The World Is the Home of Love and Death

The final short story collection that completes the extraordinary literary voyage of Harold Brodkey, a modern master of short fiction; his most forceful and incisive collection of all. In this collection, Harold Brodkey displays all his remarkable gifts – his exquisite authorial control, his unerring attentiveness to the subtle dynamics of sexual power, and his remarkable ability to depict the perils and perversities of family life. He returns to themes he has treated so memorably in the past – the malevolence of cocktail-party conversation, the conformity and stupefying monotony of suburbia – bringing to them a new refinement and compression. And he takes us back to the Silenowicz family, Wiley, S.L. and Lila, where unstated threats lurk behind kind words, and where a gentle parental touch carries more than a hint of seduction. In all of these stories, several of which were completed in the last months of his life, Harold Brodkey proves that there has never been a more acute translator of the language of power, coercion, and, ultimately, love. In "Dumbness Is Everything" and "A Guest in the Universe," Brodkey returns to themes he has treated so memorably in the past - the malevolence of cocktail-party conversation, the conformity and stupefying monotony of suburbia - bringing to them a new refinement and compression. In "Waking" and "Car-Buying," Brodkey takes us back into the home of the Silenowicz family, Wiley, S.L., and Lila, where unstated threats lurk behind kind words, and where a gentle parental touch carries more than a hint of seduction. "What I Do for Money" catalogues the frustrations and hazards that lie in wait for an office worker who is diagnosed with a brain tumor and dangles before him the cruel illusion of escape. In all of these stories, several of which were completed in the last months of his life, Harold Brodkey proves that there has never been a more acute translator of the language of power, coercion, and, ultimately, love. The final collection from one of the masters of the short story, several of which were completed in the last months of his life. Here Brodkey displays all his remarkable gifts, and in returning to themes he has treated in the past, he brings to them a new refinement and compression.