Trippy SF book from the 70s

January 26, 2006 3:39 PM

I'm trying to remember the name of a trippy science fiction book from the 70s, I think.

I read it about 10 years ago, as a dog eared paperback in Thailand, where no other reading material was available. It was about this kind of traveler guy, who goes to this town inhabited by sort of post-apocolypse hippies. I think they take a lot of drugs. The prose is written in a very poetic style. At night, something weird would happen in the town. Strange neon-lit animals in the shape of scorpions and spiders would come to the town, and the inhabitants would ... maybe ride them? I'm a bit fuzzy on the details as you can see. I have the idea that the name of the book was the name of this town. It was a fairly thick paperback, probably 400+ pages.

posted by Dag Maggot to writing & language (16 comments total)

Dhalgren?
posted by matildaben at 4:08 PM on January 26, 2006

Could be Dhalgren.

1974. 800+ pages.
posted by Justinian at 4:10 PM on January 26, 2006

Sounds like Dhalgren by Samuel Delaney. It's a very hard book to read but you'll be glad you did, if you get through it all.
posted by camworld at 5:00 PM on January 26, 2006

Coincidentally I was turned onto this book by an English professor (in the early 1990s) who used to spend 3-4 months of every year in Thailand. I wonder if the copy you read was one he left behind.
posted by camworld at 5:03 PM on January 26, 2006

I have come to wound the autumnal city...

Another book in a similar vein although mercifully much shorter is Brian Aldiss's Barefoot in the Head.
posted by meehawl at 5:32 PM on January 26, 2006

Dhalgren is never clearly sourced in the book; the city's name is Bellona. I read somewhere that perhaps Dhalgren is the amnesiac protagonist's lost name.
posted by mwhybark at 6:53 PM on January 26, 2006

Another vote for it being Dhalgren, one of my all-time favorite books.
posted by mkhall at 7:29 PM on January 26, 2006

Yes, I think that Dhalgren it is. What a strange book it was. Now I can reread it. Thanks all.
posted by Dag Maggot at 7:47 PM on January 26, 2006

Wow - great link mwhybark. Interesting article comparing Dhalgren to Katrina ravaged NO.
posted by Dag Maggot at 7:50 PM on January 26, 2006

*maybe sort of spoilers, if you haven't read it yet or are worried about a minor detail in this slab of a book*

Dhalgren is the last name of a person on a list of names that Kid finds, right? I think the first name was William. Plus, Kid finds himself repeating it over and over once, eh?

I've been planning on getting that first line tattooed on my arm for a while now...
posted by hototogisu at 8:29 PM on January 26, 2006

spoilers? ... i've read that book several times and still haven't figured out enough of a plot to have spoilers in it ... that's not a criticism, by the way, it's a good book

rudolph wurlitzer's "nog" was somewhat similar in tone if you can find a copy ...
posted by pyramid termite at 11:02 PM on January 26, 2006

All of Delaney's work is great. Check out Aye and Gomorrah, a colection of his short stories for excellent reading and re-reading. He is one of a handful of science fiction authors who transcends the genre. Dhalgren is a difficult read and pretty hard to make sense of in a traditional narrative sense but it gnaws at you like few books can.
posted by JJ86 at 6:20 AM on January 27, 2006

Yeah, seconding the comment about leetting go of any expectations of traditional narrative: there are incidents, but little plot, and certainly none of the usual setups/signposts/climaxes/resolutions found in standard narrative. (Those that do exist are generally dropped in purposely to confound those expectations.) Read it for the language, the imagery, the meditations on the urban and the modern and social dislocations. Don't wait for explanations, resolutions, or a final decoding of meaning. And enjoy.

Oh, and there's lots of sex, too.
posted by jokeefe at 10:40 AM on January 27, 2006

Lots and lots of sex, in many permutations.

A couple of years ago I heard Chip Delaney read the first section at the Miami Book Fair. The poetic cadence of his reading gave me a lot of insight into his own thoughts on the book.
posted by mkhall at 5:38 PM on January 27, 2006

His name's spelled 'Delany', not Delaney, by the way.

One of my all-time favorite books.
posted by ikkyu2 at 9:30 PM on January 27, 2006

Delany's Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand is also wonderful: classic, enormous space opera with lashings of hot sub-dom gay sex. It's like Heinlein, only without the denial.
posted by meehawl at 6:48 AM on February 2, 2006