A number of things in 'Dhalgren' are just meant to function as mysteries. They're mysteries when the book begins, and they're mysteries when the book ends.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
If the book is a mystery to its author as she's writing, inevitably it's going to be a mystery to the reader as he or she reads it.
Writing a mystery is like drawing a picture and then cutting it into little pieces that you offer to your readers one piece at a time, thus allowing them the chance to put the jigsaw puzzle together by the end of the book.
People apparently only read mystery stories of any length. With mysteries, the longer the better, and people will read any damn thing. But the indulgent, 800-page books that were written a hundred years ago are just not going to be written anymore, and people need to get used to that.
You know the thing that interests me about 'Unsolved Mysteries?' It's because there are people out there, people who know something, who may have the one final clue.
It seems to me that good novels celebrate the mystery in ordinary life, and summing it all up in psychological terms strips the mystery away.
There's a market for mysteries for adults. That feeling of opening a book and delving inside and not coming out until you've closed the book.
I don't think the problem is that people don't read enough mystery books, but that people don't read.
There's a lot of mystery just inherent in the story of 'Descender.' There's sort of a central mystery that runs throughout it.
I want the reader to know what's going on. So there's never a mystery in my books.
'Dhalgren' is the kind of book in which you can look for pretty much anything you want. I tried to put as much into it as I could at the time.