Book Review: Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
Jun. 21st, 2007 01:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juushikaTitle: Dhalgren
Author: Samuel R. Delany
Published: New York: Bantam Books, 1974
Page Count: 879
Total Page Count: 34,353
Text Number: 98
Read For: my own enjoyment
Short review: Bellona is a city in Midwestern America that has been completely isolated by some unspecified catastrophe. Kid is a man with a history of mental illnesses and no memory of his own name who looks significantly younger than his age. In the novel, he comes to Bellona and slowly adapts to life there, exploring, in detail, the various social castes occupied and coping mechanisms used by the inhabitants of the isolated, post-apocalyptic city where time passes differently for different people and two moons appear through the perpetual cloudcover. He discovers a half-filled notebook that mimics the novel itself in many ways, and begins to fill its pages first with poetry, and then with a journal of his life in Bellona. Intensely detailed and with a slow-moving plot, Dhalgren is largely impenetrable novel with almost no scientific aspects (despite being in the science-fiction genre), but is an interesting investigation into the roles of story, narrator, protagonist, and writer within fictional works. I found this novel disappointing and I don't recommend it, but I also wouldn't steer away an interested reader, because the text does have something to offer.
I believe that my major disappointment with Dhalgren was the lack of science. The novel is billed as sci-fi and is written by a sci-fi author, but the text is primarily an unsolved mystery: Kid becomes increasingly immersed in the irregular events that make Bellona so strange, including the unusual, non-linear passage of time, the hugely oversized sun, and the complete lack of radio signals throughout the town, but he never discovers what causes them. The novel is a puzzle without a solution, and so there is no room for the science-fiction explanations that I would expect in a novel from the genre. The lack of science makes the novel feel more fantastical or surreal than sci-fi, which wasn't what I was expecting and continued to be a disappointment throughout the novel. The unsolved nature of the novel may also make it unsatisfying of even frustrating for some readers: the text comes to no definite conclusion. Indeed, the last sentence is a fragment that loops back the sentence fragment that begins the novel.
The combination of the non-linear, confused timeline and the incredibly detailed writing make the book both lengthy and dense. The plot is loosely-constructed and slow moving—not much happens in the course of the novel, but what does happen is described on a daily basis, action for action, the detail. Reading about what Kid wears and eats, when he washes, who he makes love to, how he moves about town... can get repetitive and frustratingly dull.
Those caveats aside, the novel does provide a detailed, in-world investigation of the roles of text, protagonist/narrator, and writer. The exploration of these themes is not theoretical so much as it is a practical part of Kid's life in Bellona. His discovery of the notebook and the poems and journal entries that he writes, as well as the text of the novel itself and the identities of Kid as author and Delany as author, all interweave, work independently, borrow from each other, and question the underlying identity and nature of all of these roles. Like the mystery of Bellona, the nature of text and authorship is never fully resolved, but the question is given detailed, thorough investigation and provides a wealth of food for through for the reader. It is the saving grace of this difficult and frustrating novel, and I recommend Dhalgren for that purpose only: it is a interesting investigation of the nature of authorship, but not a sci-fi novel nor an enjoyable or satisfying read. I think this book is best for serious, dedicated readers, and don't strongly recommend it either way.
Review posted here at Amazon.com.
Author: Samuel R. Delany
Published: New York: Bantam Books, 1974
Page Count: 879
Total Page Count: 34,353
Text Number: 98
Read For: my own enjoyment
Short review: Bellona is a city in Midwestern America that has been completely isolated by some unspecified catastrophe. Kid is a man with a history of mental illnesses and no memory of his own name who looks significantly younger than his age. In the novel, he comes to Bellona and slowly adapts to life there, exploring, in detail, the various social castes occupied and coping mechanisms used by the inhabitants of the isolated, post-apocalyptic city where time passes differently for different people and two moons appear through the perpetual cloudcover. He discovers a half-filled notebook that mimics the novel itself in many ways, and begins to fill its pages first with poetry, and then with a journal of his life in Bellona. Intensely detailed and with a slow-moving plot, Dhalgren is largely impenetrable novel with almost no scientific aspects (despite being in the science-fiction genre), but is an interesting investigation into the roles of story, narrator, protagonist, and writer within fictional works. I found this novel disappointing and I don't recommend it, but I also wouldn't steer away an interested reader, because the text does have something to offer.
I believe that my major disappointment with Dhalgren was the lack of science. The novel is billed as sci-fi and is written by a sci-fi author, but the text is primarily an unsolved mystery: Kid becomes increasingly immersed in the irregular events that make Bellona so strange, including the unusual, non-linear passage of time, the hugely oversized sun, and the complete lack of radio signals throughout the town, but he never discovers what causes them. The novel is a puzzle without a solution, and so there is no room for the science-fiction explanations that I would expect in a novel from the genre. The lack of science makes the novel feel more fantastical or surreal than sci-fi, which wasn't what I was expecting and continued to be a disappointment throughout the novel. The unsolved nature of the novel may also make it unsatisfying of even frustrating for some readers: the text comes to no definite conclusion. Indeed, the last sentence is a fragment that loops back the sentence fragment that begins the novel.
The combination of the non-linear, confused timeline and the incredibly detailed writing make the book both lengthy and dense. The plot is loosely-constructed and slow moving—not much happens in the course of the novel, but what does happen is described on a daily basis, action for action, the detail. Reading about what Kid wears and eats, when he washes, who he makes love to, how he moves about town... can get repetitive and frustratingly dull.
Those caveats aside, the novel does provide a detailed, in-world investigation of the roles of text, protagonist/narrator, and writer. The exploration of these themes is not theoretical so much as it is a practical part of Kid's life in Bellona. His discovery of the notebook and the poems and journal entries that he writes, as well as the text of the novel itself and the identities of Kid as author and Delany as author, all interweave, work independently, borrow from each other, and question the underlying identity and nature of all of these roles. Like the mystery of Bellona, the nature of text and authorship is never fully resolved, but the question is given detailed, thorough investigation and provides a wealth of food for through for the reader. It is the saving grace of this difficult and frustrating novel, and I recommend Dhalgren for that purpose only: it is a interesting investigation of the nature of authorship, but not a sci-fi novel nor an enjoyable or satisfying read. I think this book is best for serious, dedicated readers, and don't strongly recommend it either way.
Review posted here at Amazon.com.
