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Stories in an Almost Classical Mode
These 17 short stories represent the best of Brodkey's work over three decades.
608 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
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1,622 people want to read
About the author
Harold Brodkey
73books83followersHarold Brodkey, born Aaron Roy Weintraub, was an American short-story writer and novelist.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
December 19, 2019
Harold Brodkey (1930 � 1996) is a major twentieth-century American writer of highly polished, highly poetic fiction first published in The New Yorker, Esquire and other magazines over a thirty years span, 1960s through the 1990s. Published as part of the 1980s Vintage Contemporaries series, this magnificent collection contains 18 stories, some short, some long, 5 pages to 50 pages, but all of these stories speak to the feeling tone of memory and are expressed in such lyrical, elegant language, they are enough to take your breath away. Rather than making general statements about a number of stories, as a way of sharing some Harold Brodkey splendor, I will focus on one shorter piece that will remain with me always:
VERONA: A YOUNG WOMAN SPEAKS
The Power of Memory: I know a lot! I know about happiness! So proclaims a young woman describing for us a day and a night when she was a seven-year-old girl traveling in Italy with her mother and father. Sidebar: Personally, I love when a male author tells a tale from the point of view of a first-person woman narrator. Thank you, Harold Brodkey!
Invisible Cities/Visible Cities: Reliving her time as a little girl, the narrator recounts how her joy bubbles over: “It was absurd, but we were all three drunk with this; it was very strange; we woke every morning in a strange hotel, in a strange city.� All the sights and sounds so alive, so vivid and beautiful, it is as if our little girl is traveling in Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities made visible.
Sparkling Self-Identity: “I was dizzy with shopping and new possessions: I hardly knew who I was, I owned so many new things my reflection in any mirror or shopwindow as resplendently fresh and new, disguised even, glittering I thought.� What little girl wouldn’t love to be given such a chance to shop and wear all new cloths? As the narrator recounts ‘only the simplest and most light-filled words and images can suggest what I thought we were then.�
Princess: When in Verona the faces of the men and women were stern, sad, unlaughing faces but when they looked at our little girl their faces would lighten and they would smile at her splendor. She knew she decorated life. “I liked myself very much; and almost everywhere, almost every day, there was someone new to love me, briefly, while we traveled. I understood I was special.� As adults, being told we are special can sound so saccharine, but as a youngster being treated as special and understanding our specialness is an affirmation of a truism.
Cornucopia � Our little girl says Daddy was a fountain of money and their vacation and travel was one unending spending spree. “We were at play; we were at our joys.� Life as abundance; life an overflowing; life as a swirl of joy.
Art: “There was a picture in Verona Daddy wanted to see: a painting; I remember the painter because the name Pisanello reminded me I had to go to the bathroom when we were in the museum. . . . I also remember the painting because it showed the hind end of the horse, and I thought that was not nice and rather funny.� In an entire trip of sweet memories it isn’t at all surprising she has this sweet memory of art since there is magic when a great painter applies paint to canvas. And you have to love linking her bodily needs with the artist’s name and her eye going to the horse’s rump.
The Piazza - One: “We went to a square, a piazza � the Sealigera, I think; I don’t remember � and just as we got there, the snowing began to bellow and then subside, to fall heavily and then sparsely, and then it stopped; and it was very cold, and there were pigeons everywhere in the piazza, on every cornice and roof, and all over the snow on the ground, leaving little tracks as they walked, while the air trembled in its just-after-snow and just-before-snow weight and thickness and gray seriousness of purpose.� Ah, to enter a piazza and be welcomed by the beauty of a snowfall, all those pigeons and a sense of the seriousness of purpose in it all.
The Piazza � Two: She describes herself as half mad with pleasure and then her Daddy poured corn in her hands and tells her to hold out her hands. “Then the pigeons came. On heavy wings. Clumsy pigeon bodies. And red, unreal birds� feet. They flew at me, slowing at the last minute; they lit on my arm and fed from my hand. I wanted to flinch, but I didn’t. I closed my eyes and held my arm stiffly; and felt them peck and eat � from my hand, these free creatures, these flying things.� Even as an adult, such an encounter with winged wildlife can be intense; with a child, this intensity is exponential. Again and again, more corn, more birds. “I become brilliant, gleaming, soft; an angel, a great bird-child of laughter.�
On the Train: The great bird-child’s blissful dream continues, through dinner at a restaurant and then sitting next to her Momma on a train traveling through mountains under the moon. “We looked at mountains until dawn, and then when dawn came, it was too pretty for me � there was pink and blue and gold in the sky, and on icy place, brilliant pink and gold flashes, and the snow was colored, too, and I said, “Oh,� and sighed; and each moment was more beautiful than the one before; and I said, “I love you, Momma.� Then I fell asleep in her arms.� Oh, to have such memories of such a day and night as a child. Such a gift.
Harold Brodkey - American author in a most classical mode
December 12, 2013
I gave this 4 stars remembering how I love it when I read it in the 80s. I can see a glimmer of what I liked about it at the beginning. By the time I got to the eponymous story at almost 300 pages, I was skimming. Then I was skipping. It seemed self-indulgent, pretentious. In those first few stories I could sense what I originally liked but it's lost its flavor for me.
First read 1989
First read 1989
Read
September 15, 2021È un senza voto per me, come molto che ho letto quest'anno.
Raccolta di racconti senz'altro straordinaria. Alcuni toccano delle vette altissime, altri mi hanno annoiato, non sono di mio gusto, sono senz'anima. Certo è che sono accomunati da una scrittura e da una lucidità notevole, da uno sguardo su un'America disincantata e cinica i cui protagonisti non ci risparmiano nulla. Ci sono sprazzi di una letteratura che è difficile non riconoscere come sublime.
Ma. So che qui ci si aspetta il ma. Non sono riuscita a godermi fino in fondo questa raccolta perché ogni volta, in ogni singolo racconto c'era qualcosa che mi disturbava profondamente. Una volta il protagonista, una volta la trama, una volta una certa atmosfera. Di base, cosa che accomuna tutti i racconti, una freddezza quasi ostentata che, personalmente, mi ha infastidito, mi ha proprio creato disturbo.
Certo, si potrebbe obiettare, questa è la letteratura, questo è quello che dovrebbe fare.
Intanto ho aperto un incrocio Manzoni bianco da perderci il fiato, ché dovevo consolarmi da queste sensazioni.
Raccolta di racconti senz'altro straordinaria. Alcuni toccano delle vette altissime, altri mi hanno annoiato, non sono di mio gusto, sono senz'anima. Certo è che sono accomunati da una scrittura e da una lucidità notevole, da uno sguardo su un'America disincantata e cinica i cui protagonisti non ci risparmiano nulla. Ci sono sprazzi di una letteratura che è difficile non riconoscere come sublime.
Ma. So che qui ci si aspetta il ma. Non sono riuscita a godermi fino in fondo questa raccolta perché ogni volta, in ogni singolo racconto c'era qualcosa che mi disturbava profondamente. Una volta il protagonista, una volta la trama, una volta una certa atmosfera. Di base, cosa che accomuna tutti i racconti, una freddezza quasi ostentata che, personalmente, mi ha infastidito, mi ha proprio creato disturbo.
Certo, si potrebbe obiettare, questa è la letteratura, questo è quello che dovrebbe fare.
Intanto ho aperto un incrocio Manzoni bianco da perderci il fiato, ché dovevo consolarmi da queste sensazioni.
June 20, 2014
I loved this book, though I'm not sure I would recommend it to most readers. The pieces that seem to be Brodkey at his most essential aren't really stories (or so I think would be the common complaint). "A Story in an Almost Classical Mode," for example, is really a 50-page character sketch (transparently fictionalized) of his step-mother--brilliant stuff, but no plot to speak of. (Perhaps the most amazing thing is that the story was originally published in the New Yorker, which tells you how conservative that magazine's fictional tastes have become since 1973.) "The Boys on Their Bikes" is similarly unconcerned with plot: in 32 pages, the boys of the title ride their bikes up one side of a small hill and down the other--no flashbacks, no back story, a few lines of traded dialogue. Even the more traditionally structured stories (for example, "Hofstedt and Jean--and Others," one of my favorites) are way, way more talky and ruminative than most contemporary fiction. Other favorites: "The Abundant Dreamer," "On the Waves," "Puberty," "Largely an Oral History of My Mother," "Ceil."
Thanks to Christine Schutt for this recommendation.
Thanks to Christine Schutt for this recommendation.
Want to read
February 9, 2013"A Note on the Type
"The text of this book was set in a digitized version of Janson, a typeface long thought to have been made by the Dutchman Anton Janson, who was a practicing type founder in Leipzig during the years 1668-1687. However, it has been conclusively demonstrated that these types are actually the work of Nicholas Kis (1650-1702), a Hungarian, who most probably learned his trade from the master Dutch type founder Dirk Voskens. The type is an excellent example of the influential and sturdy Dutch types that prevailed in England up to the time William Caslon developed his own incomparable designs from them.
"Composed by The Haddon Craftsmen, Inc., Allentown, Pennsylvania. Printed and bound by The Murray Printing Company, Westford, Massachusetts.
Designed by Peter A. Andersen"
_______________
I know nothing. But McElroy has name dropped him at one point for which we herewith linketh:
Also, this:
"The text of this book was set in a digitized version of Janson, a typeface long thought to have been made by the Dutchman Anton Janson, who was a practicing type founder in Leipzig during the years 1668-1687. However, it has been conclusively demonstrated that these types are actually the work of Nicholas Kis (1650-1702), a Hungarian, who most probably learned his trade from the master Dutch type founder Dirk Voskens. The type is an excellent example of the influential and sturdy Dutch types that prevailed in England up to the time William Caslon developed his own incomparable designs from them.
"Composed by The Haddon Craftsmen, Inc., Allentown, Pennsylvania. Printed and bound by The Murray Printing Company, Westford, Massachusetts.
Designed by Peter A. Andersen"
_______________
I know nothing. But McElroy has name dropped him at one point for which we herewith linketh:
Also, this:
March 27, 2022
I liked the short stories that weren't autobiographical. The ones that were, sounded like the kind of writing that Brian Griffin, the dog from Family Guy, might write.
February 23, 2008
One of my favorite stories of all time is the brief "Verona: A Young Woman Speaks," which is kind of just tucked in here amongst the longer and more autobiographically-based Brodkey stuff. Some of those get a bit blowhardy (you've got to be in the mood), even if they are good. Yes, Brodkey is a narcissist, but he is damn brilliant, too.
August 9, 2020
Бродки много за что ругали "критики", и среди прочего - за цветистость и многословие, а по мне так в самый раз. Я и забыл уже, до чего прекрасны могут быть просто рассказы о людях, традиционные, взрослые. Хотя Бродки и типичный писатель Восточного побережья со всеми вытекающими, но традиционность "Нью-Йоркера" (хорошо что не "Атлантик Мансли", вот это было б уже непереносимо) у него, я бы решил - напускная, он скорее ближе к Бартелми, чем к Апдайку. Ну и о чем бы он ни писал, такое ощущение, что пишет он о детской сексуальности.
August 7, 2013
I sampled ten stories from this collection and found them all to follow the same general motif: working through issues of childhood and adolescence in the present or retrospectively. An uneven collection that skews somewhat unrealistically towards the melancholy...at his best, Brodkey is illuminating, at his worst, his characters come across as mopey. All of the stories are about the emotional psychology of the characters. There is very little sense or place or historical context.
February 1, 2018
I gave this a chance and plodded through half, but can't manage another 300 pages of this man's life stories. Reviews on the cover, written by men, praised the work, one comparing him to Freud. Enough said. Of all the wonderful books of stories I've read, this is not one of them.
February 15, 2021
the titular story is incredible--the strongest in the collection. HIS SON, IN HIS ARMS, IN LIGHT, ALOFT is also incredible
December 29, 2016
Wow, what a writer.
His Son, in His Arms, in Light, Aloft may be the single most beautiful short story I've read. And I do loathe hyperbole. Brodkey's writing succeeds in making me feel the weight, responsibility and intimacy of experiences I've never even had and didn't necessary realise I wanted.
Besides that story, this collection is filled with witty tales, tales about the elusive nature of other people's thoughts, and many of them unfold in strange, completely unexpected ways.
Brodkey can also write a 50-page story about one sex scene (Innocence), or a 30-page one about two boys riding their bikes (The Boys On Their Bikes) up and then down a hill -- neither become dull, and the former never becomes lewd or cheap, only increasingly sensuous and with compelling, soul-scraping honesty.
His Son, in His Arms, in Light, Aloft may be the single most beautiful short story I've read. And I do loathe hyperbole. Brodkey's writing succeeds in making me feel the weight, responsibility and intimacy of experiences I've never even had and didn't necessary realise I wanted.
Besides that story, this collection is filled with witty tales, tales about the elusive nature of other people's thoughts, and many of them unfold in strange, completely unexpected ways.
Brodkey can also write a 50-page story about one sex scene (Innocence), or a 30-page one about two boys riding their bikes (The Boys On Their Bikes) up and then down a hill -- neither become dull, and the former never becomes lewd or cheap, only increasingly sensuous and with compelling, soul-scraping honesty.
May 2, 2010
the stars are only for the amazing story Verona: a young girl speaks. "innocence" was fascinating. the title story is interesting, boys on their bikes less so, and ceil was outright lousy. frankly, based only on the five stories i read, i do not recommend this acclaimed book. the egotism seems less fun than norman mailer's. it's like reading proust without the saving grace of genius.
April 20, 2007
Sometimes this seems like the same story over and over again. Fortunately, it's a really good story.
August 20, 2007
Short stories? These suckers are long. But so good.
Read
March 10, 2009"To see her in sunlight was to see Marxism die"
December 15, 2019
The most pretentious man in America. It's hard to imagine Brodkey having very productive conversations with an editor. But his sentences are something else, if you're into that kind of thing.
January 8, 2022
De verhalenbundel Stories in an Almost Classical Mode kan worden opgedeeld in twee delen: als voorstudie voor Brodkeys latere werk () en korte verhalen in een vergelijkbare trant van zijn vorige collectie . Ik weet niet of ik Brodkey een weergaloze schrijver vind of een enorme blaaskaak. De bundel heeft een aantal goede verhalen, en degene die er echt uitsprongen waren 'Play', 'A Story in an Almost Classical Mode' en 'The Boys on Their Bikes'.
*3,5
*3,5
September 16, 2024
Annoyingly neurotic and absurd statements "perhaps it was like rubbing at Aladdin's lamp; perhaps we are at the threshold of the reign of magic and death." This quote is in reference to teenager boys mastrubating in a boys scout camp. One of the only interviews he brags about how he explored the sexual process before anyone else, that really isn't much to stand upon when it comes to literature.
June 3, 2018
Nicht klassisch aber klasse.
May 6, 2019
I remember being 20 or 21 and devouring this stories; I just adored them. I wonder if I'd still like them.
Read
May 11, 2020Ook voor later
August 21, 2020
Na 3 verhalen gestopt wegens vervelend !
July 6, 2021
Halfway done, extremely good descriptions from brodkey of innocence and orgasm, and all of the corruption that lies within
July 30, 2024
Maybe the best prose stylist ever.
March 20, 2016
19.03.2016 Diese lange Erzählung (Novelle?) ist harter Tobak. Brodkey erzählt die Kindheitsgeschichte eines Adoptivlings. Die Geschichte enthält viele autobiographische Momente und ist von seltener psychologischer Grausamkeit. Das Kind wird nach dem Tod der leiblichen Mutter vom Vater verkauft. Beide Adoptiveltern erkranken schwer, der Adoptivvater geht in ein Veteranenspital (kostenlose Behandlung) und die Adoptivmutter verbleibt mit dem Kind in der Wohnung. Das Drama spielt sich zwischen der kranken, gekränkten, zornigen Adoptivmutter und dem kleinen Jungen ab: "...das Gleichgewicht von Schmerzen und Morphium in ihr; manchmal jammerte sie dann laut. Wenn ich zu ihr hinging, schrie sie: "Geh weg, faß mich nicht an du tust mir weh!" Es war wie irgendwo zu stehen und zuzuschauen, während jemand von wilden Hunden gefressen wird." Hart aber genial erzählt. Tolles Büchlein.
February 18, 2017
Some of the stories are 4 and 5 stars but some lack that extra oomph. Given the volume and output of the work it's not far-fetched to thing the style is consistent and the themes are left to simmer in Brodkean fashion. Any fan or reader of short story would do well to venture into Brodkey's Classical Mode.
October 7, 2023
Finally got this out of the physical library, but can’t say its short stories did much for me. I typically write down where I got the tip to read a book, and I wish I’d done so here. Perhaps realizing who recommended this would lend some context. Or perhaps I’d learn to be wary of that recommender in the future.
August 15, 2007
I kept this under my pillow for about a year in college.
March 26, 2014
Yes I'm still reading this. I'm savoring it story by story.
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