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sofiagcats's review
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
leerazer's review
3.0
I really have no idea why when going for a collection of short stories to read aloud with my wife the name Harold Brodkey popped into my head as the obvious answer. He must have been lurking somewhere in there for some time just waiting for his chance. Brodkey was well known in his day, the fifties through the eighties or so, for his short stories and as staff writer on The New Yorker. He kept the literary world waiting for decades for his debut novel, which when finally released in 1991 as an 800 page behemoth was met with all the critical enthusiasm of a wet fart and which has now disappeared from the public consciousness so comprehensively that on Goodreads it has all of 63 ratings and fewer than a dozen reviews of more than one line. Amazing.
This is his debut collection, containing the stories that launched his reputation and ultimately ill-fated career. The brilliance they contain lay in their close examination of the characters' inner states of mind, their thoughts and feelings and contradictory emotions. The collection is a story of two halves. The first four stories are of some length and concern Brodkey's youth in St. Louis and college years at Harvard. The final five stories are much shorter and are attempts at portraying a young woman and mother, I'm assuming modeled after Brodkey's older sister.
I enjoyed the first half much more than the second half, I must say. Brodkey had more to say in them and of course he had easy access to his own past mind to mine. He could describe his protagonist's state of inner feeling with crystal clarity. A 13 year old's insecurity and feeling of otherness is brilliantly portrayed in State of Grace and an account of a college age young man's spending a year cycling through France with a friend describes the peril that can arise from getting to know anyone too closely for too long with amusing aplomb in The Quarrel.
The second batch of stories he's trying to do the same with a literary stand in for his sister, whom he apparently thought of as shallow and incredibly vain. Sometimes it succeeds I think but for me he misses more often than he hits with these. I miss the feeling of authorial sympathy for his protagonist that the earlier stories have, and I think the length of these compared to the length of the earlier stories reflects that he didn't have as good a grasp on this character and was floundering a bit.
So then, Harold Brodkey, I hope this raising you to the forefront of my consciousness for this time has served to scratch whatever itch you planted at some past moment into my own mind. I'm sorry you've faded from fame so greatly, but hey, there's always the chance you'll get rediscovered, even for that novel to get reevaluated and declared an unjustly ignored classic. You never know.
This is his debut collection, containing the stories that launched his reputation and ultimately ill-fated career. The brilliance they contain lay in their close examination of the characters' inner states of mind, their thoughts and feelings and contradictory emotions. The collection is a story of two halves. The first four stories are of some length and concern Brodkey's youth in St. Louis and college years at Harvard. The final five stories are much shorter and are attempts at portraying a young woman and mother, I'm assuming modeled after Brodkey's older sister.
I enjoyed the first half much more than the second half, I must say. Brodkey had more to say in them and of course he had easy access to his own past mind to mine. He could describe his protagonist's state of inner feeling with crystal clarity. A 13 year old's insecurity and feeling of otherness is brilliantly portrayed in State of Grace and an account of a college age young man's spending a year cycling through France with a friend describes the peril that can arise from getting to know anyone too closely for too long with amusing aplomb in The Quarrel.
The second batch of stories he's trying to do the same with a literary stand in for his sister, whom he apparently thought of as shallow and incredibly vain. Sometimes it succeeds I think but for me he misses more often than he hits with these. I miss the feeling of authorial sympathy for his protagonist that the earlier stories have, and I think the length of these compared to the length of the earlier stories reflects that he didn't have as good a grasp on this character and was floundering a bit.
So then, Harold Brodkey, I hope this raising you to the forefront of my consciousness for this time has served to scratch whatever itch you planted at some past moment into my own mind. I'm sorry you've faded from fame so greatly, but hey, there's always the chance you'll get rediscovered, even for that novel to get reevaluated and declared an unjustly ignored classic. You never know.
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