Dhalgren is not light reading
or short (it's 800+ pages). It has on various occasions been compared with the
works of James Joyce. An Amazon.com description says it "may be read with
equal validity as SF, magic realism, or metafiction." (Certainly, it
would be difficult to find plausible scientific explanations for some of the
phenomena in the book.) Author William Gibson said it was a "riddle that
was never meant to be solved."
Bizarre conditions are taking
place in an American city after some disaster of an unclear nature. Many
residents have left the city, leaving it to those who are out of the ordinary
in one way or the other. It no longer operates in a "normal" or
commercial manner.
The main character is a
mixed-race youth (or seeming youth) who can't remember who he is. He is
referred to as Kid. After he enters the city, he is given a notebook in which
every other page has already been written in. Later he adds his own writing to
the blank pages. The notebook plays a role in the rest of the book in a few
ways. Kid writes poetry in the notebook and later in the story some of these
are published. Kid's writing sometimes weaves into the story and sometimes the
material that was already in the notebook weaves into the story. Sometimes
what is Kid's writing and what had been in the notebook blur together - and
blur with the story.
Kid makes his way through a
series of social groups, including a family behaving as if all was the way it
used to be, and a gang. He has a woman lover, Lanya, through much of the book,
and during part of the book Kid and Lanya are joined by a teenage boy into a
triad. (Kid has various other sexual encounters. Sex of every preference and
combination is common in the book.)
I won't say that much about
the plot - partly because it does not have as well defined a plot that depends
on an objective moving events ahead through obstacles to a resolution. People
do things, events transpire. And even if there is some murkiness about it at
times, there is at least some cause and effect. But on the global scale of the
entire novel it doesn't seem to emphasize book-level causes to bring about
book-level effects.
There is a certain
circularity in the logic of the book. Some readers will find that problematic,
others will find it clever or artistic. The end of the book seems to lead back
to the beginning of the book. Writings of Dhalgren’s characters refer to the novel.
There seem to be references in the book to the author. There is extensive
description of the writing process - presented as what Kid is doing, but
perhaps meaning more than that. In the last chapter, much of the text of
Dhalgren consists of items written by Kid or material in the notebook given to
him - and some of these repeat text found in earlier chapters of Dhalgren.
There are also parts which resemble earlier sections of the book, but with
certain changes. There are also paradoxes in what is apparently written by Kid
in the notebook before he was given the notebook (or similar time travel-like
scramblings).
Forgive me if this isn't
quite the correct term, but aspects such as these give the book what might be
called a surrealistic form. This will not agree with some readers more inclined
to "science fiction" as distinct from "speculative
fiction". Readers who are more comfortable with bending or ignoring the
rules of the real world, or who appreciate imaginary settings that aren't
necessarily of a futuristic or scientific nature may find Dhalgren more
satisfying.
It seems the story is better
at conveying a mood and a framework whose details we should take as something
more like a metaphor than literally as the one particular form of the detail.
As a "riddle that was never meant to be solved," there's nothing to
be taken literally word-for-word. It has to be reacted to on a more abstract
level.
Personal taste can be an odd
thing. I like mystery stories (especially SF mysteries or Sherlock Holmes). I
can also enjoy stories which are not in a "mystery" genre, but have a
mysterious element that needs to be explained. I worked for nearly 30 years as
a computer programmer - making sense out of complicated computer code.
However, for some reason, my tastes don't include that much of poetry or prose
in which the reader has to decrypt the cipher of what the author has hidden in
a literary labyrinth. At least some readers see Dhalgren as a literary work
that is special because of what can be mined out of it with the right tools,
time and effort. If so, that part will be lost on me.