Michael Mark Brodsky (born Aug 2, 1948[1][2]) is a scientific/medical editor, novelist, playwright, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels, and for his translation of Samuel Beckett's Eleuthéria.

Personal background

Michael Brodsky was born in New York City, the son of Martin and Marian Brodsky. He attended the Bronx High School of Science.[3] He received a 1969 BA from Columbia College, Columbia University, taught math and science in New York for a year, attended Case Western Reserve University medical school[3] for two years, then taught French and English in Cleveland until 1975.

Brodsky returned to New York City in 1976, working as an editor for the Institute for Research on Rheumatic Diseases. He married Laurence Lacoste.[4] They are the parents of two children, Joseph Matthew and Matthew Daniel. From 1985 to 1991, Brodsky was an editor with Springer-Verlag. After 1991, he was with the United Nations.[5]

Brodsky lives on Roosevelt Island.[6]

Unpublished works

The following list of "Books by Michael Brodsky" appeared in Project and other short pieces:

Bulletins, novel (1969-70)

Haven, novel (1972-73)

• Circuits, novel (1974, revised 1980–81)
• Detour, novel (1975)

Flesh is Flesh, novel (1976)

Street Lesions, play (1977)

• Dose Center, play (1977)
• Terrible Sunlight, play (1978)

Theme and Variations, novel (1979)

• Night of the Chair, play (1980)

Four Nephews, dialogue (1980)

• Wedding Feast and Two Novellas (1982)

Isaac Luria, novel (1982)

The entries with a bullet-point have been published, or, in the case of the plays, performed. All novels but the last were named in a German-language newspaper article on Brodsky.[7] Flesh is Flesh was named as forthcoming on the dustjacket of the first edition of Detour.

Published and performed works

Novels

• Detour, 1978
  • republished, expanded, Del Sol Press, 2003
• Circuits, 1983
• Xman, Four Walls Eight Windows, 1987
• Dyad, Four Walls Eight Windows, 1989
• ***, Four Walls Eight Windows, 1994
• We Can Report Them, Four Walls Eight Windows, 1999

Forthcoming

• Invidicum, an excerpt appears in Review of Contemporary Fiction, 31.1, Spring 2011 (the Failure issue), with this headnote:

Brodsky's novel-in-progress, Invidicum, concerns an experimental drug for "Envy Disease," and the group involved in its clinical trials.

Shorter fiction

• Wedding Feast, 1981
• Project, 1982
  • contains "The Envelope of the Given", also published separately in German translation by Jürg Laederach, 1982[7]
• X in Paris, 1988
• Three Goat Songs, 1991
• Southernmost, 1996
• Limit Point, 2007

Plays

Never published, these plays were performed Off-Off-Broadway in brief runs:[8]

• Terrible Sunlight, 1980
  • "An experimental work, ... utilizing various visual media ...."[9]
• Dose Center, 1990
  • The "play probes the interaction between two men, their fellows and keepers, within the confines of a mental institution."[10]
• Night of the Chair, 1990
  • The play "shows two figures playing out their life-or-death struggle around a single simple prop."[11]
• Six Scenes: A Barracks Brawl, 1994
• The Anti-Muse, reading 1996, performance 2000

Apparently never performed, these plays were published in Project:

• Packet Piece, 1982
• No Packet Piece, 1982

Translation

• Eleuthéria, by Samuel Beckett, written 1947, suppressed, published 1995

Criticism

• "Svevo: The Artist as Analyzand", Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry, 15 no. 2-3 (1977), pp 112–133.
• "Toward the Plane of the Sacred: Hafftka’s Great Chain of Being" essay in the catalogue for Michael Hafftka "A Retrospective: Large Oils 1985-2003" (2004).[12]

Critical reception

Critical reception to Brodsky's work has been strongly polarized, with the praise putting him in the company of some of the greatest writers, and with the rejections being openly insulting.

Highly positive

His novels, plays and short story collections have been likened, by the mainstream press, to the work of Beckett, Joyce, Kafka, Proust, Dostoevski and Swift, as well as Barth, Pynchon, Barthelme and Burroughts. I would add Thomas Bernhard and Italo Svevo, for reasons of style and the formidable, original talent their texts exhibit.

— Judith Upjohn, "#$%!: review of ***",American Book Review, v16, no5, Dec-Feb 1994-5

It should be obvious to serious readers ... that Brodsky ... is a sensitive, original, and insightful writer, one of the best produced by this country in the last 30 years.

— Harvey Pekar, Village Voice, "An American Revisionary", review of Detour re-issue, 8/19/2003

Highly negative

His latest deconstructionist experiment fails miserably, consisting almost entirely of the pathetic projections, obsessions, rationalizations, and delusions of a character we are not given the slightest reason to care about. A few scholarly avant-gardists, confused compulsives, and bibliomasochists will love this book.

— Jim Dwyer, Cal State Chico, Library Journal, review of Three Goat Songs, 1991

It would be nice if the hapless reader didn't have to reach for the nearest bottle of Excedrin or take a nap between pages or could actually connect with a character or two in any of these frustratingly opaque stories.

— Charles Salzberg, New York Times, review of Southernmost and other stories, 3/9/1997

Further reading

A short biography, and brief summaries of Brodsky's longer fiction and critical reception can be found here:

• Herman, Peter G., "Michael Brodsky", World Authors, 1995-2000 Ed. Clifford Thompson and Mari Rich. New York: H. W. Wilson Company (2003). pp 113–115.
• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series, vol 147 (2006) pp 56–8.

Brief summaries of his shorter fiction, critical reception, and quotations from Brodsky on his own fiction, can be found here:

• Hawley, John C., "Michael Brodsky (2 August 1948-)", American Short-Story Writers Since World War II, Fourth Series. Ed. Patrick Meanor and Joseph McNicholas. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 244. Detroit: Gale Group, 2001. pp 34–39. Online here.

References

CANRS refers to Contemporary Authors New Revision Series, and DLB refers to Dictionary of Literary Biography. Full citations are above.

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