Description: Dhalgren by Sameul R. Delaney The sci-fi classic from Samuel R Delany. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description In one of the most profound and bestselling science fiction novels of all time, Samuel R. Delany has produced a novel "to stand with the best American fiction of the 1970s" (Jonathan Lethem, bestselling author of Fortress of Solitude).Bellona is a city at the dead center of the United States. Something has happened there.... The population has fled. Madmen and criminals wander the streets. Strange portents appear in the cloud-covered sky. Into this disaster zone comes a young man-poet, lover, and adventurer-known only as the Kid.Tackling questions of race, gender, and sexuality, Dhalgren is a literary marvel and groundbreaking work of American magical realism. Author Biography Samuel R. Delany is best known as the author of science fiction and fantasy novels, and his books, including Babel-17, have won both Hugo and Nebula Awards. He has also published several books of non-fiction, including critical studies of literature, a volume of memoirs and the best-selling Times Square Red, Times Square Blue. Born and raised in New York Citys Harlem, he is now a professor of creative writing and English at Temple University in Philadelphia. William Gibsons best-selling Neuromancer was the first book ever to win the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award and the Philip K. Dick Award. Author of many critically acclaimed novels, he is best known for the Neuromancer series, which includes Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive. Review "The very best ever to come out of the science fiction field... A literary landmark." - Theodore Sturgen; "A Joycean tour de force of a novel, Dhalgren...stake[s] a better claim than anything else in this last quarter-century...to a permanent place as one of the enduring monuments of our national literature." - The Libertarian Review Prizes Winner of Spectrum Awards (Hall of Fame) 2002 Review Quote "A Joycean tour de force of a novel,Dhalgren…stake[s] a better claim than anything published in the country in the last quarter-century (excepting only GasssOmensetters Luckand NabokovsPale Fire) to a permanent place as one of the enduring monuments of our national literature."The Libertarian Review Excerpt from Book Prism, Mirror, Lens I to wound the autumnal city. So howled out for the world to give him a name. 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 youve held it in your mouth, cold, a whole minute. A whole minute he squatted, pebbles clutched with his left foot (the bare one), listening to his breath sound tumble down the ledges. Beyond a leafy arras, reflected moonlight flittered. He rubbed his palms against denim. Where he was, was still. Somewhere else, wind whined. The leaves winked. What had been wind was a motion in brush below. His hand went to the rock behind. She stood up, two dozen feet down and away, wearing only shadows the moon dropped from the viney maple; moved, and the shadows moved on her. Fear prickled one side where his shirt (two middle buttons gone) bellied with a breeze. Muscle made a band down the back of his jaw. Black hair tried to paw off what fear scored on his forehead. She whispered something that was all breath, and the wind came for the words and dusted away the meaning: "Ahhhhh . . ." from her. He forced out air: it was nearly a cough. ". . . Hhhhhh . . ." from her again. And laughter; which had a dozen edges in it, a bright snarl under the moon. ". . . hhhHHhhhh . . ." which had more sound in it than that, perhaps was his name, even. But the wind, wind . . . She stepped. Motion rearranged the shadows, baring one breast. There was a lozenge of light over one eye. Calf and ankle were luminous before leaves. Down her lower leg was a scratch. His hair tugged back from his forehead. He watched hers flung forward. She moved with her hair, stepping over leaves, toes spread on stone, in a tip-toe pause, to quit the darker shadows. Crouched on rock, he pulled his hands up his thighs. His hands were hideous. She passed another, nearer tree. The moon flung gold coins at her breasts. Her brown aureoles were wide, her nipples small. "You. . . ?" She said that, softly, three feet away, looking down; and he still could not make out her expression for the leaf dappling; but her cheek bones were Orientally high. She was Oriental, he realized and waited for another word, tuned for accent. (He could sort Chinese from Japanese.) "Youve come!" It was a musical Midwestern Standard. "I didnt know if youd come!" Her voicing (a clear soprano, whispering . . .) said that some of what hed thought was shadow-movement might have been fear: "Youre here!" She dropped to her knees in a roar of foliage. Her thighs, hard in front, softer (he could tell) on the sides-a column of darkness between them-were inches from his raveled knees. She reached, two fingers extended, pushed back plaid wool, and touched his chest; ran her fingers down. He could hear his own crisp hair. Laughter raised her face to the moon. He leaned forward; the odor of lemons filled the breezeless gap. Her round face was compelling, her eyebrows un-Orientally heavy. He judged her over thirty, but the only lines were two small ones about her mouth. He turned his mouth, open, to hers, and raised his hands to the sides of her head till her hair covered them. The cartilages of her ears were hot curves on his palms. Her knees slipped in leaves; that made her blink and laugh again. Her breath was like noon and smelled of lemons . . . He kissed her; she caught his wrists. The joined meat of their mouths came alive. The shape of her breasts, her hand half on his chest and half on wool, was lost with her weight against him. Their fingers met and meshed at his belt; a gasp bubbled in their kiss (his heart was stuttering loudly), was blown away; then air on his thigh. They lay down. With her fingertips she moved his cock head roughly in her rough hair while a muscle in her leg shook under his. Suddenly he slid into her heat. He held her tightly around the shoulders when her movements were violent. One of her fists stayed like a small rock over her breast. And there was a roaring, roaring: at the long, surprising come, leaves hailed his side. Later, on their sides, they made a warm place with their mingled breath. She whispered, "Youre beautiful, I think." He laughed, without opening his lips. Closely, she looked at one of his eyes, looked at the other (he blinked), looked at his chin (behind his lips he closed his teeth so that his jaw moved), then at his forehead. (He liked her lemon smell.) " . . . beautiful!" she repeated. Wondering was it true, he smiled. She raised her hand into the warmth, with small white nails, moved one finger beside his nose, growled against his cheek. He reached to take her wrist. She asked, "Your hand. . . ?" So he put it behind her shoulder to pull her nearer. She twisted. "Is there something wrong with your. . . ?" He shook his head against her hair, damp, cool, licked it. Behind him, the wind was cool. Below hair, her skin was hotter than his tongue. He brought his hands around into the heated cave between them. She pulled back. "Your hands-!" Veins like earthworms wriggled in the hair. The skin was cement dry; his knuckles were thick with scabbed callous. Blunt thumbs lay on the place between her breasts like toads. She frowned, raised her knuckles toward his, stopped. Under the moon on the sea of her, his fingers were knobbed peninsulas. Sunk on the promontory of each was a stripped-off, gnawed-back, chitinous wreck. "You. . . ?" he began. No, they were not deformed. But they were . . . ugly! She looked up. Blinking, her eyes glistened. ". . . do you know my . . . ?" His voice hoarsened. "Who I . . . am?" Her face was not subtle; but her smile, regretful and mostly in the place between her brow and her folded lids, confused. "You," she said, full voice and formal (but the wind still blurred some overtone), "have a father." Her hip was warm against his belly. The air which he had thought mild till now was a blade to pry back his loins. "You have a mummer-!" That was his cheek against her mouth. But she turned her face away. "You are-" she placed her pale hand over his great one (Such big hands for a little ape of a guy, someone had kindly said. He remembered that) on her ribs-"beautiful. Youve come from somewhere. Youre going somewhere." She sighed. "But . . ." He swallowed the things in his throat (he wasnt that little). "Ive lost . . . something." "Things have made you what you are," she recited. "What you are will make you what you will become." "I want something back!" She reached behind her to pull him closer. The cold well between his belly and the small of her back collapsed. "What dont you have?" She looked over her shoulder at him: "How old are you?" "Twenty-seven." "You have the face of someone much younger." She giggled. "I thought you were . . . sixteen! You have the hands of someone much older-" "And meaner?" "-crueler than I think you are. Where were you born?" "Upstate New York. You wouldnt know the town. I didnt stay there long." "I probably wouldnt. Youre a long way away." "Ive been to Japan. And Australia." "Youre educated?" He laughed. His chest shook her shoulder. "One year at Columbia. Almost another at a community college in Delaware. No degree." "What year were you born?" "Nineteen forty-eight. Ive been in Central America too. Mexico. I just came from Mexico and I-" "What do you want to change in the world?" she continued her recitation, looking away. "What do you want to preserve? What is the thing youre searching for? What are you running away from?" "Nothing," he said. "And nothing. And nothing. And . . . nothing, at least that I know." "You have no purpose?" "I want to get to Bellona and-" He chuckled. "Mines the same as everybody elses; in real life, anyway: to get through the next second, consciousness intact." The next second passed. "Really?" she asked, real enough to make him realize the artificiality of what hed said (thinking: It is in danger with the passing of each one). "Then be glad youre not just a character scrawled in the margins of somebody elses lost notebook: youd be deadly dull. Dont you have any reason for going there?" "To get to Bellona and . . ." When he said no more, she said, "You dont have to tell me. So, you dont know who you are? Finding that out would be much too simple to bring you all the way from upper New York State, by way of Japan, here. Ahhh . . ." and she stopped. "What?" "Nothing." "What?" "Well, if you were born in nineteen forty-eight, youve got to be older than twenty-seven." "How do you mean?" "Oh, hell," she said. "It isnt important." He began to shake her arm, slowly. She said: "I was born in nineteen forty-seven. And Im a good deal ol Details ISBN0375706682 Short Title DHALGREN Series Vintage Language English ISBN-10 0375706682 ISBN-13 9780375706684 Media Book Format Paperback Year 2001 Country of Publication United States Place of Publication New York DOI 10.1604/9780375706684 UK Release Date 2001-05-15 AU Release Date 2001-05-15 NZ Release Date 2001-05-15 US Release Date 2001-05-15 Author Sameul R. Delaney Pages 802 Publisher Random House USA Inc Publication Date 2001-05-15 Imprint Vintage Books DEWEY 813.54 Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:1121046;
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ISBN-13: 9780375706684
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ISBN: 9780375706684
Book Title: Dhalgren
Item Height: 203mm
Item Width: 131mm
Author: Sameul R Delaney
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Topic: Books
Publisher: Random House USA Inc
Publication Year: 2001
Item Weight: 575g
Number of Pages: 802 Pages
