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From: hsut@pur-ee.UUCP (Yuk Hsu)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Nabokov and Delany (reply to Stuart)
Message-ID: <3306@pur-ee.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 18-Sep-85 17:07:19 EDT
Article-I.D.: pur-ee.3306
Posted: Wed Sep 18 17:07:19 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 20-Sep-85 06:21:28 EDT
Reply-To: hsut@pur-ee.UUCP (Bill Hsu)
Organization: Electrical Engineering Department , Purdue University
Lines: 45




	Stuart Cracraft made some interesting remarks about Nabokov's
Lolita versus Delany's Dhalgren. I enjoyed both books, so I can be 
depended on to make some reasonably objective remarks, right? :-) :-)

	Stuart (and many other people on the net, it seems) detested 
Dhalgren because of its self-indulgence. While I,too, thought Dhalgren
was self-indulgent (though I have a weakness for self-indulgent books),
I think the richness of the language and a lot of the imagery and 
clever little puns and tricks make it a worthwhile reading experience.
Of course, I always WARN people not to read Dhalgren if they have not
read any other Delany book, since many common themes appear through Delany's
works and these are more accessible in their earlier, simpler forms.
Also, I don't consider Dhalgren to be Delany's masterpiece. (A friend
of mine decided to ignore my suggestion and picked up Dhalgren as an
introduction to Delany's works. Pity him...)

	Delany wrote many other more accessible books before Dhalgren.
Try Babel-17, The Einstein Intersection or Nova for a good read. The "new"
book Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand is also very readable 
and interesting.

	Stuart's preference of Nabokov over Delany seems to be a 
preference for a different "type" of novel. Lolita and Dhalgren are
very different books that try to do very different things. (cliche
about comparing apples and oranges here... :-) ) Please don't say
Delany and Joyce write garbage because you don't like their type of
experimentations. I must say the later works of Edward Albee and
LeGuin's The Dispossessed rather bored me (sorry, folks...), but
I think they are significant pieces of literature.

	A point of taste here: while I enjoyed Lolita too, I must
dispute Stuart's claim that Nabokov did not write any other novel
that compared favorably with Lolita. I thought Pale Fire was a much
richer and interesting work; I definitely enjoyed it more. It's
one of the funniest books I've ever read (but then I've been
accused of having a perverse sense of humor :-) ...)


					Bill Hsu
					pur-ee!hsut

	Department of Eccentric Esoterica, Purdue University


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