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The World Is the Home of Love and Death: Stories
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.
312 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1997
124 people want to read
About the author
Harold Brodkey
77 books89 followersHarold Brodkey, born Aaron Roy Weintraub, was an American short-story writer and novelist.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 23, 2019
Harold Brodkey's story collection, The World is the Home of Love and Death, begins with a tour de force, The Bullies, that dissects an apparently doomed lesbian seduction from both perspectives, the seducer and the unwilling object of desire. This is a minutely observed, painstakingly detailed account that isn't easy to read because it offers so many second-by-second twists and turns. After The Bullies, all is downhill. Here is a brilliant writer who unfailingly focuses on the rancid and malignant in life. He is mean-spirited and grudging, conceding little or nothing good about any character or situation. Ultimately this is not just dreary; more unforgivably, it's boring.
January 27, 2010
Stories by the Inimitable Harold Brodkey
Harold Brodkey seemed to affect readers by creating a spectrum beginning with those who fell under his spell and these who felt his work was overrated and too difficult to understand. Now some 15 years after his death in some of his lesser known books, like this collection of short stories THE WORLD IS THE HOME OF LOVE AND DEATH, his gifts as a writer are being more widely appreciated. Long considered one of the more powerful writer of short stories, this collection continues to substantiate that position. Brodkey's style varies from most writers in that he concentrates on creating individuals that in and of themselves are more important than the story in which he places them. Few writers have coped with the dichotomy of sexual identification as well as Brodkey and some of his best work is keyed toward characters who face that 'public conspiracy of acceptance'.
Brodkey has a way with picking up the atmosphere of the most mundane of topics such as cocktail conversation and creates dialogues and character responses to dialogues about the vitriol that spews forth as the alcohol level elevates as in 'A Guest in the Universe' and also in 'Dumbness Is Everything'. But he also is able to crawl into the mind of the near mute character lost in thought and describe the world through eyes as few have accomplished: 'What I Do for Money' is the extended musings of an ordinary office worker who is coping with his newly diagnosed brain tumor and the manner in which he alters his view of others and of the possible roads he could take, given his diagnosis.
In each of these eleven stories Harold Brodkey manages to override the importance of the story line he is molding by treating the reader to a level of prose that is as captivating as that of any more famous author. He shapes language, dawdles with moments that deserve pause until he brings gradually emerging and diminishing light to a subject thought foreign, and allows dialogue to become as simple as the person speaking it without resorting to the all too frequent flaw of dumbing down the reader. Reading Harold Brodkey takes time - time to savor the brilliance of his gifts as a wordsmith, time to understand some of the foreign waters in which he invites us to wade. But it is a time well spent - and it is time to spend more attention to this marvelous writer.
Grady Harp
Harold Brodkey seemed to affect readers by creating a spectrum beginning with those who fell under his spell and these who felt his work was overrated and too difficult to understand. Now some 15 years after his death in some of his lesser known books, like this collection of short stories THE WORLD IS THE HOME OF LOVE AND DEATH, his gifts as a writer are being more widely appreciated. Long considered one of the more powerful writer of short stories, this collection continues to substantiate that position. Brodkey's style varies from most writers in that he concentrates on creating individuals that in and of themselves are more important than the story in which he places them. Few writers have coped with the dichotomy of sexual identification as well as Brodkey and some of his best work is keyed toward characters who face that 'public conspiracy of acceptance'.
Brodkey has a way with picking up the atmosphere of the most mundane of topics such as cocktail conversation and creates dialogues and character responses to dialogues about the vitriol that spews forth as the alcohol level elevates as in 'A Guest in the Universe' and also in 'Dumbness Is Everything'. But he also is able to crawl into the mind of the near mute character lost in thought and describe the world through eyes as few have accomplished: 'What I Do for Money' is the extended musings of an ordinary office worker who is coping with his newly diagnosed brain tumor and the manner in which he alters his view of others and of the possible roads he could take, given his diagnosis.
In each of these eleven stories Harold Brodkey manages to override the importance of the story line he is molding by treating the reader to a level of prose that is as captivating as that of any more famous author. He shapes language, dawdles with moments that deserve pause until he brings gradually emerging and diminishing light to a subject thought foreign, and allows dialogue to become as simple as the person speaking it without resorting to the all too frequent flaw of dumbing down the reader. Reading Harold Brodkey takes time - time to savor the brilliance of his gifts as a wordsmith, time to understand some of the foreign waters in which he invites us to wade. But it is a time well spent - and it is time to spend more attention to this marvelous writer.
Grady Harp
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November 5, 2015Brodkey is all about characterization. He spend many of these stories on a single conversation, creating palpable personalities. You know these people better than your own family. Most of the stories follow the lives of Wiley and his adopted parents, but each of them can stand alone. You'll get a sense for each character no matter which story you drop in to.
Here is a great sample of Brodkey's language:
from "Car Buying"
"But he is mad--foolish--and he finds the best transitions to be mad ones, as if the world, like the moment, was newborn; he closes and slams the books on moments in a kind of applause. Those points of actuality--sex and a kind of wit in some events and kinds of courage and kinds of cowardice and his knowledge of cars and his powers of theory apart from books and set in specialized tones and languages--are points here this flying and hurdling man, a horse-bird-plane-motor-and-lecher of a creature, touches down on sanity and is reorganized: one might say he is held together by the glances he exchanges with someone twice a day--anyone--and by certain things having to do with material objects, cars, asparagus plants and asparagus farms (in sandy river bottom soil). When I am not there, he has no compass reading for goodness. When I am there, I am a compass set up as a knower or indicator of true worth. These are my dad's secret terms, his private rhetoric that he uses only with men: he says now, 'Level and true, lower a plumb line, and you are there.' A measure of the vertical? the perpendicular, like a steeple? An indicator of other meanings? His voice has a certain loud, inflected humming that I, the child, have to translate down into a thin sound, shrinking the symphonic tones to a solo piping, thinly inflected: 'Daddy, I like this car.'
I hold his hand."
Here is a great sample of Brodkey's language:
from "Car Buying"
"But he is mad--foolish--and he finds the best transitions to be mad ones, as if the world, like the moment, was newborn; he closes and slams the books on moments in a kind of applause. Those points of actuality--sex and a kind of wit in some events and kinds of courage and kinds of cowardice and his knowledge of cars and his powers of theory apart from books and set in specialized tones and languages--are points here this flying and hurdling man, a horse-bird-plane-motor-and-lecher of a creature, touches down on sanity and is reorganized: one might say he is held together by the glances he exchanges with someone twice a day--anyone--and by certain things having to do with material objects, cars, asparagus plants and asparagus farms (in sandy river bottom soil). When I am not there, he has no compass reading for goodness. When I am there, I am a compass set up as a knower or indicator of true worth. These are my dad's secret terms, his private rhetoric that he uses only with men: he says now, 'Level and true, lower a plumb line, and you are there.' A measure of the vertical? the perpendicular, like a steeple? An indicator of other meanings? His voice has a certain loud, inflected humming that I, the child, have to translate down into a thin sound, shrinking the symphonic tones to a solo piping, thinly inflected: 'Daddy, I like this car.'
I hold his hand."
August 5, 2012
Brodkey began with relatively traditional, extremely well-crafted stories with his first book. His second was more experimental, and yet very effective and often moving. This third collection becomes tedious, largely because of excessive toying with the form. I was disappointed with this volume, having loved the earlier two. Having said this, there were redeeming moments, and the story "Spring Fugue" was by far the best in the collection.
October 3, 2016
Harold Brodkey chooses to write about the depth of the moment rather than the development of plot. His terrain is the inner life. If you have a rich inner life, it might be interesting to find someone else that does. If you want a short story to just tell a story, these don't.
October 27, 2008
Wonderful short stories. Concise. Evocative. "Spring Fugue" is the best of the bunch.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews