Dark Reflections

Description

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Customer Reviews

A beautiful, tender novel
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.

2010-01-07 | Critic (Seattle, WA United States) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Dark, Enriching, Satisfying
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.

2008-10-16 | J. Conrad Guest, author of Backstop: A Baseball Love Story in Nine Innings and January's Paradigm (Northville, MI United States) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

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A great read for both fans and readers new to Delany's work
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!

2007-07-19 | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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A dark reflection of Delany's own life
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.

2007-05-28 (Chapel Hill, NC USA) | Helpful Votes: 4 | Rating: 5

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A Life in Reverse
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.

2007-05-21 | Truth About Caffeine.com (SCR Books) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Silent Interviews: On Language, Race, Sex, Science Fiction, and Some Comics--A Collection of Written Interviews

Description

A collection of substantial written interviews.

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Tales of Neveryon

Description

A novel of myth and literacy about a long-ago land on the brink of civilization. Vol 1

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Customer Reviews

The Neveryon books are challenging and good
Samuel Delany's four-book fantasy series, "Tales of Nevèrÿon," is hugely under-read and under-appreciated. Delany primarily writes science fiction. He's won both of science fiction's highest American honors, the Hugo award and the Nebula award, the latter twice in the 1960s. But the Nevèrÿon books stand on their own as excellent fantasy. (Somewhat confusingly, "Tales of Nevèrÿon" seems to be a name for the four-book series but also the title of the first of the four books. I refer to the series as "the Nevèrÿon books.")

In general, Delany's fiction is somewhat experimental and academic, (which is in and of itself remarkable, even inspiring---as is Delany's own authorial and academic success---given that he is highly dyslexic). The Nevèrÿon books may not be prohibitively difficult for young adults; but, they certainly weren't written to be easily approachable by an audience *primarily* of young adults. They are certainly not pot-boiler or formulaic fantasy. In addition to the presence of dragons and barbarian warrior-heroes, which are relatively common fantasy tropes, there are features of the decidedly unromantic Nevèrÿon world and cultures that are highly original creations by Mr. Delany, and the tales themselves are in a naturalistic style at times so gritty you're surprised there isn't a fine layer of dust upon the page. Most of Delany's characters are earthy survivors who interact with their varying cultural, social, economic, and physical environments in a matter-of-fact way interrupted--in the case of some characters anyway--with contemplation, even a sort of philosophizing. There is poignancy throughout, and it's subtle and masterful. The reader can't help but wish the characters well, even if some of them wear the harshness of their lives like old leather garbs, or are simple in their desires and ambitions. The characters of the tales range widely: active and passive, young and old, healthy and ill, famous and obscure, male and female, free and slave.

2009-06-13 (New York, NY United States) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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Amazon has removed the Sales Rankings for this and all LGBT books, academic or not.
Someone or Something at Amazon is removing the sales rankings from all titles with GLBT content, without regard to the explicitness of the content or to the academic worth of the work.

If you wish to complain to Amazon directly the phone number is, 1-866-216-1072.

2009-04-12 (Lowell, MA, USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Beautifully written - but not compelling
A collection of interrelated stories set in a mythical empire beyond time. Gorgik, a slave becomes a leader of armies; Small Sarg, a barbarian prince becomes a slave to set others free; swordmistress Raven lives in a land where the women rule; and Norema, daughter of fisherwoman attains freedom.

These are fascinating stories, very well written, in fact beautifully written. The various characters weave in and out of the different stories. Gorgik and Small Sarg are particularly interesting, as their relationship develops from Master and Slave, through physical intimacy to a voluntary master/slave relationship necessary for the intimacy to function.

However while very pleasurable to read, I found it difficult to engage with the characters, the narrative seemed to put them at a distance, leading me not to care too much about their destinies; and for me that is an essential part of the reading experience. So this is really a book which I can happily pick up and read a few pages, but not one which compels me to keep reading.

2008-10-28 (UK) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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Beautifully written - but not compelling
A collection of interrelated stories set in a mythical empire beyond time. Gorgik, a slave becomes a leader of armies; Small Sarg, a barbarian prince becomes a slave to set others free; swordmistress Raven lives in a land where the women rule; and Norema, daughter of fisherwoman attains freedom.

These are fascinating stories, very well written, in fact beautifully written. The various characters weave in and out of the different stories. Gorgik and Small Sarg are particularly interesting, as their relationship develops from Master and Slave, through physical intimacy to a voluntary master/slave relationship necessary for the intimacy to function.

However while very pleasurable to read, I found it difficult to engage with the characters, the narrative seemed to put them at a distance, leading me not to care too much about their destinies; and for me that is an essential part of the reading experience. So this is really a book which I can happily pick up and read a few pages, but not one which compels me to keep reading.

2008-10-28 (UK) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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The most lyrically beautiful prose I've ever read.
I read "Tales of Neveryon" on the airplane. I hate flying, I get nauseous, yet reading this book turned it into a delight. I don't remember another time when I savored the words so much (Storm Constantine comes close in "Wraeththu"). I usually like action & plot, scifi, space opera, and epic fantasy, and I don't like stories, so this was a surprise. I don't know how, or what it is about it, but it was simply pleasurable to read. Here's a random paragraph:

"What a glorious and useless thing to know, she thought, yet recognizing that every joy she ever felt before had mere been some fragment of the pattern sensed dim and distant, which now, in plurality, was too great for laughter - it hardly allowed for breath, much less awe! What she had sensed, she realized as the words she could not hold away any longer finally moved in, was that the world in which images occurred was opaque, complete, and closed, though what gave it its weight and meaning was that this was not true of the space of examples, samples, symbols, models, expressions, reasons, representations and the rest - yet that everything and anything could be an image of everything and anything - the true of the false, the imaginary of the real, the useful of the useless, the helpful of the hurtful - was what gave such strength to the particular types of images that went by all those other names; that it was the organized coherence of them all which made distinguishing them possible."

The sentences are long, the paragraphs can go on for several pages, but the language just flows...

Also, make sure to read the Appendix, it's a crucial part of the book. It talks about discovering ancient tablet and deciphering the language, uncovering the story that inspired the collection of these tales. (Edit: This completely passed me by at first, but the Appedix is also written by Delany and also entirely fiction.)

This book is what made me a Delany fan. I wasn't crazy about "Babel-17" or "Nova," it's amazing how different his writing styles are. I'm yet to make another attempt to conquer "Dhalgren." But I loved "The Einstein Intersection" - it has the same musical, magical, haunting quality to it as "Tales of Neveryon."

Just writing this review and quoting the book left me a little breathless, made me want to read it again, and get the rest of Neveryon books!

2006-09-24 (Staten Island, NY) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5

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Hogg: A Novel

Description

Acclaimed winner of the William Whitehead Memorial Award for a lifetime's contribution to gay and lesbian literature, Samuel R. Delany wrote Hogg three decades ago. Since then it has been one of America's most famous 'unpublishable' novels. The subject matter of Hogg is our culture of sexual violence and degeneration. Delany explores his disturbing protagonist Hogg on his own turf--rape, pederasty, sexual excess--exposing an area of violence and sexual abuse from the inside. As such, it is a brave book.

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Customer Reviews

Unreadable!
The most appalling novel I've encountered.
Absolutely aweful! Endless filth and violence.
Can't say a single good thing about this book.
Unreadable!
I'm sorry Mr Delaney chose to write this "work".
I chose not to finish reading it because it was so bad.
Spend your time and money elsewhere.

2009-12-13 (California) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 1

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Tries too hard to be shocking but just comes off boring instead
When I was given this book to read, it was with the assurance that this was "the worst book ever written". Now, I won't necessarily disagree with that, but it's definitely not for the reasons that the person intended.

As is my typical procedure, I won't go into the "plot" (such as it is), since that's been done before. I prefer to go straight to my review and opinion on the book.

1st, I've got to say that to call this book a representation of homosexuality on any level is absurd. This isn't about homosexuality, and I'm completely flabbergasted that this author would be recognized by Lambda. If he HAS "changed our concept of gayness in the last century" it was NOT in a positive way! This book highlights each and every stereotypical "perversion" that homophobics have about the gay community, and it's a tragic disservice.

2nd, to compare this to Tom Wolfe is an insult to Tom Wolfe. While Wolfe was shocking and unique for his time, this book is nowhere near Wolfe's quality.

3rd, on that note, the writing just plain isn't particularly good. I've heard others say that despite the content the book is like poetry (if you can believe that!), or that the writing is just wonderful no matter what it's depicting. Well, I've never read another Delany book, so I can't compare the quality with anything else of his, but I can say without hesitation that the writing itself was, at best, average. As an example, the usage of radio broadcasts to demonstrate what took place while the narrator wasn't present was juvenile and innacurate.

4th, this is NOT erotica, at least not in the sense that it's arousing or erotic. I SUPPOSE that pedophilia, fecophilia, watersports and lack of bathing are a turn on for some, but it does nothing for me. And, quite frankly, if this book IS erotic for someone, I don't really WANT to know.

One of my single biggest complaints, beyond anything else, is that the book is just plain boring! It took me DAYS to read it, not because it was shocking, or horrifying, or gross. Because, honestly, it simply wasn't to me -- I don't get shocked, horrified or grossed out. Rather, it was just soooo slow. Seriously this was as bad as anything else I've ever read in the boring department... with the long, drawn-out descriptions of each and every thing in each and every room, with each and every twitch and movement that each and every person made. OMG, just how many times do I have to hear about someone scratching? WHY would it be necessary to put a PARENTHESIS in DIALOGUE? Even the violence was described in such a bland and disjointed way that it didn't spark interest.

The story, such as it was, is just not all that intriguing. The characters were one-dimensional, stereotypical, and exagerrated. There were no typical people, so to say that the "monsters wear our face" or that they are in possession of "human complexities" is a huge stretch. I mean, truly, I've run into some pretty disgusting, depraved and evil people in my prior line of work (Social Work), but am I REALLY supposed to believe that each and every person that someone encounters, no matter what the context, is going to see a filthy 11 year old boy and become aroused?

The person who gave me the book to read says that I am not viewing it the right way, that it's FICTION, and I'm trying to make it too realistic. I think, really, that I just had higher expectations. I expected to be shocked or at least surprised, and instead I came away from this book wondering why Delany felt that he had to try SO hard. This wasn't a novel, it had no true story to tell, it was just random sex scenes shoved together with some haphazard story in between. If the story was worth reading, if it added anything to the literary lexicon or the reader's noesis, I could probably forgive it. Unfortunately, I feel it did neither. And now valuable space in my brain is taken up with a book that's no better than the trashiest of trashy romance novels that I typically read, and quite frankly was a lot worse. At least romance novels are usually hot.

2009-02-02 (USA) | Helpful Votes: 4 | Rating: 1

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Lewd! Depraved! Fascinating!
Lewd. Lascivious.Vile.Depraved.Graphic rape and violence. This book has it all! The characters are literally filthy, dirty and without one lick of guilty conscience or decent thought in their head! Every act of sexuallity is graphically described in this book except beastiality! Every page has either rape, torture, sodomy or incest. The main character Hogg has not one redeeming feature even going to the point of never changing his clothes even though he deficates and urinates in them. This books is extremely grahpic and [...] to the nth degree! Yet the story moves along smoothy and quickly. Some pages made me gag (eating snot) yet I had to keep on reading! It was fascinating!

2006-11-02 (Canada) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 4

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Sexual Violence as a main character
Murderers. Pedophiles. Rapists for hire. Misogynists and misanthropes. Scatologists. And they're the good guys. Welcome to Samuel R. Delany's "Hogg," a story of characters so vile they barely deserve to be called human. And all these people are described through the voice of an 11 year old boy that the title character, Hogg, enlists as his main source of self-pleasuring deviant activity. Along the way, our little man meets a cast of characters that delight in sex shaded through all colors of perversity. There's nothing this cast of marauding baby-killers won't try if they think it will get them off.

The story takes place in the course of a couple of days, as the little narrator gets sucked into the vortex of Hogg's world. The most disturbing thing about Delany's book is not that Hogg and his insane crew of racist murdering thugs do their deeds with gleeful sadistic abandon, but that the young man sees this as activity that he can just tag along and feel no compulsion to leave. In fact, as the book continues, it becomes obvious that the young narrator not only enjoys it but finds that it isn't fulfilling enough.

To that extent, "Hogg" works like Brett Easton Ellis' "American Psycho," Anne Rice's "Sleeping Beauty" series or Kubrick's "Clockwork Orange" does. You keep wondering how far the depraved indifference will extend before any one of the characters develops any sort of redeeming quality. As is becomes more apparent that regret, remorse or redemption ain't happening, you continue with the reading because you feel desperate to see where the train is going to wreck. (Having one of the main characters die in a car crash seems unironically metaphoric.)

Delany has written about the tendency for violent sex to erupt from the psyche before ("The Madman" in particular), but never has the violence been so much to the fore. If you have a weak stomach or a fragile sensibility, then by all means you should avoid "Hogg." But if you're willing to have your literary limits tested, wade in.

2005-11-18 | author and music buff (Springfield, PA United States) | Helpful Votes: 8 | Rating: 4

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Hogg, a wonderfully bizarre & extreme story.
Well, I first heard about Hogg via a friend, during a discussion about the Anne Rice "Sleeping Beauty Trilogy". If you thought SBT was extreme, nothing quite prepares you for reading Hogg. I was disgusted with the characters, but felt that he did a good job in portraying their personalities in a very direct and unapologetic way. I was fascinated by the extreme violence and sex, and by how such a story could be told in such graphic detail. It's an excellent example of story telling....but definitely not for the sexually weak of heart or sensitive.

2005-09-15 | EroticBlkMan (Jersey City, NJ) | Helpful Votes: 6 | Rating: 5

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Dhalgren

Product Details

• Notes: BUY WITH Trust, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and military talents to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
• ISBN13: 9780375706684
• Brainwash: New

Description

In Dhalgren, perhaps one of the most profound and bestselling science fiction novels of all time, Samuel R. Delany has produced a novel "to stand with the best American fiction of the 1970s" (Jonathan Lethem).

Bellona is a city at the dead center of the United States. Something has happened there…. The population has fled. Madmen and criminals wander the streets. Strange portents appear in the cloud-covered sky. And into this disaster zone comes a young man–poet, lover, and adventurer–known only as the Kid. Tackling questions of race, gender, and sexuality, Dhalgren is a literary marvel and groundbreaking work of American magical realism.

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What is Dhalgren? Dhalgren is one of the greatest novels of 20th-century American literature. Dhalgren is one of the all-time bestselling science fiction novels. Dhalgren may be read with equal validity as SF, magic realism, or metafiction. Dhalgren is controversial, challenging, and scandalous. Dhalgren is a brilliant novel about sex, gender, race, class, art, and identity.

A mysterious disaster has stricken the midwestern American city of Bellona, and its aftereffects are disturbing: a city block burns down and is intact a week later; clouds cover the sky for weeks, then part to reveal two moons; a week passes for one person when only a day passes for another. The catastrophe is confined to Bellona, and most of the inhabitants have fled. But others are drawn to the devastated city, among them the Kid, a white/American Indian man who can't remember his own name. The Kid is emblematic of those who live in the new Bellona, who are the young, the poor, the mad, the violent, the outcast--the marginalized.

Dhalgren is many things, but instantly accessible isn't one of them. While most of this big, ambitious, deeply detailed novel is beautifully pellucid, the opening pages will be difficult for some: the novel starts with the second half of an incomplete sentence, in the viewpoint of a man who doesn't know who he is. If you find the early pages rough going, push on; the story soon becomes clear and fascinating. But--fair warning--the central nature of the disaster, of its strange devastations and disruptions, remains a puzzle for many readers, sometimes after several readings.

Spoiler warning: If you want to figure out the secret of the novel as you read Dhalgren, then stop reading this review right now! If you want to know the secret before you start, this is what the novel is about: the experience of existence inside a novel. Time passes differently for different characters. A river changes location. Stairs change their number. The Kid looks in a mirror and sees not himself, but someone who looks an awful lot like Samuel R. Delany. Central images include mirrors, lenses, and prisms, devices that focus, reflect--and distort. The Kid fills a notebook with a journal that may be Dhalgren, and is uncertain if he has written much, or any, of it. The characters don't know they're in a novel, but they know something is wrong. Dhalgren explores the relationship between characters and author (or, perhaps, characters, "author," and author).

The final chapter can be even tougher going than the opening pages, with its viewpoint change and its stretches of braided narrative--and the novel ends with the beginning of an unfinished sentence. But the last chapter becomes clear as you persevere; and when you get to that unfinished closing line, turn to the first line of the novel to finish the sentence and close the narrative circle. --Cynthia Ward

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Customer Reviews

Fantastic Mystery
You really have to read it in order to understand what anyone is talking about when they describe Dhalgren. It should probably be in a genre of its own. It isn't science fiction nor poetry, but probably a little of both. I doubt anybody will ever understand it like one "understands" an ordinary novel. One can enjoy it much like one enjoys poetry, though. There a lot of sex described, but I can't remember once being turned on by it, strangely enough. Delaney sometimes described what happened without telling the reader why it happened; he often leaves out the motivations end the driving forces of people. It's a very special reading experience. It's not a normal page-turner (no cliff-hangers), but I still think a lot of people will have a hard time putting away the book.

2010-03-19 | Marky (Germany) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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i actually threw this book across the room
never have i loathed a book as much as this book. when i had to read the abomination "The Scarlet Letter" as a kid I thought it couldn't possibly be worse then two page sentences and entire paragraphs describing a bush. I WAS WRONG!!

I absolutely hated this book and I made it until the pages went wonky and then I just go so mad I threw it across the room, then in the trash- something i have never done before.

2010-03-18 | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 1

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Deserted Cities of the Heart
Where to begin with a book like this? This book should be an essential, classic novel of 20th C American life, but can't be because of its frankness and graphical descriptions of, among other things, sex that have come to be a perceived blemish on Delaney's career. My college roommate accused me of reading pr0n over this one. So I guess I might as well begin with that caveat, that this book doesn't flinch when it comes to those things we don't usually talk about, including sexual activities generally regarded as deviant.

In fact, one of the main themes explored in this book is literally the things we don't talk about, Lou Reed's "wild side," but in a realistic way, including all the dirt and fleas. If I were to describe literally what this book is about, I guess I'd have to say it's roughly about the "underground," the world you may have found in underground Seattle in the 1960's, or in New Orleans. But even more, it's about a world where that's all there is.

And Delaney was aware of what he was doing. This was a novel about the mental and psychological state that accompanies that life, and what understanding is found for anyone so lost as to arrive there in the first place. Because that place is also known as the Bardo in Budhist literature. It's a place you can only get to by being lost.

And the book is extremely unique in its form. I've never encountered anything like it before or since. It begins as a 3rd person narrative of a young amnesiac wandering an abandoned city who happens on a notebook written by, it eventually becomes clear, other amnesiacs who have wandered the city. He begins to read it, and to add his own notations, and indeed to add notes in the margins. And as he does this, notes appear in the margins of the paperback -- a totally unique approach to printing a paperback and no-one since has done it to my knowledge. You begin to read the story from a 3rd person and first both on the same page, or alternately a first-person and his own commentary on it written sometime after the fact. Sometimes the distinction between commenting on his own memories and on those of other previous owners of "the notebook" become deliciously unclear. Delaney has used the word "palimpsest" more than once in his books, and his appreciation for that artistic license is never more apparent. The book begins to take on some of the same hypnotic allure of the original tape loop music by Terry Riley, or Brian Eno.

If you are into actually reading Carl Jung, Ram Dass, Tibetan art, Jack Kerouac, or in fact, Roger Zelazney, you may find something you really like here. Most others will be left cold. To be very blunt, it is a very philosophical novel and perhaps first and foremost is about aeschatology, ideas about the end of the world. Walker Percy spoke on this a good bit. To be blunt, he as well as some writers on anthropology wrote that the general theme of a great catastrophe at the end of all things is present in all societies, and indeed in all individuals. But our universal image of the end of the world is not truly a time in the future, but is a place in our own minds, and what we find there is knowledge of ourselves that we often would rather not face. To rather ostentatiously quote the title of a song by Cream, this book is about the "Deserted cities of the heart."

Added later:
I wanted to mention that a great part of Dhalgren appears to be about the diminishing little things; watching somebody drinking from a cup with a crack in it, of discretely exploring the underside of a dinner table with one's hand while dining, a conversation between two people digging a latrine. This emphasis on the simple, or profane reality is not for no reason. It's also of some minor note a theme William Gibson dwells on at length in his novels, years down the road. Thanks, Delaney, for a humane treatment of the novel. It's a rarity.

2009-12-05 (Washington DC area) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5

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Mirrors, Prisms, Lenses
Out of curiosity, I just dropped in to have a look-see at the current reviews and was not surprised. As it was in 1977, so it is in 2009. What a book! It is rare to find a work that can cause such divergent responses from its readers over such an extended period of time. In the old days it was mainly the complaint concerning "the talent wasted by SRD." Why won't he write "Babel 17" again? Like Joni Mitchell said, she was not going to "paint A Starry Night again, man." Most of these negative reviewers do not seem to even be familiar with SRD's older work, so at least that seems to be over.

I first read this work upon its release, when both I and the author were young men. The artistic, cultural, racial, sexual, and political contexts that were explored in the novel were those shared by many in the urban centers of North America at the time. The concept of relativism seems to be one which many of the negative reviewers seem to unfamiliar with. I have re-read "Dhalgren" at least every couple of years, which means that I really cannot remember how many times I have waded through it. All I can say is that it was worth the journey every time Bellona was re-entered. There is no "getting it". There is no "riddle to be solved". Like life, the novel is not meant to be understood, it is meant to be experienced.

William Gibson said it best: "It turns there, on the mind's horizon exerting its own peculiar gravity, a tidal force urging the reader's re-entry. It is a literary singularity...Dhalgren does not answer, but goes on. Revolving. A sigil of brass and crystal, concrete and flesh."

2009-09-27 | war head (Westminster, SC) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

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The Worst Novel in the English Language
...or perhaps even any human language. Never has the mind of man conceived of such a self-indulgent exercise in deliberate obscurity, empty artifice and lexorhea. SPOILER: Its a book about itself. The book. A literal literary circle j@rk. Ooooooooo so deep and worthwhile - NOT.

I love novels. I love the evolving form of the novel, from Swift and Defoe through Austen, Scott, Dickens, Twain, Wells, Hemingway, Joyce, Faulkner, Burroughs, Brunner and beyond. This is a crime against the concept of the novel. It is abomination.

I burned my copy. That does not make me a book-burner, Delaney's monster doesn't count. Sometimes I wake up at night in a sweat, shaking in horror remembering this un-book. I wish I could burn the memory of it out of my brain. Burning my copy will have to do.

2009-09-22 | Comandante Zero (Cyberland) | Helpful Votes: 6 | Rating: 1

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Aye, and Gomorrah: And Other Stories

Description

A father must come to terms with his son's death in the war. In Venice an architecture student commits a crime of passion. A white southern airport loader tries to do a favor for a black northern child. The ordinary stuff of ordinary fiction--but with a difference! These tales take place twenty-five, fifty, a hundred-fifty years from now, when men and women have been given gills to labor under the sea. Huge repair stations patrol the cables carrying power to the ends of the earth. Telepathic and precocious children so passionately yearn to visit distant galaxies that they'll kill to go. Brilliantly crafted, beautifully written, these are Samuel Delany's award-winning stories, like no others before or since.

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Customer Reviews

Start Here with Delany
I read this some time ago, so I won't go into great detail, but to say this is classic Delany--pulpy, academic, acid-trip Delany. Its a nice place to start to see if you love Delany. I started with "The Einstein Intersection," but this was the second thing I read. An incredibly under-appreciated author.

2009-10-06 | kraut2001 (Champaign IL) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Delany is a Master
An avid science fiction buff, I fell in love with Delany's short stories many years ago. He is an incredibly cerebral and visceral writer both, with challenging prose of haunting beauty. He upsets notions of social norms in a way that was revelatory to me as a teenager, and continues to underpin my beliefs of what is natural and possible in human beings and their relations. He is also one of the few writers of science fiction (though his work extends well beyond the genre) that counts as true literature in the high-falutin' sense of the word. I can't recommend this book - and any of his other works - highly enough.

2009-08-09 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Delany, but approachable...
Samuel Delany is often cited by other SF authors as an inspriation or a great practitioner of the craft of writing. His novels, such as Dhalgren and Triton, are well-regarded. They are also frequently unapproachable: big, gnarly books with big, gnarly subjects. They certainly are not much like the rafts of semi-literate junk that passes for much of SF these days. But you won't sit down and toss of a Delany novel...

This book, though, is hugely approachable. As a short story collection, it covers a wide span of the author's career and gives us very classic, deep, meaningful, soulful stories. From "Star Pit" as the start to the author's afterword we get a range of great and near-great stories. If you love Delany's longer work, here is a chance to collect a beautiful volume of short fiction. If you want to get into Delany, here's your best opportunity.

Highly recommended.

2004-11-10 (San Jose, CA United States) | Helpful Votes: 4 | Rating: 5

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Excellent fusion of art and emotion
Delany has always been one of SF most thoughtful writers and one of the least likely to simply settle for the genre's conventions. He's an author who deserves to be considered with some of the finest literary minds working today, with the only difference being that he chooses to work within the confines of
SF or fantasy, somehow always tweaking it until it becomes distinctly his, while remaining recognizable as SF. This is a collection of his short stories and contains most of the major ones as far as I know, certainly both Nebula award winning stories and other stuff, most of it published in the sixties and seventies. The titles alone should tell you that this isn't your typical series of SF stories, containing such evocative titles as "Driftglass" or "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones" or my personal favorite, "We, in Some Strange Power's Employ, Move in a Rigorous Line". The stories run the gamut from well told SF tales to more experimental stuff. The best stories are the more famous ones, both "Driftglass" (about a future society where people are given gills to adapt to living under the sea) and "Time Considered . . ." (a future gangster type story) are stunningly evocative of their fictional future times, set apart by the depth of Delany's ideas and his stunning prose, his descriptions more often than not achieve a sort of magical realism and sometimes come closer to the more lyrical nature of poetry than anything else. Generally most of the stories hit their targets in a bulleyes, you have the occassional tale (like the one with "Blob" in the title) that are just a bit too much on the experimental side to have much of an impact. And yet there are others such as "Dog in a Fisherman's Net" that are basically timeless and work as pure story and take you to a place that may or may not have ever existed. Even the stories such as "The Star Pit" that seem to be just pure SF at first eventually reveal themselves to be about something more. Delany is not just interested in talking about spaceships and time travel and he merely uses SF or fantasy as a background to explore aspects of human nature that the tales lend themselves to. Just about anything the man has ever written is worth reading and I think his novels are the best place to discover and fully explore his talents, this collection is a great way to get acquainted with some of his best work (and a few of these stories do rank up with his best) and enjoy SF/fantasy with a more thoughtful bent than usual, something more than just swords and spaceships and aliens and evil gods. The writers of today aren't restricted to the cliches of their genres, even if they choose to stay within those confines. Delany shows us what it's like to have no restrictions at all.

2004-01-26 | Helpful Votes: 4 | Rating: 5

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A near-perfect fusion of artistry and imagination
"Aye, and Gomorrah and Other Stories," by Samuel R. Delany, brings together 15 tales along with an afterword by the author. The copyright page gives the publication histories of the pieces in this book. The stories in this volume vary greatly in length: 2 fall into the 60-70 page range (and could, I suppose, be considered novellas), 2 fall into the less than 10 page range, and the rest are of various lengths in between; this nicely adds to the overall variety of the collection.

Most of the pieces in this book fall firmly in the science fiction genre, although I consider a couple to be fantasy. Delany's locales range from cities on Earth (Venice, New York) to worlds beyond our solar system.

Delany's stories are both triumphs of science fiction inventiveness and exquisite works of literary art--as well as being compassionate yet unflinching explorations of the human condition. His vision is richly ironic, and often tragic. His prose can be hauntingly beautiful to read--he is a particular master of visual description.

Delany's explorations of emergent subcultures and institutions in many of these tales give the book an intriguing sociological aspect. His topics include crime, punishment, sexuality, loss, suffering, culture clash, space travel, and the fabric of consciousness and reality.

The remarkable title story is a look at the emergence of a new sexual orientation and its related subculture in the context of expanding technology. "Driftglass" looks at a class of physiologically altered humans. "Omegahelm" is a shocking, fascinating story about motherhood and art. These are just a few examples of Delany's fertile mind. I consider Delany to be a unique and essential voice in the science fiction canon; this collection of his short fiction is a volume to be savored and shared.

2003-07-23 (Pittsburgh, PA USA) | Helpful Votes: 7 | Rating: 5

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