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From: phil@nte-scg.UUCP (Phil Trubey)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Samual Delany's Dahlgren
Message-ID: <124@nte-scg.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 7-Aug-85 09:24:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: nte-scg.124
Posted: Wed Aug  7 09:24:34 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 7-Aug-85 12:31:34 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: Northern Telecom Electronics, Ottawa, Ontario
Lines: 35

Tim Ryan writes...

> My machine/net doesn't have postnews (they won't let us have it for
> whatever reason) so I'm forced to reply by mail. Perhaps you could
> summarize for the net? I did manage to make all the way through
> _Dhalgren_, as well as a couple of other Delany novels, though I only
> remember _Triton_.  Delany's style seems to be that of taking normal
> human beings and casting them into an environment of difference, where
> every person and every situation is somehow mutated from our "normal"
> world.  _Dhalgren_ ends up being a circle -- the main character ends up
> leaving the city, only to be in the same situation that he was in at
> the start of the novel.  I don't think there was a "moral" to the
> story, either.  I saw the story more as a character study.  One of the
> things that sticks in my mind was that the main character had badly
> disfigured hands.  Somewhere in the middle of the novel, it is
> mentioned that when the war/conflict/catastrophe occurred, one of the
> characters helped some people get out of a mental institution, and
> helped a young man who's hands were badly burned.  Perhaps the main
> character is totally insane?  I certainly agree with the original
> poster and with you that _Dhalgren_ is a bizarre novel.  For a short,
> classic piece of Delaney, I recommend "Time Considered as a Helix of
> Semiprecious Stones."  It won a Hugo and is in _The Hugo Winners_.
> _Time . . ._ is also more in keeping with what I remember of the rest
> of Delaney's novel.




-- 
		         Phil Trubey

			 Northern Telecom Electronics Ltd.
			 Ottawa, Ontario

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