The bisexual main character, who suffers from symptoms of dyslexia and epilepsy, has forgotten his own name and is variously called through the novel "the kid," "Kidd," and "Kid"; when he remembers half his name near the end of the novel the discovery is hardly a revelation. His importance lies in being a poet, the putative author of a journal found in the Park, and thereby the putative author of the novel.
Because of his authorial position (as when he sees Samuel R. Delany in a mirror), it is difficult to ascertain the status of the city, whether to itself or to his maimed perceptions. Mythologically he is Apollo or Dionysus, Orpheus, Oedipus, Theseus, even Beowulf; he faces death and chaos repeatedly.
The characters bearing the weight of the Orpheus myth are the sadomasochistic.....
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