Dhalgren

Extract: It took me nearly three weeks to read this 800 page tome. When people asked me what it was about, I usually said, "It's about a drifter who ends up in Bellonia, a city in the center of the U.S., which seems to have experienced something apocalyptic. He's a poet who becomes the head of a gang, has a lot of sex, and, oh yeah, he might be schizophrenic. I've heard it's kind of stream of conscious, like Joyce's 'Ulysses.'" And when they ask if this is one of my science fiction reads, I answer, "I think so?!"...