novel which begins in the middle of a sentence; it is, as William Gibson described it, both a riddle and an experience. It is defined, by some as a challenge, and there are those who boast of never finishing it. I have read it numerous times: as a reader, as a writer, as an artist, as someone entranced by the beauty of language. There is no single way in which to approach the novel, no single experience a reader is expected to glean from its 800+ pages. It is never the same novel twice, and for those reading it for the first time, it is a shifty, enigmatic thing, as frustrating (to some) as it is rewarding. Dhalgren, if anything among many things, is the denial of expectation. I have many favorite novels. Dhalgren is one of them. It is mythic and mundane, profane in ways that have mellowed with age, and it illuminates (at least partially) the sacred, though not in a sterilized religious manner. It is a science fiction novel, but in terms of its stylistic approach to the genre, it is something else. The central character is an amnesiac: he cannot remember his name. He enters the city of Bellona, wearing only one sandal. The city of Bellona is named for the ancient Roman destroyer of cities, and perhaps this is one of the ways in which the novel may be understood: there may be dryads in the story, at least one. Or, perhaps not. The city of Bellona appears, in another incarnation, in another Samuel R. Delany novel, set on Neptune’s moon, Triton. Indeed, Dhalgren shares many things in common with its sister novel: Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia. Of course, when I first read that novel, it was simply called Triton. I’m quite happy that its full title has since been restored. I am dissatisfied with the rather boring “literary” cover it has been given. With thoughts of Bellona floating through my mind, I walked with Corey in the depths of winter, photographing the bleakness of the lakeshore bare days before a blizzard. I didn’t intend to photograph the fictional city of Bellona (not the post-apocalyptic city in which a nameless character wanders, wearing only one sandal, nor a city on the Neptunian moon, Triton, where philosophically-significant things happen to people with one gold eyebrow.) I simply wanted to capture something bleak. Something almost lifeless. Something with the familiar shape of Chicago in a vast, vast distance. And now, nearly a year after the initial photograph came to life, I sit (on a night with late-season thunder)writing this, and thinking of Bellona and the mysterious event that changed the very nature of reality in a single city in the USA. Or did anything happen at all? It would seem that Dhalgren among everything else it may be, is also a meditation on the experience of being in a city. Dhalgren like any urban center, rife with injustice, ethnic tension and marginalization, is beyond glib description, and Dhalgren, like any city, has its share of marginalized inhabitants. Indeed, every major character in the novel is a marginalized minority: they are the sorts of characters often denied literary voices. Even Western Literature’s favorite character, the White Man (of the sort that only exists in propaganda) is a helpless minority. I’ve read Dhalgren many times and I cannot say what exactly happened to Bellona, to the sun, the moon, or the celestial body (Earth’s second moon?) called George Harrison. Something happened, that’s a certainty, and perhaps the what is only as important as what any reader may determine. Something close to rioting has taken place, and indeed, much of Dhalgren captures, distills, and clarifies the experience of being in a riot. None of that occurs in this image. It is simply a tweaked photograph that makes unintended (but welcome) reference to an early cover of one of my all time favorite novels…and of that novel, all I can say is: Dhalgren is a