Samuel R. Delany, Dhalgren

I don't really feel qualified to talk about this book, or at least to draw any conclusions about it. (I was hoping that SH's Delany week would include a discussion of this book, so I'd have something to react to/against.) But then it seems apparent that part of the intent here was to write a book that defies conclusions. The question of whether the events of the novel are real even in relation to the reality of the novel--or 1) hallucinations experienced by the protagonist, who has a history of mental illness, 2) a story being written by that protagonist, 3) a complicated metafiction committed by Delany himself, 4) an account, perhaps fictional, being read by the protagonist in a notebook which may have been written by him, in whole or in part, either during or even before his arrival in the city, 5) a recursive time loop/fractal iteration experienced in a location outside of normal time and space, 6) a combination of some or all of the above--makes trying to nail certain things down entirely beside the point. The city has a name, but the protagonist does not. Objects take on symbolic importances which later fall away to reveal banalities, then are reconfigured to take on new meanings. The order of things is confused, and there are acknowledged gaps. And all of this occurs outside of real time, outside of economy, outside of government (though not entirely outside of politics).

Much of what is best about Dhalgren are its conversations--those with Newboy the poet and Harrison the rapist/cult figure, in particular. Delany doesn't take shortcuts with many of his characters, and there are at least two dozen in this book who are fully formed enough to carry their own story. The character of Kidd/the Kid himself is particularly successful: for a self-confessed blank slate, he acquires a surprising amount of personality and forcefulness, and manages to avoid the picaresque trap of making the camera-protagonist less interesting than those he or she interacts with. And for a book that's so cerebral, I was more emotionally engaged than I realized; the last ten-fifteen pages are among the most harrowing I've read.

I didn't love it unreservedly. The opening pages seemed unnecessarily opaque compared to the prose later--although that could be a matter of my becoming accustomed to the style. Maybe I'm a prude, but I'm not sure I understand what some of the sex was aiming at. I found the dynamics of the Kid/Lanya/Denny relationship fascinating; but at times I felt pushed out of the narrative by the choices that were made outside of that triumvirate. This was one area where the force of Kid's personality may have worked against my engagement. He is so rarely vulnerable, and hardly at all with his lovers.

These are small complaints, though, in the larger scheme of things. I wish I'd read this book fifteen or twenty years ago; there were a few moments of mind-blowingness here, but I can only imagine how magnified they would have been when I was younger. A justified classic.

On a Completely Different Note . . .

. . . I also recently finished the first volume of the collected Conan stories--the Ace paperbacks that came out in the eighties, that is. I've been trying to better my knowledge of the pulps proper, since growing up I was reading mostly derivative second- and third-generation high/low fantasy. And aside from the films (which are CLASSICS) and a teensy bit of the comics (the new Dark Horse series looks worth checking out, too), I don't really know from Conan.

The stories by Howard himself turn out to be better than I expected--much better than Burroughs, on average. A bit purple at times, and structurally I'm not all that sure that some of these are stories, exactly. They're interesting vignettes, with dark magic and thievery and brawny feats and all that. But there isn't much there beyond that. Not that I was expecting there to be, and to a point I don't much care. It's just that, read in fairly rapid succession, the stories fall into a bit of a rut. It's almost worse, though, when Sprague de Camp and Carter step in, because it feels like they're trying to transcend the subject matter somehow, to elevate it. Which . . . doesn't really work. It's sword porn, at bottom, and there's nothing wrong with that in itself. At times, when Conan is playing the working-class hero, it can be fairly satisfying. But even there I'm pushing too much--this really isn't meant to be read into like that. It's escapist and macho and violent, anti-intellectual and a bit anti-authority. It is, in other words, pretty much what it claims to be, and that's pretty much all that need be said.

Oh, And . . .

Today I read From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which many of you recommended to me when I was looking for kids' books, and which mrissa was kind enough to loan me.

It was AWESOME.

Status

Tonight I spent two hours at the Temple of Mammon Mega-mall, walked around all three levels, and finished all my shopping in one fell swoop. Yay me.

Tomorrow I start a four-week temp assignment. Let's see if I still remember how to smile and pretend I give a shit. Yay me.