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Title: Dhalgren (Vintage) by Samuel R. Delany ISBN: 0-375-70668-2 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 15 May, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.85 (74 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Brilliant, abstract character study --- vintage seventies
Comment: I just finished rereading Dahlgren for the first time in 25 years. Man, have I changed! I had a much different reading experience at the age of 45 than I did at the age of 20! A couple of the reviews here are (almost) helpful; but I empathically feel that the prospective buyer may wish to know a little bit more. In short, if you are genuinely intelligent, then you will enjoy this novel; if you go through life pretending to be intelligent, then you will hate it (you will probably become very ANGRY). Forget the fact that this novel does NOT have a plot (in the ordinary sense)! Delany's brilliant writing has created some of the most memorable and believable characters in the history of science fiction! I know of few other writers (read that: "artists") who've so successfully created an experience that places the reader inside the mind of mentally ill person. Brilliant! The entire novel takes place inside of a surreal city where inexplicable things happen: do not try explaining the inexplicable; you will only frustrate yourself. (The setting reminds me a little of Tarkovski's "Stalker.") Now a little history lesson: Samuel R. (aka, "Chip") Delany (nephew of the famous Delany Sisters, I hear) burst upon the science fiction scene in the early sixties and quickly became (arguably) the best science fiction writer in America. Delany could CREATE more original ideas in ten pages than other sci-fi writers could produce in an entire novel! (Read his short stories in the Driftglass collection if you want proof!) When I was reading his books back in the late sixties and early seventies, I got this notion that he was out in the world LIVING life, while other sci-fi writers were hiding away from the world (escaping into their loner self-delusions). Scores of lesser writers have made whole careers from copying Delany's original ideas and style; but Delany is The First, The Original. Read him! If you are new to Delany, then I highly recommend that you read several of his other works BEFORE you read Dahlgren. Delany won back-to-back Nebula Awards for Babel-17 and The Einstein Intersection. Read them! He should have won a third Nebula for Nova (at least it was nominated for a Hugo; but they probably felt it was someone else's turn to win). Read it! In "The Fall of the Towers" trilogy (written between 1961 and 1964), Delany has a plot element involving soldiers who are unknowingly fighting a war in virtual reality (20 years before Gibson's Neuromancer and 30 years before the Matrix!). And now for Dahlgren. After reaching the top of his profession as a sci-fi writer in 1968 (at the tender age of only 26!), Delany seemed to turn his back on sci-fi. Although he has denied this in interviews, I have a notion that Delany wanted to become a writer of Great Literature, not just a writer in the lesser genre of sci-fi. (I personally believe that Delany was frustrated that his writing talents had exceeded the reading talents of the sci-fi fans.) And then came Dahlgren. Dahlgren begins and ends in the same style as Joyce's Finnegan's Wake (the end cycles us back to the beginning); perhaps this is Delany's way of telling us something about this novel. As other reviewers have mentioned, Dahlgren does not have a common plot; nothing is explained; there is no resolution. In my mind, this novel is entirely abstract: don't look for crystalline explanations; look for the METAPHOR! Also, this is NOT really a sci-fi book; it is Delany telling you about scenes from his real life (I believe). If you have read Delany's autobiographical book Heavenly Breakfast, then you might suspect that Dahlgren was drawn from Delany's journals from 1969 to 1973. Eighty percent of this novel could easily have been published as a period-piece from that era. In Dahlgren, we are not so much reading about the main character (a native American half-bread named The Kidd) as we are reading about Delany himself (an urban bisexual black man living in a 70s commune with a bunch of characters whose sole purpose in life is getting balled and high). In one scene in the novel, Kidd looks in a mirror and sees not his own reflection, but the image of his creator (the author, that is). And then there is the famous notebook that The Kidd finds at the beginning of the novel: a notebook (obvious dropped by the author who invented Kidd!) that describes incidents in Kidd's life before they happen. (Reminds me of Breakfast of Champions.) And who the HELL is William Dahlgren! ;-) My only complaint: Delany needed his own version of Ezra Pound to convince him to edit this novel. I get the feeling that Delany was unwilling or unable to throw the least scrap of writing onto the cutting room floor! Sometime, plot elements seem to be invented ENTIRELY to glue together unrelated writing exercises! But, what am I saying! Delany is The Master!
Rating: 5
Summary: Linearity's Bane
Comment: If you're a hard sci fi, "hardware" fan; if you need a linear narrative where "something happens" and there's a well-defined beginning, middle, and end; if you need a "rational" explanation for everything that happens in a book; if you like easy to read, shoot-em-up space opera- don't read _Dhalgren_, 'cos you "won't get it", and it will frustrate and anger you. This is one ov those extreme either-or books- either you love it and think it's truly profound and visionary, or you hate it and think it's pointless gibberish. I happen to be ov the first opinion. This book made a huge impression on me. For one thing, it was the first sci fi (really kind ov a misnomer for this book, but lacking a better term...) that I'd read that was about real, non-mainstream people and their response to the strange. It was about sex and poetry, gritty communal living, interclass interactions, life on the edge... in short, it was about everything I was doing at the time. But it's about more than just that... it's about everything suddenly changing; it's about how people deal with everything changing; it's about language and reality and the strange and fey place where the two meet and inescapably change each other forever. It's about consensus reality and the Rashomon effect. It's about life going on, no matter how bizarre things may get. It's about the strange & twisted ways that people take comfort in each other's humanity in the face ov a strange & twisted reality. It's about the complexity ov the world, and our experience ov that complexity. And I can see how, if you're a very linear, traditional Western-dichotomist thinker, those are all things that you probably don't really like thinking about- much less actually reading about them for pleasure. This isn't an easy book, even if you're into "this sort ov thing". Even readers who love this book often take a long time to finish it. But a little patience, a little effort, will yield infinite rewards. You will find yourself remembering stray fragments ov _Dhalgren_ years later, at the strangest times, in the oddest places.
Rating: 5
Summary: The people who love it are right, the people who hate it too
Comment: Dhalgren is a book I have read and re-read and I still feel like I missed a lot of its subtle whisperings. The Kid himself is not an especially sympathetic character, the book muses on sex and race for longer than I can easily decipher, in liquid but complicated prose...it's not an easy book, and not a linear book, and there have been times I hated it. But I come back to it again and again, back to Bellona, back to shimmering disguises and strange passages. It's a book I feel compelled to grapple with.
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Title: Nova by Samuel R. Delany ISBN: 0375706704 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 11 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R. Delany ISBN: 0819563366 Publisher: Wesleyan University Press Pub. Date: 15 July, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Babel-17: Empire Star (Vintage) by Samuel R. Delany ISBN: 0375706690 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 08 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Aye, and Gomorrah: Stories by Samuel R. Delany ISBN: 0375706712 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 08 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village 1960-1965 by Samuel R. Delany ISBN: 1563331330 Publisher: Masquerade Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 1993 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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