Title: Harold Brodkey Papers (MSS016), 1973-1991
Predominant Dates:1973-1991
ID: MSS/MSS/016
Primary Creator: Brodkey, Harold
Extent: 1.0 Boxes
Date Acquired: 05/01/1987
Harold Brodkey (October 25, 1930 – January 26, 1996) was an American writer and novelist. Born Aaron Roy Weintraub Staunton, Illinois, he was raised in University City, Missouri outside St. Louis. After graduating from Harvard University in 1952, Brodkey began his writing career by contributing short stories to The New Yorker and other magazines. His stories have won him two first-place O. Henry Awards.
Brodkey's career began promisingly with the short story collection First Love and Other Sorrows, which received widespread critical praise at the time of its 1958 publication. Soon thereafter, in 1964, Brodkey signed a book contract with Random House for his first novel, titled A Party of Animals (it was also referred to as The Animal Corner). The unfinished novel was subsequently resold to Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 1970, and later to Knopf in 1979. During this period, Brodkey published a number of stories, most of them in the New Yorker, that dealt with a set of recurring characters—the evidently autobiographical Wiley Silenowicz and his adoptive family—and which were announced as fragments of the novel.
In addition to publishing, Brodkey earned a living during this period by writing television pilot scripts for NBC, and teaching at Cornell University. Three long stories from A Party of Animals were collected in Women and Angels (1985), and a larger number (including those three) in 1988's Stories in an Almost Classical Mode. Evidently Brodkey had decided to omit them from the novel, for when in 1991 he published The Runaway Soul, a very long (835-page) novel dramatizing Wiley's early life, no material from Stories in an Almost Classical Mode was included. The novel seems to be either A Party of Animals under a new title or the first volume of an eventual multi-volume work. Brodkey made some comments that suggested the latter, but no further material was published in his lifetime, or has been since.
In 1993, Brodkey announced in The New Yorker that he had contracted AIDS. He later wrote This Wild Darkness about his battle with the disease. At the time of his death in 1996, he was living in New York City with his wife, novelist Ellen Brodkey (née Ellen Schwamm).
Access Restrictions: Open
Use Restrictions:
Users of the collection must read and agree to abide by the rules and procedures set forth in the Materials Use Policies.
Providing access to materials does not constitute permission to publish or otherwise authorize use. All publication not covered by fair use or other exceptions is restricted to those who have permission of the copyright holder, which may or may not be Washington University.
If you wish to publish or license Special Collections materials, please contact Special Collections to inquire about copyright status at (314) 935-5495 or spec@wumail.wustl.edu. (Publish means quotation in whole or in part in seminar or term papers, theses or dissertations, journal articles, monographs, books, digital forms, photographs, images, dramatic presentations, transcriptions, or any other form prepared for a limited or general public.)
Acquisition Source: Purchase and gift
Acquisition Method:
Purchase from Harold Brodkey
Gift of Joseph Palecek
Accession number 2012.032, purchase from Clouds Hill Books, 2012: November 27
Preferred Citation: Name of the Collection, Washington University Libraries, Department of Special Collections
Volume 4, Number 3 (1975), contains Intro, the opening of his new novel-in-progress, A Special APR Summplement by Brodkey
Volume 6, Number 1 (1977), contains, Well, Let Us Try to Talk About Poetry by Brodkey
All copies transferred to Rare Books
Number 16 (February 1973), contains Innocence by Brodkey. Contains revisions and signed by Brodkey
Number 17 (May 1973), contains Play by Brodkey
Number 26 (November 1977), contains Two Sililoquies and Several Obscenities by Brodkey
All copies transferred to Rare Books
Volume LXXVII, Number 6 (June 1972), contains Why Is This Woman Funny? by Brodkey
Volume 84, Number 2 (August 1975), contains His Son, In His Arms, In Light, Aloft by Brodkey
Volume 84, Number 6 (December 1975), contains Puberty by Brodkey
Volume 87, Number 7 (July 1977), contains My First Job by Brodkey
Volume 102, Number 4 (October 1984), contains Men at Dance by Brodkey
All copies transferred to Rare Books
Volume IV, Number 4 (October 1975), contains Manipulations by Brodkey
Volume XV, Number 3 (September 1986), contains Love Speechless: This Is Not an Easy Subject... by Brodkey
All copies transferred to Rare Books
Volume 21, Number 37 (1988: September 19). contains The Genius: Harold Brodkey and His Great (Unpublished) Novel by Dinitia Smith (2 copies, 1 transferred to Rare Books, 1 retained with manuscript collection)
Volume 24, Number 30 (1991: August 5), contains Life at Random by David Streitfeld. Brodkey is mentioned on page 40. Transferred to Rare Books
1981: April 26
1985: November 24, contains Reading, the Most Dangerous Game by Brodkey
1988: September 18, contains I Am Only Equivocally Harld Brodkey by Frank Kermode
All copies transferred to Rare Books
1981: October 5, contains Sea Noise by Brodkey
1983: June 13, contains Dead Neck, Eastern Point, Bass Rocks by Brodkey (2 copies, 1 retained with manuscript collection)
1983: September 12, contains Ceil by Brodkey
1984: March 5, contains Nonie by Brodkey
1985: September 9, contains S.L. by Brodkey
1986: May 19, contains The Garden by Brodkey
1986: June 30, contains The Bullies by Brodkey (2 copies, 1 retained with manuscript collection)
1986: September 15
1986: November 3
1986: December 29
1987: January 5
1987: February 2, contains The Laugh by Brodkey
1987: March 2
1987: June 15, contains Between 6:37 P.M. and 9:04 P.M. by Brodkey
1987: November 23, contains Reflections (Family) by Brodkey
1988: August 22, contains Annemarie Singing by Brodkey
1988: November 21, contains Susan's Field by Brodkey
1988: December 19
1990: April 23, contains Spring Fugue by Brodkey
All copies transferred to Rare Books unless otherwise noted
Volume 24, Number 85 (Fall 1982), contains Jewlove by Brodkey
Volume 26, Number 93 (Fall 1984), contains To Frank O'Hara by Brodkey
Volume 28, Number 100 (Summer/Fall 1986), contains On First Being Published by Brodkey
All copies transferred to Rare Books
Volume XLIII, Number 1 (1976), contains The Pain Continuum by Brodkey
Volume LI, Number 4 (1984), contains Egypt and Fleshpots, Johnno and Wiley by Brodkey
Volume LII, Number 4 (1985), contains What Going Out Without Ora is Like: Johnno: 1956 by Brodkey
All copies transferred to Rare Books
