Sea Battles on Dry Land gathers the best of Harold Brodkey's essays into a single volume. His "One of the Rules of Foppishness" explains, with deadpan precision, just what men and women are trying to communicate to each other by the way they dress. The previously unpublished "Notes on American Fascism" eerily anticipates the violence of latter-day militia groups. And Brodkey's profile of Frank O'Hara's Harvard years stands as one of the most eloquent portraits of a legendary American writer.
These short stories filled with “narrative grace and rare craftsmanship” chronicle the loss of innocence and the anguish of young love (San Francisco Chronicle). First Love and Other Sorrows is the hauntingly beautiful debut collection of short stories from American master Harold Brodkey. Written when the author was in his twenties, these strong, affecting tales recall the intoxicating joy of young, springtime love, while lamenting the betrayal of dreams and false ideals in the glaring light of reality. Set in the Midwest during the 1950s, First Love and Other Sorrows centers around a Jewish family that has recently lost its patriarch—and with him the world of privilege. Through the eyes of a son, a sister, and a mother—each one struggling to find a foothold in both family and society—these stories explore class prejudice, obsessive love, and the tragic foibles and emotional truths of being human. First Love and Other Sorrows is masterful fiction from an extraordinary literary artist.
DIVDIVFrom Harold Brodkey come three remarkable stories about the brief lives of two women and the troubling appearance of an angel above Harvard University/divDIV Considered by many to be among the greatest American writers of the twentieth century, Harold Brodkey created fiction that startled, provoked, and often confounded. These three novellas, told through the recollections of fictional alter ego, Wiley Silenowicz, serve as sterling examples of Brodkey’s magnificent talent./divDIV /divDIVIn “Ceil,” Wiley imagines the mother he never knew, brilliantly reinventing the woman who died when he was a child of two, creating a parent both idealized and painfully real. In “Lila,” Wiley remembers his adoptive mother, an unloving and unlovable, self-involved woman, whose early death from cancer left a permanent void in his family. And in “Angel,”the book’s remarkable closing piece, Wiley recalls a heavenly visitation that came to him and many others while studying at Harvard University, and which heralded a truth most difficult to bear. For lovers of literature who have yet to experience Brodkey’s unique style, soaring language, and conceptual brilliance, Women and Angels is a marvelous introduction to an American master./div/div
A meditation on dying by a writer who has been compared to Proust, was much praised by Salman Rushdie and is perhaps most famous for producing very little.
Harold Brodkey's haunting, lyrical portrait of his most beloved city. Venice is a separate country," Harold Brodkey wrote of the fabled city that became his literary muse. "It floats at anchor inside its own will, among its domes and campanili, independent and exotic at its heart."The author's love of Venice--its churches and vaporetti, its capacity to bewilder and seduce--brought him back time and again to the shores of the Adriatic in search of fresh inspiration. Brodkey's Venice is marked by powerful contrasts: pride beside humility, the sacred alongside the profane, solemn tradition coexisting with exuberant mercantile optimism. Illustrated with eleven stunning black-and-white portraits by the legary Italian photographer Giuseppe Bruno, My Venice combines passages from several of Brodkey's great works with previously unpublished notes and essays to create a text as rich, subtle, and beguiling as the city itself.
These short stories filled with “narrative grace and rare craftsmanship” chronicle the loss of innocence and the anguish of young love (San Francisco Chronicle). First Love and Other Sorrows is the hauntingly beautiful debut collection of short stories from American master Harold Brodkey. Written when the author was in his twenties, these strong, affecting tales recall the intoxicating joy of young, springtime love, while lamenting the betrayal of dreams and false ideals in the glaring light of reality. Set in the Midwest during the 1950s, First Love and Other Sorrows centers around a Jewish family that has recently lost its patriarch—and with him the world of privilege. Through the eyes of a son, a sister, and a mother—each one struggling to find a foothold in both family and society—these stories explore class prejudice, obsessive love, and the tragic foibles and emotional truths of being human. First Love and Other Sorrows is masterful fiction from an extraordinary literary artist.
Sea Battles on Dry Land gathers the best of Harold Brodkey's essays into a single volume. His "One of the Rules of Foppishness" explains, with deadpan precision, just what men and women are trying to communicate to each other by the way they dress. The previously unpublished "Notes on American Fascism" eerily anticipates the violence of latter-day militia groups. And Brodkey's profile of Frank O'Hara's Harvard years stands as one of the most eloquent portraits of a legendary American writer.
DIVDIVFrom Harold Brodkey come three remarkable stories about the brief lives of two women and the troubling appearance of an angel above Harvard University/divDIV Considered by many to be among the greatest American writers of the twentieth century, Harold Brodkey created fiction that startled, provoked, and often confounded. These three novellas, told through the recollections of fictional alter ego, Wiley Silenowicz, serve as sterling examples of Brodkey’s magnificent talent./divDIV /divDIVIn “Ceil,” Wiley imagines the mother he never knew, brilliantly reinventing the woman who died when he was a child of two, creating a parent both idealized and painfully real. In “Lila,” Wiley remembers his adoptive mother, an unloving and unlovable, self-involved woman, whose early death from cancer left a permanent void in his family. And in “Angel,”the book’s remarkable closing piece, Wiley recalls a heavenly visitation that came to him and many others while studying at Harvard University, and which heralded a truth most difficult to bear. For lovers of literature who have yet to experience Brodkey’s unique style, soaring language, and conceptual brilliance, Women and Angels is a marvelous introduction to an American master./div/div
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