Corrections from Samuel R. Delany to be made in the 2nd impression of Dark Reflections (Caroll & Graf).

[Dark Reflections corrections:]

BACK COVER OF NOVEL:
First Michael Cunningham quote: Line 4:

ordinary man living right now in New York City. Delany gives us

[Omit comma between “ordinary” and “man”.]

Author Paragraph [last paragraph on back cover]/ Line 2:

million-copy seller Dhalgren and a recent non-fiction book,

[Replace “his” with “a”.]

INTERNAL TEXT OF NOVEL:

15/5/9:

and Prizes left there aslant the tabletop. Absently he began paging through

[Omit the word “on” after “aslant”.]

21/1/5:

them now. It’s not your fault. You’re a fine poet, Arnold. A very

[Italicize the “r” in “your”.]

30/7/1:

Probably, from the cover of his own Beleaguered Fields.

[Drop exclamation point from the end of the sentence. Replace with period.]

32/8/7:

thick with kids, before, across from Gem Spa, he turned east.

[Omit the "apostrophe-s" at the end of "Gem", before "Spa".]

47/1/3:

planned to reward himself with a stop on the way home at St.

[Change “over” to “on”. Omit the two commas.]

55/4/5:

Gossamer, gray and violet; auburn hair . . . This could have been

[Insert comma after “Gossamer”.]

67/7/1:

“Then come on, Arnold. I’ll tell them you’re coming. At seven.

[Last word in the line: replace “six:” with “seven”.]

72/5/3:

wanted. But what were any of them doing in this brave, new, and

[Omit exclamation point after “wanted” and replace with period.]

75/5/4:

as good as this one, just completed. But that’s how he felt with

[Omit exclamation point after “completed” and replace with period.]

77/2/4&5:

a light brown beard and faint growback. “You mean the black

poet . . .? That’s awesome!” Ten rings of different sizes hung from

[At the end of line four italicize the word “black” and in line five insert a three point ellipsis between “poet” and question mark.]

77/6/2:

his long black overcoat, his runners worn along the outer edges

[Change “warn” to “worn”.]

82/3/2:

about menstrual blood and . . . lady pee?”

[After “pee” replace period with question mark.]

90/3/3:

γνωθι σεατόν: it was only because he’d wanted so much more.

[Insert “ω” (lower case omega with a circumflex over it) two letters into the first Greek word.]

110/12/1:

“Oh, never mind!” Arnold turned to the door again.

[Insert “to” after “turned.”]

111/7/5:

tell Michael for me, congratulations? On his winning the Alfred

[Insert “for” after “Michael” and before “me”. Re-wrap paragraph if needed.]

113/2/1:

“I’m sorry,” Arnold whispered, his throat dry. “But

[Omit “painfully” after “his”. Re-wrap paragraph if needed.]

120/5/2:

sun. As a breeze came, from the afternoon’s sprinkle drops glit-

[Omit comma after “sprinkle”.]

134/9/4:

heroin or Quaaludes she’s run out to get! Oh, no—that’s insane!

[Remove the final “e” from “heroine.”]

139/2/1&2:

As, through the glimmer of water, he saw the white line that
that had sedimented around the bottom, he was

[Omit “of”  at the end of the first line and “toothpaste” at the start of the second. Re-wrap the rest of the paragraph.]

149/6/1:

Judy looked over, with a serene lack of interest.

[Change “serene disinterest” to “a serene lack of interest”.]

152/5/1:

“I mean, it’s all goin’ on, practically outside your door, pretty much

[After “on,” and before “outside” insert “practically”. Re-wrap paragraph.]

169/5/4:

wondered had she gotten through?) Then a memory—half a

[Move the closing parenthesis to the right of the question mark.]

173/5/1:

“I been turnin’ the fuckin’ lock! And nothin’ fuckin’ happens!”

[Replace “g” in “nothing” with an apostrophe. Insert an apostrophe after the second “fuckin”.]

179/2/4:

with her gore, before it dripped to the tile.

[Change “fell” to “dripped”.]

195/3/9, 10, & 11:

the tiles, blood still left brown grout lines around the tub.

They’d taken his shower curtain.

In the corner was the pail, the mop still in it. Along the bottom of the tub, wet and

In line 9 omit phrase “on the floor”. Insert paragraph break after “tub.” Insert 2nd paragraph break after “curtain.” Rewrap line 11 and the rest of the paragraph as needed.[]

196/4/5:

that—uncharacteristically—Arnold was wearing Aunt

[Close up space between n first dash and “uncharacteristically”.]

201/1/9&10:

from the poems. (That’s not the kind of poetry Arnold wrote . . .)

Nevertheless, it was interesting to think about some critic,

[As it is now, this is a bad line break. Move the period and the closing parenthesis up to line 9. Start line 10 with: “Nevertheless,”.]

201/1/21:

(“Revolving door . . .”)? Trakl hadn't left a note--so how did

[Change the spelling of "Trackle" to "Trakl".]

206/6/1:

The same day, at two in the morning (more than a year after

[Replace “three years” with “more than a year”.]

206/7/1:

He’d recognized him immediately. They’d spoken Russian.

[Replace the one line paragraph “They’d spoken Russian.” with the above two sentences.]

207/1/2&3:

Wednesday morning (at school, they told him a while ago, free

Mondays or Fridays were no longer an option for adjuncts), Arnold

[On line 1, change "Mon-" to "free". On line 2, change "days" to "Mondays" and remove "free" after "Fridays".]

208/6/3:

that’s how these things turned into years—Arnold opened the kitchen

[Add an “s” to “thing” to make it plural.]

217/5/2:

to listen to Arnold’s chest, Arnold asked suddenly: “Are there

[Omit final word, “are”. Rewrap if necessary.]

232/10/1:

“Hi, sweetheart. How’s everything at college?”

[Replace final word “school” with “college”.]

260/7/[POETIC EXCERPT]:

Walk like a man, talk like a man,
Walk like a man, my so-o-on-oo!
No woman’s worth crawling on the earth!
Walk like a man, my so-on.

[Replace the two line Poetic Excerpt with the four lines above. Perhaps space can be omitted above and below the excerpt to keep from moving lines over several pages.]

262/4/1:

“Well,” Lamar said, “I wouldn’t have minded trading places

[Replace period after “said” with comma.]

269/3/10:

hundreds of miles from Rochester, where, at age 36, she had

[Omit one of the “had”s from the line’s end. Ere-wrap if needed.] 

269/4/2 [Italicized excerpt]:

Spring, 1954, Pittsfield, age 18

[Change "BU" to "Pittsfield".]

270/1/12:

prose, though: The System of Dante’s Hell (he’d read the first

[After “(he’d” omit the word “had”.]

271/1/6:

eyes water. Walking home, later, across Tompkins Square, still

[Omit “the” before “Tompkins”.]

272/1/4:

him—Eddy didn’t want to go in because someone might be there

[Replace last word “inside; with “there”.]

278/3/1:

But he was working on another book, a prose poem this

[Replace “then” with “a”.]

278/4/2:

lets you down . . .”), the fifth book was done, and even country

[Insert comma after “done”.]

283/4/5:

and, indeed, since Harold’s and Anita’s deaths, peach ice cream,

[Reverse “Anita’s and Harold’s”

291/1/2:

war, soll ich werden—Where there was id, there shall be ego—another

[Replace “by” with “be”.]

291/5/11:

universe . . .?—definitively and forever solved.

[Omit terminal exclamation point and replace with period.]

293/2/2:

loose one of the six copies he still had of Waters—the one which

[Replace first word “free” with “loose”.]

Last update to this page made on 20 Oct 2007, adding seventeen new corrections.