The World Is the Home of Love and Death

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.

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.