Dhalgren - Literary Significance and Criticism

Literary Significance and Criticism

With over a million sales, Dhalgren is by far Delany's most popular book—and also his most controversial. Critical reaction to Dhalgren has ranged from high praise (both inside and outside the science fiction community) to extreme dislike (mostly within the community). However, Dhalgren was a commercial success, selling a half million copies in the first two years, and over a million copies worldwide since then, with "its appeal reaching beyond the usual SF readership."

Its lack of a linear plot or even a single consistent chronological narrative, its graphically-described homo-, hetero-, and bisexuality, Delany's "modernist" verbal pyrotechnics, and use of stream of consciousness writing has given it a reputation as a difficult novel. It has been compared to Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow—not so much because of the styles in which the two are written, but in terms of the complexity and ambition of the two works.

Some quotes from the back cover of the Vintage Books paperback edition of Dhalgren:

• "a brilliant tour de force." - Raleigh News and Observer
• "I consider Delany not only one of the most important SF writers of the present generation, but a fascinating writer in general who has invented a new style." -Umberto Eco
• "The very best ever to come out of the science fiction field... A literary landmark." -Theodore Sturgeon

The Libertarian Review stated that Dhalgren "seems ... to stake a better claim than anything else published in this country in the last quarter century (excepting only Gass's Omensetter's Luck and Nabokov's Pale Fire) to a permanent place as one of the enduring monuments of our national literature."

The Telluride Times-Journal wrote, "Altogether, Dhalgren is a unique and powerful literary masterpiece."

Darrell Schweitzer, writing in Outworlds, Sixth Anniversary Issue (#27, 1976) stated that "Dhalgren is, I think, the most disappointing thing to happen to science fiction since Robert Heinlein made a complete fool of himself with I Will Fear No Evil."

Theodore Sturgeon called Dhalgren "the very best ever to come out of the science fiction field ... a literary landmark." By contrast, fellow writers such as Philip K. Dick and Harlan Ellison hated the novel. When the book appeared, Ellison in the L. A. Times (Sunday, February 23, 1975, p. 64) wrote: "I must be honest. I gave up after 361 pages. I could not permit myself to be gulled or bored any further." In an interview 27 years later, he said: "When Dhalgren came out, I thought it was awful, still do ... I ... threw it against a wall." Dick called Dhalgren "a terrible book" that "should have been marketed as trash. ... I just started reading it and said this is the worst trash I've ever read. And I threw it away."

Bellona, Destroyer of Cities, a stage adaptation of (or sequel to) Dhalgren, was produced at The Kitchen in New York City in April 2010.