Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany

Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

In Dhalgren, the town of Bellona is isolated. It's somewhere in the central United States, but we don't know exactly where. People live in a kind of chaotic anarchy, with no authorities present to enforce order. Occasionally strange things happen in the sky, but generally life continues with little interference from whatever has affected the town. The story follows the Kid, a wanderer who comes into town without knowing even his own name, but becomes part of the community.

Dhalgren is a very different kind of escapism than I usually look for in science fiction or fantasy. There's very little in the way of explaining why the world is the way it is, or how. Instead it's almost entirely about people finding ways to keep living their lives. Some go with the flow of things, some fight against it. Bellona is a place of benevolent anarchy, where everyone pretty much does whatever they like and things will largely just work out.

There are a lot of themes running through this book. Sex is a big one, present at the very beginning, and explicitly pornographic at times. Homosexuality, multiple partners, wide promiscuity - it reads to me as if Delaney was trying to touch on everything from the 1960s free love movement. Racial tensions appear as well, with some fairly bigoted characters as well as prominent black figures. Several characters, including the Kid, exhibit symptoms of mental illness. There's plenty of drug and alcohol use, sometimes to the point of abuse.

But it's just as interesting what doesn't appear. There are basically no economics - everyone just takes what they need from abandoned stores, squats in the park or abandoned homes, even drinks are free at the bar. There's no religion - the one church that we see is a community center but not a place for traditional worship, and the characters largely ignore the spiritual (at least in a religious context). And there's no government or other controlling authority, or any attempts to form one.

Taken together, the things that Delaney includes and chooses to leave out gives the impression of being unhappy with many realities of the world - living under authority, restrictions on sexual expression, economic hardships - and describing a world that simply removes them. I don't know if that's how Delaney felt himself, or it was a viewpoint he was trying to capture. I think it succeeds to some extent, although it's clearly not a stable reality. The reader can see that at some point, either resources will begin to run low or someone will get power-hungry, and the anarchy will turn much less benevolent. But that time doesn't come during the book.

All told, I can't say I particularly liked Dhalgren. It says some interesting things on quite a few topics, and that part I did enjoy. However, I just couldn't get behind the idea that you can take a random city full of people, remove the constraints mentioned above, and end up with a chaotic-but-largely-benign utopia of personal freedom and sexual expression. Someone or something has to make an effort to get that scenario and keep it going, and Dhalgren doesn't have any such controlling force. Without that, it feels like reading one long dream sequence rather than a commentary on reality, which is just not my thing.

Darius the Great Is Not Okay by Adib Khorram

Darius the Great Is Not Okay by Adib Khorram
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Darius the Great Is Not Okay is written from the perspective of a Persian-American teenage boy who struggles with depression and anxiety. It's a young adult novel, but it says plenty of good things for adults as well.

The story starts with Darius at home in Portland, Oregon, where he doesn't seem to fit. Teased by his peers, uncomfortable with his father, unpopular at school, overweight, feeling neither truly Persian or American...he's got plenty of reasons to feel out of place. Then his family takes a trip to his mother's home in Iran, which is stressful but also gives him a different perspective, the opportunity to meet family in person for the first time, and where he finds a friend for life.

I know something about being a teenager who doesn't feel like he fits in - don't we all? Some of the situations Darius finds himself in, and his reactions, were extremely familiar. But other parts - Darius' split heritage, his treatment for depression - stood out to me as they hadn't been part of my own experience. Khorram does an excellent job of helping the reader understand how those aspects of Darius' life impacted everything, from how he relates to his family to his ability to communicate to his peer interactions.

This book was a quick read for me, and Khorram's simple and clear writing style is great. There's plenty of humor to balance some of those heavy psychological topics. For me, the fact that Darius' thoughts are laced with references to Star Trek and Lord of the Rings was a big plus. There are also a lot of discussions of tea, for those heavily into that.

I'd recommend that everyone read Darius the Great Is Not Okay. If your personal experience has parallels with that of Darius, you'll find a story that hits close to home. If not, then you'll find a window into a world of split cultural heritage and living with depression. An excellent experience either way.

The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey

The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Monkey Wrench Gang is a rant against wilderness development and commercialism through the lens of outrageous ecoterrorism. It's often funny, too, and on occasion deep. But mostly, it's really, really wordy.

The first thing I noticed about this book is just how many words it takes Abbey to say anything. No simple description will do. Entire paragraphs are devoted to what could easily have been described as "the car moved forward" or "cars full of wild teenagers zoomed past on the highway" - and those are just a couple of examples from the first chapter. I appreciate detailed and descriptive writing, but this was excessive. Antoine de Saint-Exupery, he of the famous quote "Perfection is Achieved Not When There Is Nothing More to Add, But When There Is Nothing Left to Take Away", would not have approved.

Once you've dug the characters and plot out of the pile of words, The Monkey Wrench Gang isn't bad. A small group of arguably insane friends got roaming around the southwestern US, protesting against development encroaching on the wilderness. These aren't symbolic protests; they inflict destruction ranging from burning billboards to crippling heavy equipment to felling bridges. This isn't a dark, gritty, realistic description of ecoterrorism; it's more the telling of a larger-than-life legend, a play set on the stage of a disappearing wilderness.

This is a novel from the 1970s, and thus it's no surprise that some of the other themes of the time are also prominent. Marijuana appears regularly. One of the main characters is a Vietnam veteran, suffering from mental trauma from his experience. Another is a woman living well outside the traditional female role of wife and mother. We're used to all of this now, largely because of the cultural influence of these kinds of books, movies, songs, etc.

I'd have liked The Monkey Wrench Gang more without about half the words, but even so it was an interesting read. A bit of cultural history that informs the things we see in today's books and other media.