you? Have you qualified for Social Security? Almost there? Minimally, you have your AARP card? If not, you probably won't understand this novel -- and even if you are old enough to have been there back when, you may find -- as I did -- that the time for this book has passed.

To use an analogy, I read Thomas Wolf's Look Homeward Angel when I was 14. I adored it. Pure poetry end to end. Five years later, you couldn't have paid me to read it. The story was perfect for an adolescent trying to grow up in a world that didn't understand her but was irrelevant to a young, married woman in the suburbs. Context counts.

The writing is beautiful and the analogy to Wolfe not accidental. Like Wolfe, Samuel Delaney wrote prose that is pure poetry, rich with symbolism. Nonetheless, this isn't a book I would have chosen at this point in my life. I might have loved it at a different age and stage.

The story centers on a bunch of kids in a city called Bellona in which something very strange and evil occurred. Exactly what? Well, something. The TV, radio and telephones don't work. Signals don't work. People have reverted to a sort of feral hunting society, in an urban way. The Kid (whose name may or may not be Kidd) comes down from the mountain. He meets other kids. They talk about stuff. Poetry. People. Random events. Think Thomas Wolfe on purple haze with a beer chaser. Beautiful words, haunting images. Poetry that never ends and a plot that never begins.

The publisher puts it this way

In Dhalgren, perhaps one of the most profound and bestselling science fiction novels of all time, Samuel R. Delany has produced a novel "to stand with the best American fiction of the 1970s" (Jonathan Lethem).

"Bellona is a city at the dead center of the United States. Something has happened there.... The population has fled. Madmen and criminals wander the streets. Strange portents appear in the cloud-covered sky. And into this disaster zone comes a young man-poet, lover, and adventurer-known only as the Kid. Tackling questions of race, gender, and sexuality, Dhalgren is a literary marvel and groundbreaking work of American magical realism."

It may be all those things and I'm not sufficiently intellectual or appreciative of art to enjoy it. After the first couple of hundred pages, I found it meandering and more than a bit pretentious. But to be fair, it's a matter of taste. I have friends who really liked James Joyce and actually read Ulysses, not the Cliff Notes. Go figure, right?

This edition includes a foreword by William Gibson as well as a new illustrated biography of Samuel Delaney.