- Paperback: 836 pages
- Publisher: Vintage; New edition edition (20 Aug 1992)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0099913704
- ISBN-13: 978-0099913702
- Product Dimensions: 20.1 x 13 x 3.6 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,010,640 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Runaway Soul
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
"Harold Brodkey's first novel is a great American wager: shameless, touting and defiant, it offers us its God-defying originality. Originality is the novel's ambition, its procedure and its subject" - James Wood, Guardian. "Wiley, the book's narrator, puts his soul under the microscope and dissects his relationships with his parents, his disturbed sister, and all the fragments of influence which have formed his personality. It is a work of Proustian complexity and brilliance, surely to become the cult of the decade" - Kate Saunders, Cosmopolitan.
About the Author
Harold Brodkey lives in New York City. He has taught writing and literature at Cornell University and at the City University of New York. His many honours include two first place O. Henry Awards.
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4 reviews
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Unreadable, but unignorable
29 July 2001
Format:Paperback
Like other products of obsession - Henry Darger's work, for example - this novel has a peculiar, rather unwholesome authority. There's no mistaking that every line is "poetry written with a splash of blood", to use Yukio Mishima's phrase. I have to agree with Salman Rushdie when he gallantly claimed that this book was "worth ten safe well-written little novels."
Nonetheless, "The Runaway Soul" has to be shelved alongside other years-in-the-writing would-be masterpieces like "The Rosy Crucifixion" and "Ancient Evenings" as a noble failure. It's possible that Brodkey just chewed his cud a few years too long. (The "sketch versions" of this material collected in "Stories in an Almost Classical Mode" are substantially more rewarding, in my opinion.) Whatever the reason, he fails to transmute his suffering into literature on anything like a consistent basis. Brodkey would have done well to heed the editorial advice of an old Danish queen: "More matter and less art."
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
It's almost too much.....almost.
16 Dec 2002
Format:Paperback
When a novel starts out with a young boy masturbating and his thoughts during(not what you'd imagine) and after, you know something big is coming. Whether it's going to be shocking or if it's going to be something else is hard to tell. But the author's got your attention. And he keeps it for the most part. The novel encompasses the life of Wiley Silenowicz. And it's almost like experiencing every thought, feeling, and sense that he has.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
A Savory Journey
22 Jan 2000
Format:Hardcover
What a book! Brodkey's intimate portrayal of his characters remains true. This streaming-conscious book is a challenging work of prose that begs the reader to take it slowly, savor the words, feel the emotions, understand the characters. Brodkey executes this book beautifully, forming a triumphantly orignial and poignant story. I'd find myself, after reading a few chapters, putting the book down to revel and contemplate the viewpoints of the characters and my own. Time reading this book is time well spent.
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