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Originally Posted by Tarana
Haven't read this author but he's won both a Hugo and Nebula before.
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That's burying the lede.
Dhalgren is notoriously difficult to read.
Wikipedia:
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Literary significance and criticism
With over a million sales, Dhalgren is by far Delany's most popular book—and also his most controversial. Critical reaction to Dhalgren has ranged from high praise (both inside and outside the science fiction community) to extreme dislike (mostly within the community). However, Dhalgren was a commercial success, selling a half million copies in the first two years, and over a million copies worldwide since then, with "its appeal reaching beyond the usual SF readership."
William Gibson has referred to Dhalgren as "a riddle that was never meant to be solved."
Darrell Schweitzer stated, "Dhalgren is, I think, the most disappointing thing to happen to science fiction since Robert Heinlein made a complete fool of himself with I Will Fear No Evil."
In 2015, Elizabeth Hand characterized the novel as "a dense, transgressive, hallucinatory, Joycean tour-de-force". By contrast, fellow writers Philip K. Dick and Harlan Ellison hated the novel. When the book appeared, Ellison wrote: "I must be honest. I gave up after 361 pages. I could not permit myself to be gulled or bored any further."
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