Re: Dhalgren's first and last line

As far as I know, Erich, that's a new reading, a valid reading, and 
an evocative reading of some of the most read words in Delany's work. 
Congratulations! Besides underscoring (one of) the central emotional 
weight(s) of the novel -- the paranoia of being the protagonist in a 
realist novel -- I like how it energizes-by-overdetermination the 
verb "come", what with almost the first (verified) plot incident of 
the book being an orgasm.

I remember thinking the envelope was a bit of a cheat even at the 
time, since it has U.S.A. where the state should go, but, yeah, it's 
got historical moment built in too. (More with the L.A. return 
address, actually.)

Ray

At 09:47 AM 4/10/2006, Erich Schneider wrote:
>I just finished rereading _Dhalgren_ a few days ago, approximately 7
>years after my last rereading.. Whenever I reread it, it is like
>coming back to a city I visited some years ago, and being pleased that
>all of the things about it I found interesting are still there, but
>there's usually something new that surprises me.
>
>Anyway, reading it this time I realized that the famous first/last
>line, "I have come to / to wound the autumnal city", actually can be
>read literally: "I have 'come to' to wound the autumnal city", with
>"come to" meaning "to wake from unconsciousness" or something like
>that. And this lets you read the end of the novel as "I have awoken...".
>That never occurred to me before.
>
>I also thought, on reading the fragment in the "Anathemata" section
>where the envelope from the Richards' mailbox is described, that it
>could not be written that way today, due to the total adoption of ZIP
>codes; Delany would have to have made up a ZIP code for Bellona,
>making it much less of an "anonymous American city".
>
>--
>Erich Schneider  [email protected]



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