Harold Brodkey

Should I pick up Runaway Soul for a couple bucks used? I love the short stories I've read.....hmmm.

It can be read chapter by chapter as kind of vignettes and short stories. I think some of it is actually an expansion of the stories (or just Brodkey having another go at big moments in his personal history; the long going-down of "Innocence" has equivalents here).

He seems to be one of those folks, like John O'Hara, who was famous in NY literary circles as much for his personality as his writing, so that after he passed the legacy diminished.

if you pick it up, be warned: you will never be able to sell it back anywhere because every used bookstore in the country already has four copies

Edmund White's new memoir City Boy has some amusing dish: Brodkey's denial about his sexuality, his efforts to promote himself with Harold Bloom, Sontag, et al.

https://brickmag.com/harold-brodkey-yesterdays-genius/

A friend and I were quoting the worst of Brodkey's, screaming with laughter.

Great piece.

Brick is good overall, eh? Anybody here used that Submittables service?

Will follow Scott's advice on getting the collected stories, but also the novel looks like a suitable case for treatment, since I sometimes find myself editing my reading anyway.

Reading this New York magazine profile from 1988, just for a taste of when the combination of short stories and anticipation could make a sensation.

He is at once grandiose ("It's dangerous to be as good a writer as I") and humble ("Look, I can understand if you don't like my work and don't want to write about me").

(Cover story is a few pages up from where the link leads.)

One more thing: listening now to this sparring with Michael Silverblatt in this 1991 Bookworm interview. Less interested today in Brodkey's actual writing than who he was during this era of publishing.