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It is said that string quartet music is the highest form of art and the lowest form of entertainment. I’m reminded of this pithy observation when reading Harold Brodkey’s highly polished, finely drawn short stories. Not the bite of fantasy or sci-fi but the world of the everyday rendered clearly and with the lyricism of a classical poet, as when the teenage narrator of First Love and Other Sorrows says of his mother: “She did not want to see life in a grain of sand; she wanted to see it from the shores of the Riviera, wearing a white sharkskin dress.” And here is one of my favorite Harold Brodkey quotes: “Reading is an intimate act, perhaps more intimate than any other human act. I say that because of the prolonged (or intense) exposure of one mind to another.”
As a way of writing my review, I initially considered synopsizing several of these Brodkey pieces or commenting on specific scenes. However, after further reflection, both of these approaches strike me as less than adequate, almost as if I were to synopsize or provide a running commentary on a collection of classical poetry. Therefore, as a way of giving a reader unfamiliar with Harold Brodkey a sampling of what is to be found in this book, here are a few direct quotes.
From The State of Grace, when the narrator is a 13-year old boy: “There is a certain shade of red brick – a dark, almost melodious red, somber and riddled with blue – that is my childhood in St. Louis. Not the real childhood, but the false one that extends from the dawning of consciousness until the day that one leaves home for college. That one shade of red brick and green foliage in St. Louis in the summer (the winter is just a gray sky and a crowded school bus and the wet footprints on the brown linoleum floor at school), and that brick and a pale sky is spring. It’s also loneliness and the queer, self-pitying wonder that children whose families are having catastrophes feel.”
From First Love and Other Tales, when the narrator is a high school student: “That spring when I was sixteen, more than anything else in the world I wanted to be a success when I grew up. I did not know there was any other way of being lovable. My best friend was a boy named Preston, who already had a heavy beard. He was sky, and unfortunate in his dealings with other people, and he wanted to be a physicist. He had very little imagination, and he pitied anyone who did have it. “You and the word ‘beautiful’!” he would say disdainfully, holding his nose and imitating my voice. “Tell me – what does ‘beautiful’ mean?”
“It’s something you want,” I would say.
“You’re an aesthete,” Preston would say. “I’m a scientist. That’s the difference.”
From The Quarrel, when the narrator is a freshman at college: “I came to Harvard from St. Louis in the fall of 1948. I had a scholarship and a widowed mother and a reputation for being a good, hardworking boy. What my scholarship didn’t cover, I earned working Wednesday nights and Saturdays, and I strenuously avoided using any of my mother’s small but adequate income. During the summer between my freshman and sophomore years, my grandmother died and willed me five thousand dollars. I quit my part-time job and bought a gray flannel suit and a pair of white buck shoes, and I got on the editorial board of the college literary magazine. I met Duncan Leggert at the first editorial meeting I attended. He had been an editor for a full year, and this particular night he was infuriated by a story, which everyone wanted to print, about an unhappy, sensitive child. “Why shouldn’t that child be unhappy?” Duncan shouted. “He’s a bore.” The story was accepted, and Duncan stalked out of the meeting.”
Such subtlety and attention to the nuances of language in creating character, setting, atmosphere and tension. If you enjoy poetry as well as prose, Harold Brodkey may become one of your very favorite short story writers.
Harold Brodkey, age 28, in 1958, the year “First Love and Other Sorrows” was first published.
