Harold Brodkey Critical Essay | Critical Review by Sean French

Critical Review by Sean French

SOURCE: French, Sean. “Scientific Fiction.” New Statesman & Society 2, no. 70 (6 October 1989): 44.

In the following review, French offers a laudatory assessment of The Abundant Dreamer.

Harold Brodkey has an extraordinary, almost subterranean, reputation among a small group of readers and critics in the United States. This seems strange at first because, though Brodkey must now be in his fifties, his reputation is based on a virtual handful of short stories as well as the rumours about a novel that Brodkey has been working on for many years.

Furthermore, the subject matter of this, Brodkey's second collection of stories [The Abundant Dreamer], is the standard fare of modern American short fiction, especially that which appears in the New Yorker: the love affairs and family relationships of wealthy, East Coast, highly educated, often Jewish people.

Also, like his fellow New Yorker contributor, John Updike, Brodkey is little interested...
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