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FUNCTION_OF_WORD_PATTERNS
January 19, 2005
February 10, 2005
to wound the autumnal city.
So howled out for the world to
give him a name.
DHALGREN
The in-dark answered with wind.
All you know I know: careening astronauts
and bank clerks glancing at the clock
before lunch; actresses cowling at
light-ringed mirrors and freight elevator
operators grinding a thumbful of grease
on a steel handle; student riots; know
that dark women in bodegas shook their
heads last week because in six months
prices have risen outlandishly; how
coffee tastes after you've held it in
your mouth, cold a whole minute.
Reading Delany's "Dhalgren"...
Take it step by step.
Reading as Delany has been
It begins with a known to read others.
sentence fragment, (Or in something like a
goes through some similar fashion.)
pretentious (windy?)
statements that
establish a tone, an (A trick
atmosphere, without Much later, we will find borrowed
immediately resolving the beginning of this from Joyce,
into sense. fragmented sentence, at I think.)
the close of the book.
There's a choice of:
There is something I have come to wound the autumnal city.
odd going on with I have come to to wound the autumnal city.
pronouns...
And here: who can the
Experienced fiction "I" be that is speaking?
readers expect the
"person" to be There are only two
established quickly guesses: (1) the Kid;
(third? first? the or (2) the author.
rather rare second?). We also
Instead, the implied expect that Reading to it from
third person "he" is a name will the end (where the
elided-- though strongly be given narrative has
suggested by a quickly for the shifted to first
following "him": main person), it seems
character. like the Kid.
So howled out for the
world to give him a name. (There are Considering it
notable wrapped around,
But then immediately exceptions I suggest it
afterwards in the next with first looks more like
paragraph (the fourth? person, the author.
or is it the third and a though.)
half?) there is a "you" Delany himself,
and then an "I": Later in this is stating his
narrative the purpose. He has
All you know I know "amnesia" card arrived (or
is played, awakened) in
Who is the "you" addressed? which back order to "wound
Who is the "I" speaking? fills the the autumnal
meaning of city".
It seems likely, in this "howl".
retrospect -- once the The citadel
third person narrative of science
is established -- that fiction
this can only be the itself?
reader and the author. The voice
remains Autumnal.
unstable, A fading
though. citadel?
I -> He
He -> I
There's something
there about the
blurring of self WANDERING_PURPOSE written to be read
aloud.
In the midst of the first
sex scene, there's this bit Delany himself, we all learned much
about the main character's later, finds "ugly" hands like this
hands being "ugly". to be tremendously erotic, a piece
of information that colors (flips?)
The way this is played-- the meanings here.
at first-- makes it look
like a horror movie bit:
She pulled back. "Your *hands*--"
Veins like earthworms wiggled in the hair.
The skin was cement dry; his knuckles were
thick with scabbed callous. Blunt thumbs
lay on the place between her breast like
toads.
You know the routine: the woman is
having sex with a stranger, notices
something weird about him, and Monsters.
discovers-- oh no, oh my god he's Dhalgren = Grendhal
not *human*, he's a *monster* ... The monster reversed.
But it doesn't go that far. (Dhalgren never Through the
Instead, it backs off from goes too far into mirror...
this: what you expect.
When you expect it First he is
No, they were not deformed. to be misleading, warned of
But they were... *ugly*! then it stops trying scorpions,
to mislead.) then he becomes
Here, the narrative seems to a scorpion.
admit that it was misleading
(a rare admission in this book But the narrative (You know
as I remember it). The author is not misleading what you
tells you they were not, about the state of find when
because he knows you were mind of the woman: you go
thinking they were. she thought they were where they
deformed, at first. tell you
not to go?)
Has the viewpoint wandered
into *her* head? Not
precisely: the male
character experiences her
suprise at the same time
she does, he can see her
reactions (perhaps he
expects them, having seen
them before).
Feb 2005:
Then there's some dialog, Suddenly it dawns
where the main character's that the main
partial amnesia is established. character is
an echo of
There's a "recitation" of Wandering Angus.
questions that I like, but
don't recognize -- nor do This woman is the
I know if it is something It could creature (the sprite?)
that is to be recognized. easily be that Angus seeks.
some formula
Then there's a classic for plotting Look at all those
science fictional "hang stories. references to the
up": dates don't add moon... the Silver
up. The main character ("And what apples?
claims he knows when he is your
was born, (he says quest?") Eh: might not
1948, which I would be what Delany
guess is Delany's own had in mind.
date of birth), and The setting would
that he's 28. then be 1976.
(Which is not to
The woman insists say that he would
that he must be much So then the date is a decade necessarily object
older if he was born or so later, but no more than to some over-
then (she was born in two. (She can't be *all* that interpretation,
'47 and claims to be much older.) either.)
much older).
In the real world, this would be taken as
proof of a radically damaged memory; in
straight fiction-- say, a Hitchcock film--
it might mean the woman was lying to induce
self-doubt. But in a science fiction But if Dhalgren *is*
story, there's a strong suggestion of time- science fiction,
travel or time-slip. it's not *that* kind.
The flow of time
is either not as
strange, or stranger
than that.
The woman leads him
into a cave, where he
finds a string of
prisms, mirrors and I've heard it claimed
lenses, and wraps there's some mythological There is a large
them around his body. tie-in to this... Jason brass brazier on
discovering the chains the floor of the
And here we have that bound Prometheus? cave.
another major
fake-out/red Well, Prometheus is
herring... an appropriate deity
to invoke in an SF tale. Or in a tale
about SF.
And Jason is yet
another wanderer...
ORCHID_PETALS
I know at least one reader that jumped to
the hypothesis that this strange chain was
a science fictional talisman, which caused
all the later fantastic events, perhaps by
warping the main character's perception. Though his amnesia
clearly precedes this.
In retrospect, this might seem as
plausible an "explanation" as any, (Unless the apparent
because -- in retrospect -- we realize order of events is also
that no explanation will be endorsed a warped preception.)
by the author as the one true one.
Also in retrospect: it's easy to
spin a hypothesis of the
"literary significance" of this
chain of prisms, mirrors, and (Compare to the "Helix of
lenses: It is symbolic of chains Semi-precious Stones":
of words, which themselves Moments in time,
distort, reflect, or focus the fragments of meaning...)
real, without being the real.
And the fourth (third and a half?) paragraph
resolves into meaning: since the primary
focus (or one of them?) of this novel is
language itself, this list of things known
represents the massive amount of shared
background information -- context -- without SYSTEMS_OF_THE_MADMAN
which any communication would be impossible.
"All you know I know"
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