Dark Reflections

Dark Reflections

Cover from the first edition
Author	Samuel R. Delany
Country	United States
Language	English
Publisher	Carroll & Graf
Publication date	2007
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Pages	295 pp
ISBN	0-7867-1947-8
OCLC	123444197
Dewey Decimal	813/.54 22
LC Class	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.

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 possibly 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

• Errata for Dark Reflections, approved by the author.