Stories in an Almost Classical Mode

Brodkey is murky, cloudy, discursive, brilliant, static, and often boring--in this collection, not in his First Love and Other Stories, written before he became a literary cult figure. If you've never read him, this is probably the best of his late fiction. Profane Friendship and Runaway Soul are all but unreadable. This Wild Darkness, which was edited by his wife, possibly for intelligibility, is a fantastic memoir and meditation on living and dying. I'd recommend, for a good blast of Brodkey the fiction writer, First Love and also Almost Classical Mode. The former presentes lucid, moving, beautifully written stories. The latter offers mandarin, inaccessible prose that seems to be trying to capture the mind as it oscillates from thought to thought, feeling to feeling. The result is a weird, involuted, sometimes compelling collection.

There are some real gems in this collection; "Ceil," for instance,is a wonder. I liked some of the stories and didn't like others, but when Brodkey is at his best his work is very moving.

Brodkey breaks so many rules of narration in this collection of stories that he can be judged aptly by no standards other than his own. Unfortunately, this means that much of his genius is often overlooked. [email protected] writes that _Stories in an Almost Classical Mode_ focusses too much on the pain of Brodkey's childhood and adolescence, and its appeal therefore is solely "prurient." I disagree. In _A Story in an Almost Classical Mode_, for example, we see not only his mother's cruelty and madness as she physically and emotionally degenerates. We see the portrait of a boy who must figure out how--against incredible odds--to build his personality, one part at a time. This is his genius. So many of us take the world for granted; our personalities guide us through and allow us to filter out what is harmful or unimportant. Brodkey's protagonists, for the most part, lack this ability--thus, they must constantly be in a state of flux, of becoming, rather than being.

Certain passages -- sometimes single sentences -- are so gorgeous they can make you stop and shudder and go back to reread them. The self-portrait that emerges is pretty appalling, but the force of his music overruns all objections.

Never loan this book out to anyone--they'll never return it