Customer Reviews

Dark Reflections

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Even as a long-time fan of Samuel Delany's work (both fiction and non-fiction), I confess to finding it sometimes hard going (I still haven't finished Dhalgren!). But Dark Reflections is his most accessible book in a long time. Even though it's written "in reverse", starting with old age and progressing to youth, there's no difficulty following the narrative, and this would be a good book to start with if you've never read anything by Delany.

But the book takes on an added dimension for those of us who are Delany junkies, since in some way it is (and is not) autobiographical. Arnold Hawley, the central character, is a black gay writer only a little older than Delany, whose books have Delanyesque titles (one of them is actually the title of a Delany book). But his life is the opposite of Delany's... his books are unread (and not even in the New York Public Library!); his sole claim to success is having won one rather questionable prize (is it a coincidence that the author's bio on the back of the book mentions Delany's prizes?); his old age is utterly lonely and his emotional life completely unfulfilled. Even though, like Delany, he married, his marriage (which culminates in the most horrifyingly vivid events that I've ever read) surely did not, let us hope, resemble that of the author!

So what's going on? Is this a "what if" account (as the Publisher's Weekly review, cited above implies)? Rather, I think the title, which is at least triply ambiguous, gives the clue. These are dark reflections (thoughts) about a life, looked at as if reflected in a dark mirror (and, of course, narrated in reflected order). It's time to go reread it and see what I missed reading it the first time.

I've followed Samuel R. Delany's career across galaxies for thirty years. Between the ages of nineteen and twenty-five, Delany had written and published nine novels, two of them winning Nebulas for best science fiction. I've read most of his early work, including Dhalgren, considered by many to be the finest science fiction novel ever written, and, from later in his career, Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, as well as the Neveryon series, his foray into the fantasy genre. As a boy I read Nova, Delany's tribute to the space opera genre and a forerunner to today's cyberpunk, which even now remains one of my favorite science fiction novels.

As a heterosexual, I didn't always relate to some of Delany's gay protagonists and storylines, but I always thrilled, even as a boy, to his use of language, his dense prose, descriptive narrative, and vivid imagination. When I began writing seriously it was Delany I endeavored to emulate.

In Dark Reflections, Delany, now a professor of English and creative writing at Temple University, steps away from the science fiction genre to give us a glimpse into the lonely life of Arnold Hawley, a black, gay poet living in Manhattan's East Village. Gone is the dense language that usually accompanies Delany's prose; but the story itself, related with simple honesty, is rife with complexities. A poet himself before turning to fiction, perhaps only Delany knows how much of Arnold's story is autobiographical, although his real life marriage to Marilyn Hacker, also a poet, ended much less tragically than Arnold's. Perhaps it is the alternate autobiography Delany would have written had he not turned to fiction writing.

One of the fascinating aspects of Dark Reflections (and there are many) is that it is told in three parts in reverse chronological order, perhaps to reflect what we see when we glance into the looking glass -- a reverse image of how others perceive us.

In part one, The Prize, Arnold, in his fifties, has just won the Alfred Proctor Award for his sixth book of collected poems. Arnold is the poster child for the starving artist, holding onto the $3,000 stipend the award pays out over three years as a financial godsend to his existence. Emerging writers who read Dark Reflections will take comfort from Arnold's insecurities and envy of others, while non-writers will be afforded a glimpse into the soul of a creative spirit -- its innocence and sensitivity, its desire for recognition. In response to praise for one of his collected works as "one of my favorite books of the last... well, thirty years! In any genre! Really! It's just an... an amazing performance!" Arnold later reflects:

"The fact is, there is no praise as great as the praise I want." He'd said it with tears welling. "That sort of praise doesn't exist -- I know that," Arnold had told Dr. Engles, on his side of the chipped table in the small blue room at Mount Sinai. "It doesn't stop me from wanting it, though -- wanting it so much!" Couldn't he have an entire evening without someone like Michael, sneakily and without warning, reminding him how little he'd had...

The Prize is perhaps the most movingly poignant part of the whole of Dark Reflections. Arnold himself, now sixty-eight and eighty pounds overweight (a mirror image of Delany's own girth), suffering incontinence (entering a subway he wonders if the smell of urine emanates from him or the subway) perhaps best sums up its content: Jesus, he thought, at last on the platform, a tear tickling his cheek, the tears of the old just don't mean anything, do they?

As poignant as The Prize is, part two, Vashti in the Dark, is the most shocking. Arnold, in his late thirties, sits outside a public restroom known to be a place where gay men rendezvous, fantasizing about what takes place inside but lacking the courage to partake, only once venturing inside only to flee in horror. It is here he meets a young homeless woman, Judy, perhaps fifteen years his junior. He befriends the shoeless Judy, takes her to lunch and subsequently buys her some shoes and clothing and brings her back to his apartment where the not quite right Judy, knowing of Arnold's proclivity for men, convinces Arnold that they should wed. A few days later, tested for disease and license in tow, they marry, and Judy's wedding gift to Arnold is to send him out to the public restroom to have the night of his life. Arnold returns to his apartment with young Tony to a shocking scene. This is Delany at his brilliant best, what he reveals both through the narrative as well as what is left unwritten.

The final segment, Book of Pictures, chronicles Arnold's youth as he wrestles with the "disease" a doctor tells him afflicts only one in five thousand men (a greatly skewed number) and with which no Negro has ever been diagnosed, and that he is sure will one day cut his life short.

Throughout the text Arnold, whenever he finds a photograph of himself, invariably turns it over to write on its back, The poet Arnold Hawley, aged -- in anticipation of the biography of his life that is never written. Underlying themes of Dark Reflections are poetry's status as the most ignored field in literature -- Arnold is haunted by the remark a famous white poet made when a poet of color was admitted to a literary society: "Who let the coon in?" -- as well as the loneliness and despair that all too often accompany the life of the creative soul.

Highly recommended reading.

I'm not going to reiterate the plot, you can get that from the capsule reviews above.

Mainly I just wanted to say this book contains many examples of SRD's superfine descriptive powers. Almost every sentence is a pleasure to read, and as one follows another you find yourself there, sometimes in the character's mind, sometimes in the vivid settings among the people and events that surround him.

All of SRD's books are worthwhile, but some are more work than others. This one is "easy." Fans will gulp it down and immediately start over, and even new readers will be able to tap into much of what is exciting about SRD's writing: precise observation, emotional immediacy, and a sheer joy in the use of language that makes you want to, well, run out and write a book, or a poem, or at least read another and another one and then talk about it with someone!

For triangulation purposes, my (current) top 5 SRD books are, in no particular order, Dhalgren, Trouble on Triton, Times Square Red/Blue, About Writing, and his book of letters, 1984.

If you have read and liked any of these I suspect you will enjoy this new book as well.

Enjoy!

Dark Reflections is a terrific novel. It tells the story of a gay black poet's life, in reverse. The novel is about the poet's experience as a black poet, a gay poet, and a gay black poet, but really it's about his life as a poet. Dark Reflections is quite remarkable for it's subtlety and grace. Readers interested in a historical perspective on being gay, black, or gay and black in America will find this a rich trove of fascinating details, as the poets life has been a long one--it's also an interesting narrative about aging. But Arnold Hawley found poetry and became a poet before encountering or discovering any of these other qualities. Dark Reflections is not a book of poetry but a novel about living a poet's life. A poet's life is not necessarilly poetic--this poet's life is not particularly so. It is a quiet, sensitive, tentitive, cautious life, a life in which race politics and sexual fantasy, while ever present and always defining, cannot compete in devastating significance with a typo in the second line of the first poem of the first edition of a second volume of mostly cinquain verse. Dark Reflections is, ultimately, a novel about accuracy, about precision, about sensitivity and beauty. As deep as the lines of race and gender may cut, poetry cuts deeper--for this poet, at least. It's a quiet, tender novel--really a work to be cherished.

Which is not to say that the book undermines the significance of race and gender issues--it just brings to them, with a relentless, patient grace, a poet's perspective. I found this passage beautiful:

"One night, when he leaned the book (Sexual Behavior in the Human Male) against the lamp's bronze base and turned off the light on the bedside table, Arnold lay awake thinking: How . . . cruel!! Even if it _is_ the most debilitating of conditions (which, were it anywhere _near_ as common as Dr. Kinsey said, made it seem unlikely)how cruel, to take us as children and impose such isolating lonliness. Tonight, Arnold thought, in Pittsfield and in Queens and in Appleton and in Fishtown and God-knows-where-else, children are awake, in bed, as I am now, pondering their approaching deaths from this . . . disease, in the midst of a lonliness sharp enough yo clog their ears and scatter their eyes and cloy their throat with grave dust. And, as he had not in a while, Arnold began to cry. Why, why, why lie to them as I was lied to?"

I met Mr. Delany once, briefly, and remember him fondly. I loved Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia. Perhaps my favorite Delany book is Bread & Wine: An Erotic Tale of New York, which is almost unutterably beautiful. And I used to teach his literary theory just because he's so good at explaining things. But Dark Reflections is quite a different kind of book--Delany has got to be one of our most versatile authors.

Although the book had great reviews when I ordered it, I was disappointed when reading it. First, I got the impression that the author is one of those New York writers who loves to show how long he has been in the city and how much he knows about the "in" places of New York from years ago. The WAY this information was written into the story seemed unnecessary and to me seemed to indicate the author's ego coming out. Second, I think he further tried to prove how intellectual he is with more side information about poets and poetry than was needed to tell the story of this man. The story itself was quite good. I was hoping it would be great. The author just got in the way of it.

Take a trip back through the life of a gay African American poet as he puts his life in rewind mode and examines it all.