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 engineer Tak Louier, the Cerberus, and the ubiquitous but invisible editor Roger Calkins and...