From Publishers Weekly
Brodkey, who struggled so publicly for so long with his mammoth The Runaway Soul , seems to have broken his block, writing this full-length novel apparently in a matter of months--and to a commission, yet, from the city of Venice, where it is set. As in The Runaway Soul , there is misguided gigantism at work here. What could have been a touching, atmospheric novella about two boys growing up together in Venice has become a monstrously swollen, infinitely repetitious account of a partly homosexual relationship between youths who act and talk infinitely beyond their ages. Niles (Nino) O'Hara, the son of a successful American writer, meets Onni, scion of a rising Italian Fascist, at the English school in Venice before WW II. He goes back to America at the outbreak of war, picks up again with Onni in 1946 when they are, respectively, about 13 and 15--and Onni has become something of a male whore as well as a bit player in movies. They taunt each other interminably, verbally and sexually, drinking, smoking and taking drugs all the while; they fight, make up and occasionally try girls they pick up in the streets. In the book's closing pages Niles returns yet again, to find Onni a famous, world-weary movie star, still challenging him. Venice in its darker moods is often strikingly caught, and its pre- and postwar atmosphere is skillfully conveyed. But Brodkey's logorrhea is painful to read, endlessly, strenuously yet tentatively straining for effect; never has a severe editor been more needed. There is a considerable talent here, certainly, but buried in self-indulgence. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Niles O'Hara, son of an American expatriate novelist, grew up in Venice in the 1930s, taking as his best friend an Italian boy named Giangiacomo Gallieni, or "Onni." After World War II, Niles returns to a sleazier, shell-shocked Venice and resumes his friendship with Onni, now a drug-addicted male prostitute and aspiring movie star. O'Hara's obsessive analysis of their sexual relationship, written from the vantage point of old age, is almost Proustian in scope, much like Brodkey's monumental first novel, The Runaway Soul ( LJ 11/1/91). The goal is to capture the reality of love, stripped of fantasy and illusion. Commissioned by the Consorzio Venezia Nuova, a preservationist group dedicated to saving the city, this new work gives Venice itself a central role in the story. Recommended for larger fiction collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/93.- Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los AngelesCopyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Brodkey's new novel is a stunningly sensual, intricate testimony to a love that endures for more than 50 years. The narrative, set in Venice, is related by Niles O'Hara, the son of an alcoholic American expatriate writer. As he grows up in Venice in the 1930s, Niles meets a Venetian boy named Giangiacomo Gallieni, and the two become more than close friends. They learn to share their developing sexuality with each other, and remain intimate throughout their lives and their other loves.Lush, lyrical, and haunting, Profane Friendship stands as one of the great novels of our time, its magnificence reminiscent of Henry James or Marcel Proust. It is a relentlessly detailed, cumulative exploration of the psychology of lasting love. In a decade of growing cynicism and widely reviewed pedestrian literature, so monumental and refined an account of the highest human emotion is both welcome and rewarding. The book reconfirms Brodkey's status as one of the world's finest living novelists. Greg Burkman


From Kirkus Reviews
An exploration of love that slides tissues of earthly friendship and love under the Brodkey microscope and finds the cell walls of the human soul. In 1993, Brodkey announced in The New Yorker that he has AIDS. As in The Runaway Soul (1991), Brodkey deals in shadings, quarter tones, nuances, and half-gestures that plant a raw reality on the page, a Nowness, that stops time and fixes each slice of feeling into a still-life in painterly words. Patches arise that are often as hard to grasp as Henry James's late style, the reader's brain a sieve through which pass drenches of sensation, coloring thoughts without actually forming them. Setting his story in Venice, Brodkey conjures up the city in ravishing descriptions, ever coming up with immensely striking sentences amid his more remote effects: ``One desires a naked world of love to replace the one of lonely dailiness, a world which has a heat of emotion and genital heat, and such warm, shocked brightness spreading through it that it might as well be Hell.'' We follow the birth of love in Niles O'Hara, son of a best-selling novelist who lives in prewar Venice and is a friend of Hemingway's; birth of family love and adoration of his nursemaid Zilda, and then of his love for fellow student Onni Galliani, which revives after the war when the O'Haras (minus Dad) return to Venice; birth of love as male sex play and profane friendship with Onni; love becoming love/hate as Onni turns into a monster, and later into a dead soul as a world-famous actor who envies Niles his life as a writer. At story's end, after a glorious picture of bustling street life in Venice, Niles says, ``I regret the disappearance of my life.'' Spirited originality that will take time to sink in. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM OUR EDITORS

Set in Venice, a childhood bond that began in the 1930s between Niles, the son of an expatriate American novelist, & Onni, a Venetian boy, evolves into an enduring, loving relationshiop between two men.

ANNOTATION

Growing up in Venice in the 1930s, Niles O'Hara, the son of an expatriate writer, befriends a Venetian boy. After the war, Niles and his family return, and he becomes involved in a kind of semi-affair with his childhood friend, who is now an adolescent with a wartime history of sexual trespass.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In Profane Friendship, Harold Brodkey tells an odd and strangely beautiful Venetian love story, sounding its depths with the suppleness and virtuosity of style that in recent years have won him worldwide admiration as a uniquely gifted American writer. Growing up in Venice in the 1930s, Niles O'Hara, the son of an expatriate American novelist, loves a Venetian boy named Giangiacomo Gallieni, fondly known as Onni. After the Second World War, Niles and his mother return to Venice, and he becomes involved in a complex on-again, off-again affair with his childhood friend, now an adolescent with a wartime history of sexual trespass. Profane Friendship is a remarkable depiction of an intense and enduring relationship conducted in the triumphantly alluring setting of the world's most beautiful city. Searching, comic, romantic, and ironic. Harold Brodkey's novel is at once the most sumptuous modern evocation of Venice and a truly singular exploration of human emotion and passion.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Brodkey, who struggled so publicly for so long with his mammoth The Runaway Soul , seems to have broken his block, writing this full-length novel apparently in a matter of months--and to a commission, yet, from the city of Venice, where it is set. As in The Runaway Soul , there is misguided gigantism at work here. What could have been a touching, atmospheric novella about two boys growing up together in Venice has become a monstrously swollen, infinitely repetitious account of a partly homosexual relationship between youths who act and talk infinitely beyond their ages. Niles (Nino) O'Hara, the son of a successful American writer, meets Onni, scion of a rising Italian Fascist, at the English school in Venice before WW II. He goes back to America at the outbreak of war, picks up again with Onni in 1946 when they are, respectively, about 13 and 15--and Onni has become something of a male whore as well as a bit player in movies. They taunt each other interminably, verbally and sexually, drinking, smoking and taking drugs all the while; they fight, make up and occasionally try girls they pick up in the streets. In the book's closing pages Niles returns yet again, to find Onni a famous, world-weary movie star, still challenging him. Venice in its darker moods is often strikingly caught, and its pre- and postwar atmosphere is skillfully conveyed. But Brodkey's logorrhea is painful to read, endlessly, strenuously yet tentatively straining for effect; never has a severe editor been more needed. There is a considerable talent here, certainly, but buried in self-indulgence. (Mar.)

Library Journal