- Dark Reflections
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Dark Reflections 
Cover from the 1st editionAuthor(s) Samuel R. Delany Country United States Language English Genre(s) Novel Publisher Carroll & Graf Publication date 2007 Media type Print (Paperback) Pages 295 pp ISBN 0786719478 OCLC Number 123444197 Dewey Decimal 813/.54 22 LC Classification PS3554.E437 D37 2007 Dark Reflections is a novel by Samuel R. Delany, published in 2007 by Carroll & Graf, an imprint of Avalon Publishing Group. In 2008 it received a Stonewall Book Award and was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award for Gay Men's Fiction.
Contents
Plot
Dark Reflections tells the story of Arnold Hawley, a gay, African-American poet who lives most of his life in New York City. The novel is divided into three sections, each illustrating a period in Arnold's life. Where most novels would start in youth and move towards old age, Dark Reflections begins, instead, with Arnold between the ages of 52 and 68, then moves backwards to his middle 30's, and finally recounts his early college days.
Themes
Dark Reflections centers on themes of loneliness, sexual repression, fear, and the difficult and often unrewarding life of the artist. As in many other Delany works, a writer is a character in the novel, in this case the protagonist.
Connections to other Delany works
Late in the third section we learn that, at the request of a close friend, Arnold anonymously wrote a pornographic novel. It is obviously Phallos, the fictional novel quoted from and referred to extensively in Delany's 2004 novel, also titled Phallos. This connection is very similar to the connection between two of Delany's earlier novels, Babel-17 and Empire Star.
External links
References
- "Library of Congress Online Catalog". http://catalog.loc.gov. Retrieved 2008-01-10.
Categories: 2007 novels | Novels by Samuel Delany | 21st-century American novels | 2000s science fiction novel stubs
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