Harold Brodkey
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Harold Brodkey (October 25, 1930 – January 26, 1996), born Aaron Roy Weintraub, was an American short-story writer and
novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others aspire to ...
.


Life

Brodkey was the second child born in
Staunton, Illinois Staunton is the second largest city in Macoupin County, Illinois, United States. As of the 2020 Census, the population was 5,054. History Name origins A man named Stanton bought land in the area, and then decided to move on and gave the land to ...
, to Max Weintraub and Celia Glazer Weintraub (1899-1932); Samuel Weintraub (1928-2017) was their oldest child. He was Jewish. When their birth mother Celia died, Samuel Weintraub was four and old enough to remain with his father but Aaron Weintraub, only two years old, was adopted by his father's cousin, Doris Rubenstein Brodkey (1896-1949) and her husband, Joseph Brodkey (1896-1946) and renamed Harold Roy Brodkey. Doris and Joseph lived in
University City, Missouri University City (colloquially, U. City) is an inner-ring suburb of the city of St. Louis in St. Louis County, Missouri, St. Louis County, in the U.S. state of Missouri. The population was measured at 35,065 by the 2020 United States Census, 2020 c ...
, with their daughter, Marilyn Ruth Brodkey (1923-2011). Brodkey would chronicle his life with his adoptive parents and sister in his short stories and his novel, ''
The Runaway Soul ''The Runaway Soul'', published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 1991, first edition , Library of Congress catalog card number 91-75885, is the long-awaited first novel by Harold Brodkey. It represents either part or all of the work that Brodkey lab ...
''. After graduating from
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
with an
A.B. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...
''
cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sou ...
'' in 1952, Brodkey married his first wife, Joanna Brown, a Radcliffe graduate and, in 1953 their only child, Ann Emily Brodkey was born. With the aid of his editor, William Maxwell, a childhood friend of his wife, Brodkey began his writing career by contributing short stories to ''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'' and other magazines. His stories received two first-place
O. Henry Award The O. Henry Award is an annual American award given to short stories of exceptional merit. The award is named after the American short-story writer O. Henry. The ''PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories'' is an annual collection of the year's twenty best ...
s. Brodkey was a staff writer for ''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'' until the end of his life. In 1993 he announced in ''The New Yorker'' that he had contracted
AIDS Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual m ...
; he later wrote ''This Wild Darkness: The Story of My Death'' (1996), about his battle with the disease. At the time of his death in 1996, he was living in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
with his second wife, novelist Ellen Brodkey (née Schwamm). Brodkey contracted the HIV virus from a homosexual relationship, though he reportedly did not consider himself to be gay. The author is most famous for his breathtaking conversational skills, his progressively more complex text and for taking 32 years to complete his much anticipated first novel, published in 1991 as ''
The Runaway Soul ''The Runaway Soul'', published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 1991, first edition , Library of Congress catalog card number 91-75885, is the long-awaited first novel by Harold Brodkey. It represents either part or all of the work that Brodkey lab ...
''.


Literary career

Brodkey's career began promisingly with the short-story collection '' First Love and Other Sorrows'', which received widespread critical praise at the time of its 1958 publication. Six years later he signed a book contract with
Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...
for his first novel, tentatively titled "A Party of Animals" (it was also referred to as "The Animal Corner"). The unfinished novel was subsequently resold to
Farrar, Straus & Giroux Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG) is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by Roger Williams Straus Jr. and John C. Farrar. FSG is known for publishing literary books, and its authors have won numerous awards, including Pulitzer ...
in 1970, then to
Knopf Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. () is an American publishing house that was founded by Alfred A. Knopf Sr. and Blanche Knopf in 1915. Blanche and Alfred traveled abroad regularly and were known for publishing European, Asian, and Latin American writers in ...
in '79. As a ''Paris Review'' interview noted, "The work became something of an object of desire for editors; it was moved among publishing houses for what were rumored to be ever-increasing advances, advertised as a forthcoming title (''Party of Animals'') in book catalogs, expanded and ceaselessly revised, until its publication seemed an event longer awaited than anything without theological implications." In 1983 the ''Saturday Review'' referred to "A Party of Animals" as "now reportedly comprising 4,000 pages and announced as forthcoming 'next year' every year since 1973." During this period, Brodkey published a number of stories, most of them in ''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'', that dealt with a set of recurring characters—the evidently autobiographical Wiley Silenowicz and his adoptive family—and which were announced as fragments of the novel. His editor at Knopf,
Gordon Lish Gordon Lish (born February 11, 1934 in Hewlett, New York) is an American writer. As a literary editor, he championed many American authors, particularly Raymond Carver, Barry Hannah, Amy Hempel, Rick Bass, and Richard Ford. He is the father of t ...
, called the novel in progress "the one necessary American narrative work of this century." Literary critic
Harold Bloom Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was described as "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking wor ...
declared: "If he's ever able to solve his publishing problems, he'll be seen as one of the great writers of his day." In addition to publishing, Brodkey earned a living during this period by writing
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scripts for
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, and teaching at
Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...
. Three long stories from "A Party of Animals" were collected in ''
Women and Angels A woman is an adult female human. Prior to adulthood, a female human is referred to as a girl (a female child or adolescent). The plural ''women'' is sometimes used in certain phrases such as "women's rights" to denote female humans regardl ...
'' (1985), and a larger number, including those three, appeared in 1988's '' Stories in an Almost Classical Mode''. Brodkey had apparently decided to omit them from the novel, for when, in 1991, he published ''
The Runaway Soul ''The Runaway Soul'', published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 1991, first edition , Library of Congress catalog card number 91-75885, is the long-awaited first novel by Harold Brodkey. It represents either part or all of the work that Brodkey lab ...
'', a very long novel (835 pages) dramatizing Wiley's early life, no material from '' Stories in an Almost Classical Mode'' was included. The novel seems to be either "A Party of Animals" under a new title or the first volume of an eventual multivolume work. Brodkey made some comments that suggested the latter. Brodkey's second novel, ''Profane Friendship'', appeared in 1994.


Criticism

From the beginning of his career, Brodkey accrued detractors. Reviewing ''First Love'' for ''
The Christian Science Monitor ''The Christian Science Monitor'' (''CSM''), commonly known as ''The Monitor'', is a nonprofit news organization that publishes daily articles in electronic format as well as a weekly print edition. It was founded in 1908 as a daily newspaper ...
'', Melvin Maddocks wrote that "a sense of vital, untampered-with conflict is missing. These stories seem too patly, too cautiously worked out. They are Japanese-garden fiction with every pebble in place." A critic for ''
The Atlantic Monthly ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
'' similarly complained that Brodkey "appears to be the kind of artist committed to working in the minor key which ''The New Yorker'' has made fashionable." ''
Kirkus Reviews ''Kirkus Reviews'' (or ''Kirkus Media'') is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus (1893–1980). The magazine is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fic ...
'' called ''Stories in an Almost Classical Mode'' an "endless kvetch." In ''
The New Criterion ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...
'',
Bruce Bawer Theodore Bruce Bawer (born October 31, 1956) is an American writer who has been a resident of Norway since 1999. He is a literary, film, and cultural critic and a novelist and poet, who has also written about gay rights, Christianity, and Islam. ...
found the book's tone to be "extraordinarily arrogant and self-obsessed." He further wrote, "Brodkey is so fixated upon the tragic memories of his childhood and youth that he has virtually no sense of proportion about them. In one story after another, he offers up pages of gratuitous detail, straining, it seems, to squeeze every last drop of significance out of every last inane particular." Later, in assessing ''The Runaway Soul'', Bawer wrote, "The plain fact is that 99 percent of the prose here is gawky, aimless, repetitive, murky, and pretentious—and there are few more unenviable literary experiences than having to read over eight hundred pages of it." He concluded that the novel was "one of the literary fiascos of all time." "Entering ''The Runaway Soul''," wrote
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt Christopher Lehmann-Haupt (June 14, 1934 – November 7, 2018) was an American journalist, editor of the ''New York Times Book Review'', critic, and novelist, based in New York City. He served as senior Daily Book Reviewer from 1969 to 1995. Bi ...
in ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', "is like arriving at a monthlong house party and being accosted at the door by your host, who sticks his mouth in your face and begins to talk." Lehmann-Haupt found the book to be replete with "bogus philosophizing" and "paradoxical non-art," with prose that was "verbose, repetitive, overstuffed with adverbs, of questionable sense, tedious and just plain ugly." In ''
The American Scholar "The American Scholar" was a speech given by Ralph Waldo Emerson on August 31, 1837, to the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College at the First Parish in Cambridge in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was invited to speak in recognition of his gr ...
'', Michael Dirda criticized the novel's "consummate, unmitigated tedium." Regarding ''This Wild Darkness'', Brenda Bracker in ''
The Baltimore Sun ''The Baltimore Sun'' is the largest general-circulation daily newspaper based in the U.S. state of Maryland and provides coverage of local and regional news, events, issues, people, and industries. Founded in 1837, it is currently owned by Tr ...
'' criticized the "long and self-indulgent stretches of the author's much-touted mystical prose" and wrote that "watching Brodkey watch himself die by inches becomes, ultimately, tedious." Several weeks after Brodkey announced in ''The New Yorker'' in 1993 that he was suffering from AIDS, the
Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...
-winning poet
Richard Howard Richard Joseph Howard (October 13, 1929 – March 31, 2022; adopted as Richard Joseph Orwitz) was an American poet, literary critic, essayist, teacher, and translator. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and was a graduate of Columbia University, w ...
wrote in ''
The New Republic ''The New Republic'' is an American magazine of commentary on politics, contemporary culture, and the arts. Founded in 1914 by several leaders of the progressive movement, it attempted to find a balance between "a liberalism centered in hum ...
'' that the disclosure was "a matter of manipulative hucksterism, of mendacious self-propaganda and cruel assertion of artistic privilege, whereby death is made a matter of public relations." In reviewing Brodkey's essay collection ''Sea Battles on Dry Land'' for ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', Wendy Steiner wrote that although the anthology "does contain some very good sentences," others were "unspeakable," e.g. "'A car simply is too weak and too complex to be a good symbol, since neither does it plow, and it does not weep either." Moreover, "Brodkey's philosophizing alternates between deconstruction-rivaling nonsense and delusional pieties." ''
Kirkus Reviews ''Kirkus Reviews'' (or ''Kirkus Media'') is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus (1893–1980). The magazine is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fic ...
'' complained that in these "self-involved, prolix" essays, "Brodkey seems to be parodying both himself and ''The New Yorker.''" Among the offending examples cited were "a superannuated
New Journalism New Journalism is a style of news writing and journalism, developed in the 1960s and 1970s, that uses literary techniques unconventional at the time. It is characterized by a subjective perspective, a literary style reminiscent of long-form non ...
style piece on the
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," "pompously irrelevant analyses of the 1992 presidential campaign," and "preciously insubstantial vignettes" for ''The New Yorker's'' "Talk of the Town" section. "If, for some reason, you consider yourself a New York intellectual, ''Sea Battles on Dry Land'' might encourage you to secede from the tribe," wrote Susie Linfield in her review of the book for ''
The New York Observer ''The New York Observer'' was a weekly newspaper printed from 1987 to 2016, when it ceased print publication and became the online-only newspaper ''Observer''. The media site focuses on culture, real estate, media, politics and the entertainmen ...
''. "When rodkeyis bad, he is very, very bad, and he is very, very bad quite often. ''Sea Battles'' is filled with whoppers: misstatements, overstatements, nonstatements and statements that are silly, false or incomprehensible."


Bibliography


Short-story collections

* '' First Love and Other Sorrows'' (
1958 Events January * January 1 – The European Economic Community (EEC) comes into being. * January 3 – The West Indies Federation is formed. * January 4 ** Edmund Hillary's Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition completes the third ...
, ) * ''
Women and Angels A woman is an adult female human. Prior to adulthood, a female human is referred to as a girl (a female child or adolescent). The plural ''women'' is sometimes used in certain phrases such as "women's rights" to denote female humans regardl ...
'' (
1985 The year 1985 was designated as the International Youth Year by the United Nations. Events January * January 1 ** The Internet's Domain Name System is created. ** Greenland withdraws from the European Economic Community as a result of a ...
, ) (3 stories, all later included in his 1988 collection). * '' Stories in an Almost Classical Mode'' (
1988 File:1988 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The oil platform Piper Alpha explodes and collapses in the North Sea, killing 165 workers; The USS Vincennes (CG-49) mistakenly shoots down Iran Air Flight 655; Australia celebrates its Australian ...
, ) * ''
The World is the Home of Love and Death ''The World Is the Home of Love and Death: Stories'' is a collection of short stories written by Harold Brodkey and first published Posthumous work, posthumously in 1997. Most of the stories were written to be part of his novel ''The Runaway Soul ...
'' (
1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of t ...
, )


Novels

* ''
The Runaway Soul ''The Runaway Soul'', published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 1991, first edition , Library of Congress catalog card number 91-75885, is the long-awaited first novel by Harold Brodkey. It represents either part or all of the work that Brodkey lab ...
'' (
1991 File:1991 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Boris Yeltsin, elected as Russia's first president, waves the new flag of Russia after the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, orchestrated by Soviet hardliners; Mount Pinatubo erupts in the Phil ...
, ) * '' Profane Friendship'' (
1994 File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which Sinking of the MS Estonia, sank in ...
, )


Non-fiction

* '' This Wild Darkness: The Story of My Death'' (
1996 File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A Centennial Olympic Park bombing, bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical Anti-abortion violence, anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 8 ...
, ) * '' My Venice'' (
1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The '' Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently ...
, ) * '' Sea Battles on Dry Land: Essays'' (
1999 File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shootin ...
, )


References


External links


Jonathan Baskin, "Fading Fast," ''Bookforum''


''The New York Times'' * {{DEFAULTSORT:Brodkey, Harold 1930 births 1996 deaths 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American memoirists Cornell University faculty O. Henry Award winners Novelists from Illinois Novelists from Missouri Novelists from New York (state) Harvard Advocate alumni People from Staunton, Illinois People from St. Louis County, Missouri AIDS-related deaths in New York (state) Jewish American novelists American male novelists American male short story writers 20th-century American short story writers American male non-fiction writers 20th-century American Jews