There are definitely places where the novel bogs down a bit, but Delany’s writing, I think, is worth getting through, even in the slow spots. Though he’s forgotten his name, he recalls many fragments of his life.” … The strange woman has sex with him, draws out a bit of his background. He doesn’t know his purpose, other than to survive each moment with his consciousness intact. AmazonBarnes & NobleBooks A Hudson BooksellersPowellsTargetWalmart. In a lyrical, almost incantatory opening section, a nameless young man meets a shadowy woman who asks him where he is going. Known mostly as the Kid, because he has forgotten his name and he looks much younger than he is, the narrator struggles not just to write his poems but to understand the relationship between writing, his mind and the world around him. Delany seems to have many detractors as a work of science fiction but I find it a powerful portrait of a fractured mind, of a poet in dystopia, of a city broken the way its main narrator feels he might be breaking. Here’s how I introduced my review of it at – I do love this book, though I realize it just doesn’t work for many people. I’ve been tilting at this windmill too long, and have tried to read it so often. Help me figure it out, because I want to finish it. Is that right? What else is there going on.Īgain, this is a genuine ask: please help me get it. But if so, great! I’ve already gotten the payoff from the book.

And maybe that’s the point? Maybe I’m supposed to wonder what’s happening and why. If you consult Amazon, unreliable bellwether that it is, you will find. I find the book, so far, almost incomprehensible. Delanyis the long-awaited major novel by a writer who. I want to know what’s happening here because I don’t understand it. What is it that makes this book such a classic to so many? Can you help me? If you love this book, I’d love to know what you loved about it, and why. Dhalgren presents two ideas, postmodernism and psychogeography fiction brought to life and a city that determines the lives of its inhabitants. This time (the fourth time), I’m about 180 pages in, and I’m dragging. A young man who has forgotten his name and his past, soon to be dubbed The Kid, wanders into the city in an attempt to find himself. The first time, I made it about 60 pages in.

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