The literary world waited a long time for Harold Brodkey's first novel, The Runaway Soul, and perhaps that 25-year wait raised expectations much too high; published in 1991, the 800-page book received mixed reviews. Though The Runaway Soul eventually came to an end, the life of its protagonist, Wiley Silenowicz, goes on in this posthumously published collection of short stories, The World Is the Home of Love and Death. All of Brodkey's considerable strengths and occasional weaknesses are on display in these stories: brilliant language and an acute understanding of character illuminate tales of orphaned Wiley and his adopted family, the Silenowiczes: his mercurial father, S.L.; seductive mother Ida; and vengeful sister Nonie. But if the writing and characterization are brilliant, Brodkey's penchant for dragging out the tiniest moment through incessant examination can be trying for readers hoping for some forward motion in the narrative. Plot is not one of Brodkey's strong points, but the beauty of his writing renders readers willing to be swept along on the sheer force of his prose.

From Library Journal
The final collection of a master.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The New York Times Book Review
"A dazzling performance. Brodkey captured the inner poetry of consciousness, the outer music of the spoken voice."

The New York Times Book Review, Jonathan Rosen
... Brodkey's style is a magnificent achievement.... Brodkey captured the inner poetry of consciousness, the outer music of the spoken voice, the vanity of the modern writer, the infidelity of the imagination, the haunting persistence of the past, the painful loss of family through death or the killing insights that come with maturity. Most of all, he captured the child's world spinning inside the adult world. Brodkey could do everything--except tell a story. But as this collection makes clear, that was enough.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In 'Dumbness Is Everything' and 'A Guest in the Universe,' Brodkey returns to themes he has treated so memorably in the past -- the malevolence of cocktail-party conversation, the conformity and stupefying monotony of suburbia -- bringing to them a new refinement and compression. In 'Waking' and 'Car-Buying,' Brodkey takes us back into the home of the Silenowicz family, Wiley, S.L., and Lila, where unstated threats lurk behind kind words, and where a gentle parental touch carries more than a hint of seduction. 'What I Do for Money' catalogues the frustrations and hazards that lie in wait for an office worker who is diagnosed with a brain tumor and dangles before him the cruel illusion of escape. In all of these stories, several of which were completed in the last months of his life, Harold Brodkey proves that there has never been a more acute translator of the language of power, coercion, and, ultimately, love.

FROM THE CRITICS

Jonathan Rosen

Brodkey's style is a magnificent achievement. He captured the child's world spinning inside the adult mind. -- New York Times Book Review

Publishers Weekly

When Brodkey died last year, he was not only near the height of his powers as a writer of short stories (always his strong suit), he was also, still, at the forefront of the genre and a grand master of psychological realism. Unfortunately, not all these stories seem finished. 'A Guest in the Universe,' his reminiscence-clef of a 1950s literary brunch, falls apart at the end. So does 'Dumbness Is Everything,' a 17-page description of a bout of drunken lovemaking and yet neither of these stories cram as much credible wisdom (the first historical, the second sexual) into a single page than many good novelists manage to squeeze between two covers. Like most of the rest of the volume, these stories chronicle the troubled, charmed life of Brodkey's alter-ego Wiley Silenowicz; several return to childhood scenes treated in earlier works. That comes as no surprise. Brodkey aims for a fractal effect: each sentence merely deepens what we already know about his hopelessly interrelated obsessions, grown-ups and children (family), grown-ups and grown-ups (sex) and American speech ('Americanola'). Brodkey's legendary self-absorption is ever-present: 'I had been ordained as a poet by some critics although I wrote prose,' he writes in 'A Guest' '[T]he term meant that I was a Jew and used adjectives and was a smart-ass and it also meant that I was politically unidentifiable. It didn't mean that I was a poet except with some critics, and by poet they meant eccentric and competent, no more than that.' Perhaps, but readers of poetry will recognize in this last collection a self-consciousness, a continual, hesitant struggle to capture acts of noticing, remembering, speaking that we have come to expect from the best poets. Whether Brodkey would want the praise or not, it belongs to him.

Library Journal

Noted novelist and short story writer Brodkey (This Wild Darkness, LJ 10/1/96), who died in 1996, also wrote criticism and essays. This collection includes a number of pieces previously published in such magazines as The New Yorker. They are divided into four sections: "Celebrity & Politics," "Whimsey & Wit," "Life, Love & Sex," and "Language & Literature." As in many compilations of this sort, the quality varies, with some of the more general pieces (such as the author's thoughts on American fascism or on time and language in his writings) rather fragmented and extremely complex. Best are the profiles (Marlon Brando, Walter Winchell, Frank O'Hara, William Shawn) and personal reminiscences. In the latter category, the essay "AIDS and Loss in City of Ghosts" is both moving and thoughtful. This is recommended for public and undergraduate libraries, especially those that have Brodkey's fiction in their collections.--Morris Hounion, N.Y.C. Technical Coll. Lib., Brooklyn, NY

Library Journal

The final collection of a master.

Richard Bernstein - The New York Times