From Publishers Weekly
The title of the captivating latest by the Hugo-winning author of
Dhalgren is also the title of a book of poems written by the novel's poet protagonist, Arnold Hawley. That might strike one as a more straightforward setup than that of
Pale Fire. But given that Delany is a poet who gave up writing poetry for a more financially rewarding career writing sci-fi and memoir, and that the fictional Hawley is the same age as Delany and is also black and gay, the reader familiar with Delany's work soon feels that these "dark reflections" form a fascinatingly structured experiment in alternative autobiography—what if Delany had remained a poet and not turned to prose? Hawley's career as a semisuccessful poet istold in reverse, its three sections take the poet from obscure old age to the dawning of youthful ambition. In contrast to the exuberant explorations of the East Village's sexual underworld in Delany's memoirs, poor Hawley's sexual career never really gets off the ground—"what if" for Delany had not come to terms with his sexuality during early 1960s? Delany transforms poetry's status as the most ignored field of American letters into a devastating and beautifully written study of the loneliness and despair that so often accompany the life of the mind in America.
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From Booklist
Better known for his groundbreaking sf, Delany here takes a rare detour into contemporary mainstream fiction. Drawing upon his own life circumstances, he follows the troubled career of Arnold Hawley, a gay, African American poet wrestling with obscurity while eking out a meager living in New York's East Village. Arnold's creative and personal struggles are recounted in three sections corresponding to stages of his life, presented in reverse, so that the book begins in his disillusioned elder years and ends with his ambitious youth. Against a backdrop of shifting American culture stretching backward from the present to the 1950s, Arnold wins a little-known poetry prize for his sixth book; stumbles into an unlikely marriage with a suicidal homeless girl; and explores awakening homosexual identity in an eye-opening encounter with a black delivery boy. Arnold's triple minority status as gay, black, and a poet inspires Delany's finely nuanced meditation on the challenges and the changing roles faced by society's outsiders in what is one of his most masterfully written novels to date.
Carl HaysCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
