My Venice

by Harold Brodkey

Harold Brodkey's haunting, lyrical portrait of his most beloved city.

Venice is a separate country," Harold Brodkey wrote of the fabled city that became his literary muse. "It floats at anchor inside its own will, among its domes and campanili, independent and exotic at its heart."The author's love of Venice--its churches and vaporetti, its capacity to bewilder and seduce--brought him back time and again to the shores of the Adriatic in search of fresh inspiration. Brodkey's Venice is marked by powerful pride beside humility, the sacred alongside the profane, solemn tradition coexisting with exuberant mercantile optimism. Illustrated with eleven stunning black-and-white portraits by the legary Italian photographer Giuseppe Bruno, My Venice combines passages from several of Brodkey's great works with previously unpublished notes and essays to create a text as rich, subtle, and beguiling as the city itself.

Genres: Nonfiction, Travel

128 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Harold Brodkey, born Aaron Roy Weintraub, was an American short-story writer and novelist.

Reviews

[Ian Coutts · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Time has no geometry of middles." What does that mean? No idea, but it is of a piece with the rest of this book. It's sort of Brodkey does Venice, a compilation of bits he wrote about Venice, a lot of which read like that quote. Still, when you are desperate to succeed at your Goodreads challenge, and you have just a few hours before the year is up, you could do worse than to grab this slim volume. Thank you, Harold, for being there when I needed you..

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

The hard thing about travel books, as it stands, is getting a sense of place. Frequently these handle minutiae, chance encounters, customs misunderstood... ironically the thing you signed up for, the visuals of place, rarely come across.

This slim volume is more frustrating, as it is not a cohesive portrait of a city, but excerpts cobbled from the author's work on Venice. It leads to a very disjointed picture, one which rarely focuses on one aspect, one which often gets into the theoretical and abstract. It's billed as an homage to a city, but it doesn't have that sort of weight. Instead we get reflections on death, a creepy scene of father and daughter on the grand canal, and a lot of reflection on Venetian decay as a concept more than a reality.

[Max Nemtsov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Прелестные маргиналии к венецианскому роману, собранные друзьями и изданные посмертно, - с картинками (но будут ли картинки в русском издании - не знаю).

[Grady · Rating 5 out of 5]

'History is a scandal, as are life and death.'

Venice, Italy has been a city of mystery, of hidden secrets, of scandals, and of the flowering of art, a city that has intrigued many philosophers and historians as that unique kingdom that floats on the sea, a city that has escaped the invasion of the the clutter of the world such as the automobile and industrial advances. Venice has produced some of the greatest artists of the world: in music (Gabrieli, Vivaldi, et al), painters (Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Canaleto, Tintoretto, Veronese, Paladino et al), and writers of the past (Goldoni, Casanova) and of the recent past and present - John Rushkin, Henry James, Thomas Mann, Marcel Proust, Nietzsche...and Harold Brodkey. This small book MY VENICE by Harold Brodkey treasure those aspects of Venice that make it so special. The book is actually a series of excerpts from his writings (Profane Friendship, This Wild Darkness, Stories in an Almost Classical Mode, fragments from his lectures and other writings) joined with photographs by Giuseppe Bruno. The result is a book or memoir honoring a city where Harold Brodkey was born and where he constantly returned to write and to live fully in the mists and vapors and mysteries that this floating city provides.

Much of the book is devoted to first drafts of his manuscript for this last novel, 'Profane Friendship', and these fragments (thought by the editor and the author to dwell too much on describing the city rather than allow the novel to flow) are scattered with final pages of that novel and give us insight as to just how much this city meant to Brodkey. The book was published in 1998, two years after Brodkey's death from AIDS, a fact that makes passages in this memoir even more poignant. He writes 'I am dying...Venice is dying...The century is dying...The imbecile certitudes of the last three-quarters-century are dying. The best journalism of the last half-century has been leftist; which means that human nature was shown as innocent, as decent at the beginning and the end of each story. A phantasmagoria, a piety, that idea - an abdication of reality, an infinite condescension toward anything less than absolute power. Similarly, novels were fantastic - like spaceships that as a matter of course left this world. The real was forbidden.'

Nine 'chapters' of Harold Brodkey's writing are accompanied by exquisite photographs by Giuseppe Bruno of the canals, the sea vistas, the piazzas, the architectural treasures both in full view and in subtle fragments, and the sites of lonely benches along the canals that contribute to the the mood of this fine book. The editor, Angela Praesant (in a translation by Elizabeth Gaffney) summarizes the production of this volume at the end of the book: 'Harold Brodkey evokes Venice as a state of mind; as a premonition of what might remain were Europe's ancient hatreds finally quelled; as an imaginary place where to live in the moment need not preclude an awareness of history.' For those many admirers of the talent of Harold Brodkey this little book is a rare memento.

Grady Harp

[Rom Alejandro · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's best not to go into this book expecting writing like Brodkey's short stories. Not much narrative here (except for one chapter) as these are mostly notes, thoughts, and rough drafts. Thus, Brodkey focuses on the ambiance of Venice. His language surrounds you in a misty haze that if you sit in for a while slowly dissipates into a very personal and significant idea.

[Ankelchen Newrat · Rating 4 out of 5]

The almost picturesque description of Venice at the beginning alone makes this book worth reading.

The book makes curious on Venice, the author, age, your own perception ...

I'll definitely read more of Harold Brodkey!

[Melody · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unpublished notes and passages about Venice. Felt a little disjointed to me. I was expecting to be swept into the spell of the canals and vaporetto but I just got a glimpse from the plane.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some interesting, adn short little musings. I liked it.