SOURCE: Davis, Robert Gorham. A review of The Runaway Soul. New Leader 74, no. 14 (30 December 1991): 30-3.

In the following review, Davis criticizes what he preceives as pretension, posturing, and lack of coherence in The Runaway Soul.

Harold Brodkey's unreadable magnum opus [The Runaway Soul], a great disservice to literature, consists of 835 remorselessly difficult pages, 600 words to the page, and is so literally weighty that it is best read in bed supported by a pillow. Brodkey has told interviewers that he worked on the novel for 27 years, an average production rate of less than three pages a month. His caterpillar pace has done strange things to the text and its effect on readers. Some scenes make us feel as if we were watching a tennis match in slow motion replay, with 10 seconds for every exchange at net, 15 for every serve.

Brodkey did prepare us for this in some of his...