I accidentally came across Harold Brodkey when I was looking for books on Venice. I had picked up "My Venice" and noticed that the author also had a book of short stories. I picked that one up too and decided to read one standing. The next thing I knew I was sitting in my car in the parking deck finishing the first story wondering how I had gotten out of the library and if I had actually checked out the book or not.

Brodkey’s first collection of stories is quite different from his latter output. A literary foot in the door I suppose.

“The State Of Grace” alone garners its own 5 star rating and is what the reader will find in the deep abyss of Brodkey’s work that he deserves to be renown for. We aren’t looking for the cringy and unrealistic conversations he employs, but passages like these:

“THERE is a certain shade of red brick—a dark, almost melodious red, sombre 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 is 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.”

Or:

“I was irrevocably de-prived, and it was the irrevocableness that hurt, that finally drove me away from any sensible adjustment with life to the position that dreams had to come true or there was no point in living at all.
If dreams came true, then I would have my childhood in one form or another, someday.”

While the other stories don’t match the first one, up to the second half of the book (sequentially revolves around a character Laura and her child Faith), there are a plethora of suburban American tenderness that feels tangible and it’s quite fascinating how someone can spurt words like these. While bland or mundane at its surface, the prose kind of yields a big bang epiphany that you feel with the characters inside these stories. You’ve felt these things once upon a time.

“The Quarrel” a story about two boys overseas secretly insecure and fond of each other (interpret it however you will) has this stunning passage of riding bikes through a cloud of butterflies:

“Around a curve the trees seemed to take off, soar upward at the sky. Suddenly we were in the midst of a horde of yellow butterflies; they filled the air; their wings beat and trembled; they were everywhere. They beat on our foreheads and on our eyelids, tangled in our clothes, died on the wheels of our bicycles. With horror, Duncan stopped his bicycle and then slowly began to thread his way through the yellow cloud. "Try not to touch them," he said. "Their wings won't work if you touch them; they die." I was too drunk even to be able to slow my bicycle. I rode blindly through the butterflies, blinking my eyes, cursing when one lit on the wheel and was crushed. At the very last, a butterfly blundered against my eye, and my eye remained open with abrupt pity; between it and the sky was a yellow film laced with airy veins; the film beat, came apart. I closed my eyes and rode blindly into a tree.”

Or the final paragraph in “Laura” about being a mother (also, interpret it however you want):

“The crying had such a needy sound, but how could it be desperate or frightened when she had her milk full in her breasts? Laura's hands unfolded into the crib, like flowers opening, and nestled the baby. Laura's sloppy dress slithered on her shoulders as she wiggled, and finally it fell free. One was supposed to wash the nipple with boiled water and antiseptic cotton, but "After all," Laura whispered,
"Mother's germs are nice germs." The tiny head cradled itself in her hand; the tiny mouth clutched the nipple. Laura giggled amiably, aimlessly, and settled herself in the rocker she'd bought in a junk shop for two dollars, over her husband's objections.
The chair began to move gently. The baby sucked.
Laura smiled down at her nether heart and said,
"You'll give me back to me, won't you? When you don't need me." And then she laughed, because her daughter looked so fierce clutching at the nipple and eating.”

I’ll stop here. I don’t believe I’m biased in my review. Just ashamed that no one is reading this man.

I can’t deny a lot of the authors faults. We all have them. But if you’re looking for great prose or introspection bar none (give me grace. Our reviews are merely our limited experiences, one different from the next), I highly recommend Brodkey.

I can’t tell you where you begin. That your own journey to figure out.

Didn't hate it, but didn't fall in love with it either, as I felt the author to be making some ontological error the whole time; as though he hadn't really figured out what he really wants to write about, other then his stories be slices of life with import, and melancholic. I feel as though his feeling for great prose and rhythm could have been better utilized by condensing his work. As it stands, the stories are too long, and usually end in a silly way that dismantles whatever progress had been made through the story. Though, I have to admit, the story I remember most is "Sentimental Education," which is often very evocative of winter, and of warm fireplaces, fuzzy sweaters, and ignorance and love as a youth; though I still by the end feel a sense of "fakeness" to the characterization. If I like Brodkey at all, it's because he always seems to know which words to use and where, and at times feels perfectly wrought. If only, perhaps, he came to prominence later in the 60s or 7os, with the milieu of experimentation for pushing the boundaries, because here, in the 50s, his portraits are sill rather dusty and staid.

"Sembrava che avessero trovato il segreto di essere felici insieme, adesso, nell'imminenza del distacco, e pur senza afferrare il paradosso, sapevano però che era vero"

I primi tre racconti sono una bomba, gli altri sono buoni ma non gioielli di scrittura come i primi. A mani basse una delle migliori raccolte di racconti made in USA.

I read one of Brodkey’s short stories in the collection My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro. It was his notorious one which charts the first orgasm of a young woman in what seems to be real time. It’s witty, sexy, heart-warming and a truthful representation of what a relationship is like in all its sublime ridiculousness. It was with this in mind that I looked forward to reading this collection.
Loath as I am to admit it I found them disappointing. There were one or two stand outs but most I struggle to recall and the final three I bordered on actively disliking.
The stand out stories were:
State of Grace where a young woman’s beauty is for a brief period a key to a life of admirers and flirtatious fun but is soon turned into a shackle as her mother pressurises her to marry the local rich boy who has fallen for her. The mother’s desperate need to regain her affluent lifestyle after the death of her husband has left her in reduced circumstances is paramount and the daughter’s happiness a secondary consideration. As miserable as the situation is, there is an added poignancy in the tale being related by the 16 year old brother. He doesn’t get on with nor overly like his sister and at the end he comes to realise the sacrifice she makes for him and the self-pity he feels will be assuaged by her now being able to fund his college fees and offer him freedom of a sort she will never know.
Love and Other Sorrows which charts the experience of first love, the discovery of sex and the initial madness of it all where nothing matters beyond seeing the object of one’s affection. It’s quite beautiful in its understatement, take the simple but evocative line after the couple kiss for the first time after weeks of charged friendship,
“After that they took to kissing each other a good deal”.
And of course it must chart the slow waning of the madness, the small irritations with the beloved that creeps in, the feeling that one is missing out on other equally fun aspects of life and Brodkey does this wonderfully. The non-dramatic cooling, the maturity that grows and recognises that love settles into something less heady but more fulfilling as it allows for the couple to be individuals as well as a pair. Anyone who has ever been in love will recognise themselves in this tale.
The Quarrel: A tale about adolescent friendship which any teenager will tell you is as heady and involved and as passionate as any love affair. There is (like romantic pairings) often one partner who is slightly idealised by the other and so it is in this case. Like many friendships this hero-worship comes to an end when the idol is witnessed in all their raw self and as is frequently the case this unmasking happens on a holiday the pair take. I found it quite sad, the spell of friendship being broken when one sees the actuality of the wizard behind the curtain and vowed never to holiday with anyone who’s friendship I value.

I picked this up in a library at the age of fifteen and haven't stopped picking it up.

Salinger without the edge. Good writer, still going.



Re-reading, 9/20

Memories of youth from an author who (from what I understand) later developed a more individualistic "difficult" style and became well-known in the New York literary scene of the 1980's. What I had heard about the author prior to reading the book (example: "For some years now, Harold Brodkey has been making one of the great brave journeys of American literature" - Don Delillo (blurb on front cover)) led me to expect these stories would be strangely written, detached, or avant-garde. Instead they felt sincere and romantic, true to the title of the collection, with occasional flashes of odd description. Pleasant enough that I'd like to eventually get to Brodkey's other books, particularly Stories in an Almost Classical Mode and The Runaway Soul.

Harold Bordkey and James Wood in conversation, 1991-
https://sounds.bl.uk/Arts-literature-...

Richard Ford reads and discusses this book's first story, "State of Grace":
https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/fic...

LO STATO DI GRAZIA


Saint Louis, Missouri, è la città più grande accanto alla quale scorre la celebre route 66 (“Highway 66 Revisited”, Bob Dylan, 1965).

[Letto in prestito bibliotecario, piaciuto così tanto e annotato così tanto che ho avuto voglia di possedere la mia copia - l'ho comprata ed è ovviamente la nuova edizione di Fandango. Qui sotto il mio pensiero dopo la lettura della prima edizione].



“Stato di grazia” è il titolo del primo racconto, ed è anche come doveva sentirsi Harold Brodkey quando lo scrisse.
Effettivamente, era in uno stato di grazia, perché dopo un incipit come questo:
Esiste una particolare gradazione di mattoni rossi – un rosso cupo, quasi melodioso, profondo e venato di blu – che è la mia infanzia a St Louis ,
si capisce subito d’essere stati proiettati nella grande letteratura, nella immensa arte del racconto, quella che con poche frasi ti proietta dentro tranche de vie che illuminano esistenze intere, che ti lancia per i corridoi del tempo, che in poche pagine allarga il tuo orizzonte di conoscenza e consapevolezza.
E di dolore.


Interno americano.

Non posso non citare il finale dello stesso racconto, la storia di un tredicenne che soffriva della malattia di non essere amato, perché è un racconto che probabilmente mi spingerà a comprare questo libro pur avendolo già letto in prestito bibliotecario, per poterlo riaprire, tornarci dentro e sopra, per potermici specchiare ancora:
Ecco, la storia è tutta qui. Il ragazzo che ero, il bambino che era Edward. Questo, e il terribile desiderio di volgermi di colpo e di correre indietro, urlando al ragazzo che ero, cercandolo fino a scovarlo, e picchiandogli forte sul petto: "Amalo, maledetto idiota, amalo".



Il giovane protagonista conosce già l’odio e il disprezzo per i propri genitori, che, a 13 anni, fortifica e giustifica – poi, a 40, quasi sicuramente, saprà che, sia quello per i propri genitori ormai anziani, sia l’odio che i propri figli hanno verso di noi (il loro turno di fortificarsi e giustificarsi), per noi si è invece trasformato in indebolimento che piega la schiena.


David Hockney: Portrait of an Artist (pool with two figures).

Si prosegue con altro splendore, un racconto dal titolo meraviglioso, quello adottato dall’intera raccolta, che ci trascina attraverso l’incanto dell’infelicità a quello del primo incontro con l’amore.

Siamo dalle parti di “Revolutionary Road”, il dopo guerra americano, la provincia, le villette coi giardini, i campus universitari - ci sono bambini, adolescenti, studenti, giovani mogli e giovani mariti, famiglie in erba - molta educazione sentimentale, molti momenti di passaggio da una fase della vita all'altra, e di scoperta delle segrete sorgenti della tristezza che inondano il mondo intero, tanta impossibilità di comunicare, ma anche attimi di felicità che si vorrebbe lasciassero le cose ferme e immutabili e non finissero mai, che si ripetessero senza fine, perché, come potevi sapere se la felicità sarebbe tornata? E se fosse tornata, sarebbe stata bella come questa? Il guaio della felicità è che ti fa paura.


Foto di Gail Albert Halaban dalla serie “Hopper Redux”.

Dopo questo esordio pubblicato nel 1958 Harold Broodkey esplose nel firmamento letterario americano e diventò The Next Big Thing.
Ma passarono oltre trent’anni prima che uscisse la seconda opera, l'unico romanzo, atteso e conteso.
Non abbandonò mai i racconti, continuò a pubblicarne mediamente uno ogni due anni!

Harold, è un pezzo che non ci sei più: tuttavia, come direbbe Sam, penso che questo sia l'inizio di una bella amicizia. Sono sicuro che godrò ancora della tua compagnia.


Foto di Stephen Shore.

De eerste drie verhalen uit deze bundel (‘The State of Grace’, ‘First Love and Other Sorrows’ en ‘The Quarrel’) zijn doorspekt met fenomenale, menselijke observaties. De resterende verhalen zijn mooi, maar missen deze kwaliteit.

Harold Brodkey is onterecht vergeten. Luister vooral naar de New Yorker Fiction Podcast waar Richard Ford ‘The State of Grace’ voorleest: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-...

I had never heard of Brodkey until I caught Richard Ford (an author I'm a huge fan of) reading one of his stories ("The State of Grace") for the New Yorker podcast. Ford had great things to say about Brodkey and when I came across an old Vintage Contemporary paperback copy I snatched it up—and I'm glad I did.

This book started out wonderfully, and Brodkey's seemingly autobiographical stories were brilliant in their honesty and sincerity, especially "The State of Grace", "First Love and Other Sorrows", and "Sentimental Education". In these, Brodkey draws on a few recurring themes throughout: financial status and happiness; intellect and isolation; vanity; self-pity; rebellion against what others feel one "ought" to do; etc. All this creates very compelling main characters that I cant help but feel are all (intentionally) poorly disguised versions of Brodkey, himself—not that that's a bad thing here. If the book ended after the first four stories, it would be 5 stars in my opinion, easily.

The last 70 pages or so depict, in a series of vignettes, a character named Laura and her family. For me, this structure didn't work too well. Another reviewer somewhere made a similar remark, which may have influenced my opinion, but I find myself in agreement. They just didn't captivate me the way the earlier stories in this collection did—they seemed unpolished, hasty, and merely tacked on to flesh out the length of this collection (which wouldn't be a big deal if the first four stories didn't share such a common thread). In the end, I just didn't really care. Maybe these scenes represent an aspect of Brodkey's life that I'm unfamiliar with and therefore may have missed something that would've made me appreciate them more.

Final word: highly recommend the first 160 pages, the last 4 pieces are nonessential...