discovery while reading *Dhalgren* again

I am reading *Dhalgren* again for the first time in about ten years.
My experience is different each time; for example, since my last
reading I have moved to San Francisco, and Joaquim Faust's
statement that he "sold the *Tribe* on the corner of Market and Van
Ness" now means more to me.

But another discovery I made on this most recent reading: when Kidd
visits Tak's penthouse for the first time, he notes science fiction
novels in Tak's library, by Disch, Zelazny, and Russ, the latter being
"something called *The Female Man*. Looking it up, I learned that *The
Female Man* had not been published when *Dhalgren* was written or went
to press; *Dhalgren* was published in January, 1975, while *The Female
Man* was published in February of 1975 (and was also a "Frederik Pohl
Selection" of Bantam Books). I can only imagine what *Dhalgren*'s 
original readers experienced when they first read of this nonexistent
work by Russ, only to have it appear for the first time a short while
later! It must've added to the sense of *Dhalgren* being set in the
indeterminately near future.

(To those of you who have not done so already, I recommend finding
Russ's short story "A Game of Vlet" in her collection _The Zanzibar
Cat_, to see how it inspired vlet as depicted in _Trouble on Triton_.)

-- 
Erich Schneider  [email protected]


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Posted by: Erich Schneider <[email protected]>
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