Dhalgren is an intimidating book, I found it hard to read due to its language and style until I got used to it and now I find it hard to talk about. A city somewhere in the midwest has been effectively forgotten by the rest of the world after a tragic and highly destructive event (maybe paranormal? maybe more grounded in historical events?) occurred, prompting its gradual abandonment by its population. Now it's become a lawless sort of enclosed space where for better and worse both social and time-and-space norms apply very haphazardly. I was reminded at times of Roadside Picnic, One Hundred Years of Solitude and Jose Saramago's books such as Blindness. It touches on cyclical history, a nation that turns its back on victims, what people keep and leave behind from their identity when found somewhere where "the normal" is suspended, there's a lot of sexual and gender exploration and everything is presented in a somewhat stream of consciousness way. There's no plot resolution here and answers will not be provided. I really enjoyed it myself, but do be aware of content warnings, the author deploys race and homophobic slurs and there are descriptions of sexual violence, some of it on minors. Delany deploys it all evidently fully aware of their weight, but it's at least good to be aware of their presence in the book beforehand.