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.

Two out of three: the double "to" is discussed in ... hell, I _think_
it's the introduction to the Gregg edition, not sure. At any rate,
yes, it's very valid and not an insignificant achievement to recognize
it without prompting. (I came within an inch and missed; I noted the
double "to" and concluded that it was a clue that the book wasn't
"really" circular. Spiral, I thought, and evolved a complex double-helical
model that involved one of the women Kid meets coming into and
going out of Bellona going through a set of experiences that mirrors
(prisms? lenses?) Kidd's in the course of the novel. All wasted, since
"come to" is much more elegant and clearly correct.

>Congratulations! Besides underscoring (one of) the central emotional
>weight(s) of the novel -- the paranoia of being the protagonist in a
>realist novel --

H'mmm. My current model of _Dhalgren_ is almost the opposite of
realism -- I think that the Kidd is precisely contained in and exactly
constrained by the text. This explains, for example, the kid's odd
lapses of memory. When something is skipped over by the narrator
-- as is perfectly normal in a novel -- then he has no memory of it,
because, for him as for us, it never happened.

It is by now cliched, and though true probably an oversimplification,
to suggest that the odd narrative discontinuities of _Dhalgren_ are
Delany's attempt to have the reader experience (if vicariously) the
way his extreme dyslexia presents the world to him. . . . .

>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 don't want to deny the validity of this ... but if the book is
circular (or even helical) then the "I have come..." happens right
_before_ the "incident with a nymph," so in fact he has not yet
come, at least that time (except that he has, and will again...).

Of course, he has come many times in the course of the novel.

>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.)

I don't think it was a cheat ... Delany grew up before ZIP codes, and
the novel was at least significantly written before the USPS (back
then, I think, still the USPD) began the big push to get people to use
them on all correspondence. I still remember "Brooklyn 9, New York"
and suchlike. But leaving out the state was clearly writerly artifice
intruding on the internal reality of the text... something that (I think)
happens so much in the course of _Dhalgren_ that it hardly constitutes
a cheat -- rather, a more obvious than usual move on the part of the
writer.

--Dan'l




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