On Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren

by Bill Wood

Samuel R. Delany is the winner of two Hugos and four Nebula Awards. He has been honored with lifetime achievement awards, including SFWA’s Grand Master, the Eaton Award, the Lambda Pilgrim Award, and the Gaylactic Spectrum Award, and was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Dhalgren, his most popular and most controversial novel, was first published in 1975. It was nominated for the Nebula Award, remains in print to this day, and has sold close to two million copies in a variety of editions.

In this book are collected reviews, critical essays, and in-depth analyses of Dhalgren as a novel, and as commentary on life and the world. There are also discussions of how to read the novel, and clues to unraveling some of the mysteries hidden therein. Contributors include Douglas Barbour, Mary Kay Bray, Rudi Dornemann, Harlan Ellison, Robert Elliot Fox, Jean Marc Gawron, Kenneth R. James, Gerald Jonas, John Nizalowski, Steven Paley, Darrell Schweitzer, Steven Shaviro, K. Leslie Steiner, Theodore Sturgeon, and, of course, Samuel R. Delany himself.

347 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 2, 2023

Reviews

[Geoffrey Dow · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1988 I was living with three friends in the east end of Montreal. Along with two of them, I was working hard to become a writer. One night after I had finished a short story, I took a walk with those two and found myself listening to them discuss my story as if it were a great work of literature. Vern and John talked about such things as the symbolism of two trees which featured prominently in the story, and I found myself nodding in agreement with their analyses. Much, if not all, of what they were saying sounded so plausible, despite the fact that I knew I had intended no such symbolism while I was writing.

For that reason, among others, I have shied away from making statements about symbolism and metaphor when critiquing or reviewing. Two often, it seems to me, that sort of thing amounts to just-so stories that might or might not have anything to do with an author's actual intentions. I prefer to concentrate on the craft of storytelling, examining books I've enjoyed (or not) and exploring what it was about story and character that, pace Tolkien, held my attention, amused, delighted, excited or deeply moved me.



On those grounds, editor Bill Wood's anthology of reviews and essays, On Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren is not the book I had hoped it might be, but I suspect that, at least to some extent, the book that Delany hoped it would be, if only because two of his own essays (one under his name, another under the nom de plume of K. Leslie Steiner) delve quite deeply, not just into Dhalgren's thematic and structural intricacies, but its literary antecedents and its symbolism and metaphors as well.

That said, I suspect that Delany — a very serious writer of fiction, but also for many years an academic — might wish that his own essays are not the most interesting and insightful pieces in this collection. The fact of the matter is, Dhalgren is a long book and a complicated one; it was published as (and is) science fiction; and even 45 year after its publication, science fiction simply doesn't get much serious critical attention.

Maybe this is a good time to say something about Dhalgren itself, for those of you who wander what in the world I'm talking about.

Published in 1975, Dhalgren is a nearly-900 page novel that seems to be circular — its final, broken sentence almost leads into its opening, broken sentence — and features as its protagonist a half-(Native American) Indian, half white protagonist with a history of mental illness who doesn't remember his own name. The Kid/Kidd/Kid, as he is called at various points in the novel, enters the mysterious post-apocalyptic Middle American city of Bellona, a place where some kind of disaster has driven all but a thousand or so of its citizens away. He encounters a wide assortment of misfits and eccentrics, has a lot of conversations and has sometimes very graphic sex with some of those he talks with. And the end, he leaves, and the reader is free to join two halves of an apparent circle and start again.

That might or might not sound intriguing to you, but to try to write a quick synopsis of a novel without, in fact, any traditional plot at all, is a fool's errand. Suffice it to say that Dhalgren is a novel I have found endlessly fascinating, tremendously real despite its impossibility, and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, which is something I don't think any of the reviews and essays in Bill Wood's book mention.

And that lack, perhaps, helps to explain why it is that On Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren left me with the sense that I am not the sort of reader Delany expected to have much interest in his long and structurally complicated novel. Though I have literally lost count of the number of times I've read Dhalgren, I keep returning to it and, as with a favourite place in the real world, I find something new with every visit. As with Tolkien's Middle Earth, Dhalgren's city of Bellona is a place to which I have felt almost compelled to return year after year after year.



All that said, there is considerable variety in this 267 page volume, and if Dhalgren is a novel that means something to you, On Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren is a must-read.

The first section of contemporary reviews is about what one would expect for a paperback original published in 1975: only seven short pieces, the highlights of which include Steven Paley's, written as a pastiche of the novel's newspaper, The Bellona Times and, for comic relief, Harlan Ellison's remarkably obtuse (but very well-written) diatribe from the Los Angeles Times, in which he confesses to having given up on the novel on page 361. Theodore Sturgeon's laudatory, but all-too-brief review from Galaxy mostly begs for a much longer analysis, but only Douglas Barbour's "The Autumnal City" comes close to providing it. Also for comic relief, but in a much different key from the Ellison, is Darrell Schweitzer's, "A Response to Myself," written in 2020 as a rebuttal to his own review written in 1975.

A second, even shorter section includes two respectful reviews in response to the Wesleyan University Press' trade paperback reissue of the novel, positive but not especially insightful.

The third section, "Delany on Dhalgren" is the most interesting, no matter that one might expect a writer writing about his own work to be fraught with the risk of intellectual onanism.

What we get instead is a serious writer reflecting seriously on his own work. Delany does so both under his own name, and as K. Leslie Steiner in a 50 page (self) analysis that is without a doubt the high point of the collection. Steiner/Delany starts by pointing out that, despite its reputation, sex scenes take up a very small percentage of the novel — 35 pages out of nearly 900 — but spends the bulk of the essay discussing Dhalgren's structure, symbolic and mythological allusions and its literary influences. (Yes, Jane Austen and Cervantes among them, not to mention Gertrude Stein and, of course (if you're familiar with Delany's work), Jacques Lacan.)

If ever a reader wanted to know what the author meant, "Some Remarks Toward a Reading of Dhalgren" is a masterclass in how to do it right.

Being tone deaf to poetry more often than not, I'll pass by John Ashbery's "The Instruction Manual" without comment except to note that it is there.

The penultimate section, Critical Reactions, includes the kind of academic analysis that doesn't usually interest me, and opens with a poor stereotype of the form, Steven Shaviro's brief essay, "Amnesia", which concludes that, "Dhalgren is a huge, beautiful paean to wasting time." Er, thanks for that, Professor Shaviro.

Jean Mark Gawron's "An 'Introduction'", from the 1977 Gregg Press edition, on the other hand, is a long and meaty essay of the type one tends to find at the beginning of 19th century classics (which think should always be placed after the work in question, though Dhalgren is a novel that is harder to "spoil" for first time readers than most. Gawron suggests that Delany inserted himself into the novel, as a chain in Delany's long-standing interest in art as reflection of reality, and reality's reflections of art.

Mary Kay Bray's "Rites of Reversal: Double Consciousness in Delany's Dhalgren" looks at the fact that Delany is black as a starting point to examine Dhalgren against archetypal American novels, including Huckleberry Finn, Billy Budd, The Great Gatsby and even Catch-22, as heroes' journeys. Unsurprisingly, Bray finds Kidd's progress (or "progress") to be an ironic reversal of classic tropes.

Kenneth R. James' "Subverted Equations: G. Spencer Brown's Laws of Form and Samuel R. Delany's Analytics of Attention," very much lives up to its title. It is a dense essay which examines Delany's use of Brown's Laws of Form, a mathematical treatise that, if I understand the gist correctly, Delany disagreed with but found interesting enough to grapple with in fiction. James spends more Delany's brilliant fantasy tetralogy, Flight From Nevèrÿon, than on Dhalgren itself, discussing that series' use of inversions and deconstructions of ideas. It's an interesting essay but I fear much of it went over my head.

The book's final piece is an interview with Delany, not about Dhalgren, but about his pornographic novel Hogg, which was written concurrently with Dhalgren, but not published until nearly 20 years later. I have yet to get through Hogg, but even without it, the interview is an extremely interesting look at the creative process of a very deliberate artist.

* * *

As I mentioned above, one thing On Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren will not give you is any sense of just how funny the novel can be (indeed, Delany's fiction — again, like Tolkien's — almost always includes humour. Not slapstick or situational humour, but usually character-based bits of dialogue that work in the same way your friend saying something unexpectedly funny at a party can. Neither do any of the essays examine how fully-developed, how real, its characters are. Delany might have been working on Dhalgren as a formal experiment in fiction, but he never neglected what is, to my mind, a writer's primary duty: to tell a story that, yes, will delight, amuse and sometimes deeply move a reader. Delany's fiction always works on multiple levels, but never skimps on story.

This isn't the volume of essays I wanted it to be, but it is precisely what the title promises: a collection of writing about a novel which I believe will continue to stand the test of time as a book that readers want to enjoy. If it does not cover everything I wish it did, what it does cover it covers quite well — perhaps in another five, or 10, or 20 years, Bill Wood will have sufficient material at hand to release a revised and much expanded version of it. I hope so, anyway.

Or maybe, if I hope to ever read the kind of essay about Dhalgren I missed in this book, I'll need to write it myself.

(Originally posted on my blog, Edifice Rex.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Only approximately one half of this book is interesting, or even readable, by the intelligent fan of Dhalgren. This contains contemporary reviews of the several editions from 1975-1996, which are relevant by virtue of their currency with the original publication dates. And honestly, the irony, in hindsight, of the bad reviews is funny to read. Also in this part are comments by Delany himself on Dhalgren’s writing and meaning - very illuminating.

The second half of this book contains several critical reactions written in the nearly impenetrable language of formal literary criticism. Even the titles have no meaning except to the very few who have studied this arcane field. For example, “Subverted Equations: G. Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form and Samuel R. Delany’s Analytics of Attention.” What??? This comes with weird little geometric drawings of shaded right angles and dots, as if to clarify something not understood in any case. Essentially it’s all incomprehensible, virtually unreadable to almost everyone, through no fault of their own.

Probably you could find all the material in the first half online and spare the book purchase, thus avoiding the embarrassment of feeling stupid when confronted by the second half.

Good cover though.

[Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Almost as exciting to me as a new book by Samuel R. Delany, is a new book on Delany; and since Dhalgren holds a special place for me, seeing this on the shelves (well, virtual shelves) particularly pleased me, and I purchased it at my first opportunity.

Dhalgren, for the three of you who don't know, is a massive and unconventional novel published in 1975 (but actually available in bookstores as early as December of 1974), which has, across the years, sold far north of a million copies. Not a lot for a paperback novel, but huge for SF, especially for SF published in those times without a movie tie-in. It influenced not only my literary taste but my actual life in a variety of ways, mostly good.

Alas; I had read something like half of the book's content before, and own most of that half in one form or another. That half is good stuff, but I really did not need another copy of it. The other half, however, was new to me and is sufficient to make me happy with the purchase.

The book is divided into six sections.

The first section is "Contemporary Reviews", which is a great deal of fun. There are seven entries here, only one of which -- Theodore Sturgeon's near-hagiographic Galaxy Bookshelf review -- I had actually seen Back In The Day. (Yes, children, I am old. Now get off my lawn. Well, if I had a lawn.) It begins with a student's review which is designed to look like a page of the Bellona Times, the rather bizarre newspaper that plays a major part in the book as one of three embedded texts seen in fragments. There are two reviews by New York Times book critic Gerald Jonas (one from the NYT, one some months later from Penthouse, of all places). Most delightful to this reader is Harlan Ellison's "Breakdown of a Breakthrough Novel", an absolutely devastating review of which Delany later said -- from memory as I'm too lazy to look it up -- "I wonder what it means when your most vituperant critic is the one to hit the nail on the head?" There is another negative review by Darrell Schweitzer, who adds a years-later note in which he mans up and admits he was wrong about at least part of what he had to say.

Section two is reviews of the 1996 Wesleyan Press reprint. Some insights, and all new to me, but not the most interesting part of the book.

That would be section three, "Delany on Dhalgren", in which Delany, who tends to evade discussing his own work, does. Interestingly, in the first of these pieces (which I had, yes, read before), Delany speaks of the book from "outside", rather than going into a discussion of its interior matter. K. Leslie Steiner, who is anopen pseudonym, contributes "Some Remarks Toward a Reading of Dhalgren", a useful and insightful approach to, well, reading Dhalgren. Next is a section of an interview which has previously appeared in Delany's collection of Silent Interviews. And, finally, "Looking Back at the Autumnal City", almost a reverie, which I had not to my recollection seen before.

Section four, "Sources", consists of a single poem, "The Instruction Manual" by John Ashbery. This is generally held to have been of some influence on Dhalgren, based largely on a passing and possibly coincidental reference in the book. I had not read it before, as I had been unable to find a copy in my local library (my library-fu is not particularly strong) and am glad to have a copy. I see some possibilities of influence: the subject matter is quite different but the method seems contributive.

Three of the five essays in section four, "Critical Reactions", were familiar to me. One of these is Jean-Marc Gawron's rather spectacular "Introduction" to the Gregg Press hardback edition of Dhalgren. The other two, by Robert Elliot Fox and Kenneth R. James, originally appeared in a Delany symposium called Ash of Stars, edited by James Sallis. There are here in addition a rather short piece by Steven Shaviro called "Amnesia", and "Rites of Reversal: Double Consciousness in Delany's Dhalgren, a reading of the book in the light of W.E.B. du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk, and its observation that marginalized people -- i.e. Black folks in America -- see themselves, not as they themselves from the inside, but as the privileged or "central" class see them, as from the outside. (That is a gross oversimplification of a quite radical concept.)

Finally, the sixth part -- also one piece -- is "The Making of Hogg", an interview in which Delany discusses the interwoven writing and roads to publication of both Dhalgren and Hogg, the latter a pornographic but not terribly erotic novel about a boy who enslaves himself to a truck driver who makes a living raping women for pay. (Apparently a few such people actually exist.)

On the balance, I quite enjoyed reading this volume, even the pieces I had read before. So that's a recommendation, for those who enjoy this sort of thing.

[Tamahome · Rating 3 out of 5]

Collecting some quotes.

"I think a good number of Dhalgren’s more incensed readers, the ones bewildered or angered by the book, simply cannot read the proper distinction between sex and society and the nature and direction of the causal arrows between them, a vision of which lies just below the novel’s surface and which gives the book its logical coherence...It renders a very long book a mere mass of unordered, quotidian psycho/social detail."

"Thus to describe an object was to generate a web of commentary, just beyond direct apprehension yet nevertheless strongly felt as one reads the texts at hand on the politics, economics, and religion of both the material and the fictive world, charging the whole work with significance and a sense of coherent worldly knowledge. This is what all those descriptions of furniture, fashion, fabrics, and carriages are doing in the novels of Balzac."

""…The rubrics running pages left or right, which we print in slightly smaller type, are marginal (sometimes rather wide) entries made along the sides of our typescript at somewhat narrower spacing; most probably they represent “entries in quarter-sized, near illegible scrawl all over the margins”—that is, entries of a later date than the one beside them we print in ordinary sized typeface. (Note also that the rubric which breaks off marginally to the last entry in the notebook continues as the major entry just two previous to this.) (p.662)" — We wonder how many readers who have been baffled by “what happens in Dhalgren” have stopped to make use of this extremely important note on ordering the events of the text. "

"Dhalgren has outsold Gravity’s Rainbow—by about 100,000 copies: we share a mass market publisher and statistics leak. But Gravity’s Rainbow is a fantasy about a war most of its readers don’t really remember, whereas Dhalgren is in fairly pointed dialogue with all the depressed and burned-out areas of America’s great cities."

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

I give this five stars because it is valiant attempt at analyzing and contextualizing one of the most intricate and complex novels of the 20th Century. The novel itself resists reduction to synopsis and interpretation is an open field. Hard to be wrong when the possibilities of being right cover SO much. But it does work as a set of guideposts that can help one get a handle on the novel it studies. You should already be sympathetic to literary criticism done at a high level.

[Andres · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some Fantastic Insights...

...on what is arguably one of my all-time favorite novels. If you've read Dhalgren and loved it, or even if it only perplexed or intrigued you, then this book will be a welcome companion. Needless to say, this book is pointless, unless you've read Dhalgren.

[Drgnkingdom · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know a lot of this is available online but I haven’t read most of it. To me, the critical essays in the middle make the book worth it. I admire Delany’s reticence to talk about his own work but did legit get a lot out of his essays here.
Last two essays lost me because I’m not a math guy and I’m not interested in reading Hogg. 3.5/5