An Arrow's Flight

An Arrow's Flight
Author	Mark Merlis
Country	United States
Language	English
Publisher	St. Martin's Press
Publication date	August 1998
Media type	Print (hardback & paperback)
Pages	376 pp
ISBN	978-0-312-18675-3
OCLC	38150357
Dewey Decimal	813/.54 21
LC Class	PS3563.E7422 A89 1998

An Arrow's Flight (ISBN 978-0-312-24288-6) is a novel by Mark Merlis, published in 1998.

Plot summary

Pyrrhus lives in the city with his housemate Leucon. He works as a waiter, then as a hustler. One day he hears his father Achilles has left him some inheritance in Troy, and he decides to claim it. On the ship, he sleeps with Corythus, a sailor. He soon learns he needs to seduce Philoctetes and get his bow for a prophecy to come true. He grows attached to the old man, though the latter also has an affair with Paris. Finally, Philoctetes breaks the bow. Pyrrhus meets Leucon again in a hospital where Pyrrhus is waiting to see his lover Philoctetes, who is very sick; the latter realizes he no longer has feelings for Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus understands that he has grown and accepted his sexuality and is able to live openly, something Leucon cannot do. (The novel hints that he probably never will.)

Main characters

Pyrrhus, the protagonist.
Leucon
Odysseus
Philoctetes
Corythus
Paris

Literary signifiance

1999 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Men's Fiction[1]
It is a retelling of Sophocles's Philoctetes.[2] It was inspired by Edmund Wilson's essay entitled 'The Wound and the Bow'.[2] It was also inspired by Christopher Logue and Robinson Jeffers.[2]
It has been read as a sequel to Andrew Holleran's Dancer from the Dance.[3]

gollark: How would you take over the world with it? You can bruteforce anything which fits into 1KB (are we assuming 1KiB here, not 1000 bytes exactly?), which is not that much.

gollark: "None are safe" is correct as an approximation, not *strictly*.

gollark: Unlikely. osmarks.tk™ is protected by highly advanced HTech™ Personality Constructs™.

gollark: `OverflowError: factorial() argument should not exceed 9223372036854775807` - how apious.

gollark: Troubling.

References

"Lambda Literary Foundation :: LL Awards Recipients :: 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999". Archived from the original on 2008-04-18. Retrieved 2008-08-03.
"Interview". Markmerlis.com. Archived from the original on March 3, 2012. Retrieved 2013-12-04.
Norman W. Jones (2007). Gay and Lesbian Historical Fiction Sexual Mystery and Post-Secular Narrative. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 140. ISBN 978-1-4039-7655-0.

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[lambda-1] "Lambda Literary Foundation :: LL Awards Recipients :: 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999". Archived from the original on 2008-04-18. Retrieved 2008-08-03.

[interview-2] "Interview". Markmerlis.com. Archived from the original on March 3, 2012. Retrieved 2013-12-04.

[3] Norman W. Jones (2007). Gay and Lesbian Historical Fiction Sexual Mystery and Post-Secular Narrative. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 140. ISBN 978-1-4039-7655-0.