I honestly don't know what I just read here. There is a coherent enough plot to string everything along forward, so the book wasn't unreadable even if a majority of the subtext flew over my head. So much of it remains a mystery, but I still came out in the end with a valuable interpretation of my own. I don't know if that was the intention. On one hand it feels like the kind of book where author's intent becomes very important to know in order to "get" the book. Though somehow simultaneously it also gives the feeling that any intent Delany might have doesn't matter, the book proves so amorphous that hammering for a unified meaning would only detract from its power. I think William Gibson put it best, Dhalgren is "a riddle that was never meant to be solved".

It takes on class struggle, sexuality, racial injustice, and mid 20th century bohemia and scales it all down to just a "city" of 1,000 or so people. If that sounds like a lot of people, it is not.

I have my own goofy interpretation of what the book really is trying to do, but probably best to keep to myself. This is the sort of book where it is better to have everything revealed along the way.