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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
Then there are several pages of and other...
somewhat disorienting narrative
about a man being disoriented.
He meets a woman and has
sex with her. The wind
obscures all attempts at Recently, I attempted
speech at first. to read this passage
aloud on to tape... Over and over:
There's a short it was strikingly "wind", "leaves".
dialog where it's repetitious, mildly
established that embarrassing, and didn't Delany has commented
the main character work very well. elsewhere on the
can't remember his differences between
name, though he written and spoken
knows (or thinks he words... Dhalgren
knows) much else was clearly not
about his history. WANDERING_PURPOSE written to be read
aloud.
In the midst of the first
sex scene, there's this bit Delany himself, we all
about the main character's learned much later, finds
hands being "ugly". "ugly" hands like this to
be tremendously erotic, a
The way this is played -- piece of information that
at first -- makes it look colors (flips?) the
like a horror movie bit: meanings here.
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 not Dhalgren = Grendhal
*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 that say that he would
he must be much older if So then the date necessarily object
he was born then (she is a decade or so to some over-
was born in '47 and claims later, but no more interpretation,
to be much older). than two. (She either.)
can't be *all*
that 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 story,
there's a strong
suggestion of time- But if Dhalgren *is*
travel or time-slip. science fiction, The flow of time
it's not *that* kind. is either not as
strange, or stranger
than that.
The woman leads him
into a cave, where I've heard it claimed
he finds a string of there's some mythological There is a large
prisms, mirrors and lenses, tie-in to this... Jason brass brazier on
and wraps them around discovering the chains the floor of the
his body. that bound Prometheus? cave.
And here we have Well, Prometheus is
another major an appropriate deity
fake-out/red to invoke in an SF tale. Or in
herring... a tale
And Jason is yet about SF.
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 Though his
fantastic events, perhaps amnesia clearly
by warping the main precedes this.
character's perception.
In retrospect, this might seem
as plausible an "explanation"
as any, because -- in
retrospect -- we realize that
no explanation will be
endorsed 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
lenses: It is symbolic of chains (Compare to the
of words, which themselves "Helix of
distort, reflect, or focus the Semi-precious
real, without being the real. Stones": Moments in
time, fragments of
meaning...)
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
which any communication would be SYSTEMS_OF_THE_MADMAN
impossible.
"All you know I know"
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