Central images include mirrors, lenses, and prisms, devices that focus, reflect-and distort. The Kid looks in a mirror and sees not himself, but someone who looks an awful lot like Samuel R.

Time passes differently for different characters. Spoiler warning: If you want to figure out the secret of the novel as you read Dhalgren, then stop reading this review right now! If you want to know the secret before you start, this is what the novel is about: the experience of existence inside a novel. But-fair warning-the central nature of the disaster, of its strange devastations and disruptions, remains a puzzle for many readers, sometimes after several readings. If you find the early pages rough going, push on the story soon becomes clear and fascinating. While most of this big, ambitious, deeply detailed novel is beautifully pellucid, the opening pages will be difficult for some: the novel starts with the second half of an incomplete sentence, in the viewpoint of a man who doesn't know who he is. The Kid is emblematic of those who live in the new Bellona, who are the young, the poor, the mad, the violent, the outcast-the marginalized.ĭhalgren is many things, but instantly accessible isn't one of them. But others are drawn to the devastated city, among them the Kid, a white/American Indian man who can't remember his own name. The catastrophe is confined to Bellona, and most of the inhabitants have fled.

Dhalgren is a brilliant novel about sex, gender, race, class, art, and identity.Ī mysterious disaster has stricken the midwestern American city of Bellona, and its aftereffects are disturbing: a city block burns down and is intact a week later clouds cover the sky for weeks, then part to reveal two moons a week passes for one person when only a day passes for another. Dhalgren is controversial, challenging, and scandalous. Dhalgren may be read with equal validity as SF, magic realism, or metafiction. Dhalgren is one of the all-time bestselling science fiction novels. What is Dhalgren? Dhalgren is one of the greatest novels of 20th-century American literature.

Dhalgren goodreads