Dhalgren in New Orleans: a classic science fiction novel comes to life in the big easy.

• Author: Banerjee, Bidisha
• Position: Dhalgren - Book Review

As Americans struggled to grasp what was unfolding in New Orleans, the word unimaginable frequently recurred--even though the catastrophe had been imagined many times. Thirty years ago, the novelist Samuel R. Delany wrote, in rich detail, about the unfolding of racially charged violence, rape, and looting in "Bellona," a major American city struck by an unspecified catastrophe and ignored by the National Guard.

Delany's Dhalgren describes a group of people who choose to remain in Bellona despite--in part because of--its dystopian qualities (including lack of water and sanitation). This surreal work of science fiction seemed especially relevant the first week after Hurricane Katrina hit, as fires raged; stories of racism, rape, looting, and murder proliferated; and Mike Brown, then head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, continued to blame the victims who had not evacuated the city. Dhalgren suggests what the holdouts might have found if they had succeeded in staying.

Dhalgren's micro-detailed images of the streets of Bellona portray a city that is both hellish labyrinth and temporary autonomous zone. Bellona's residents (mostly poor and black) live on looted cans of food; there's no economy to speak of, gossip is the most highly valued commodity, and a gang of thugs (eventually headed by the main character, Kid, an amnesiac and possibly Native American poet) runs a haphazard protection racket.

Delany writes, "The city is a map of violences anticipated. The armed dwellers in the Emboriki [a department store], the blacks surrounding them, the hiss from a turned tap that has finally stopped trickling, the time it takes a group who go out to come back with bags of canned goods, packaged noodles, beans, rice, spaghetti--each is an emblem of inalienable, coming shock. But the clashes that do occur are all petty, disappointing, minor, inconclusive, and above all stupid, as though the city prevents any real anxiety's ever resolving. And the result? All humanity here astounds; all charity here is graced."

While some residents of Bellona refuse to adjust, insisting that nothing has changed and the old way of life will come back intact, others take advantage of their unique position to break taboos. Since money is meaningless, Kid mugs somebody just to see how it feels, and his primary lover, Lanya, prostitutes herself for the same reason. But they don't get much out of criminal gestures. Some of the most beautiful parts of Dhalgren concern...