SOURCE: Rothstein, Edward. “Look Homeward, Angel.” New York Review of Books 37, no. 2 (15 February 1990): 36-41.

In the following review, Rothstein places Stories in an Almost Classical Mode within the context of Brodsky's oeuvre, deeming it an “unsettling book, far different from Brodkey's first collection.”

It is more than a year since Stories in an Almost Classical Mode was published, and the various expressions of dissatisfaction, unease, and enthusiasm that greeted it have since abated. Harold Brodkey's book of short stories, just published in paperback, can now begin to stand apart from the expectations and posturings that have always seemed to accompany the author and word of his work, for in the career he has mapped out for himself, in the discussion his work has inspired, in the gossip that has accompanied the wait for this, his second commercially published book in thirty years, Brodkey's personality has seemed inextricably linked...