This Wild Darkness: The Story of My Death

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This Wild Darkness: The Story of My Death
Harold Brodkey

A meditation on dying by a writer who has been compared to Proust, was much praised by Salman Rushdie and is perhaps most famous for producing very little.Harold Brodkey died of AIDS in January 1996. His last written words, produced hours before his own extinction, appeared in the New Yorker magazine the week of his death. This book is the author’s terrifying and intimate account of his journey into darkness.Born in 1930 in Illinois, Brodkey’s mother died when he was two, after which he became withdrawn and mute for over two years. He emerged from his silent cocoon as a prodigy, however, and both his parents and his trauma figure largely in his writing. He went to Harvard, and moved to New York in 1953, publishing his first collection of short stories in 1957. Despite publishing very little for the next 31 years, Brodkey developed one of the most extraordinary reputations in modern letters, and has been compared by serious critics to Milton, Wordsworth, Freud and Proust.

This Wild Darkness

The Story of My Death

Harold Brodkey

DEDICATION (#u3a7046fe-f662-5400-8b91-07d06764a7ca)

For Ellen, my light …

EPIGRAPH (#u3a7046fe-f662-5400-8b91-07d06764a7ca)

I want to thank Tina Brown and Michael Naumann and David Godwin for their loyalty and generosity in all matters concerning Harold and his work. I take this liberty because no one knows better than I what his life would have been like without them; or without Kim Heron, his editor during these last hard-won years.

—Ellen Schwamm Brodkey

I don’t see the point of privacy.

Or rather, I don’t see the point of leaving testimony in the hands or mouths of others.

—H.B., June 1993

CONTENTS

COVER (#u94298fc8-4f42-5108-8579-dffe0b83dcc4)

TITLE PAGE (#ued9ef9b1-e359-5365-bae6-339a72166d24)

DEDICATION (#uc9f0dc37-c7f2-5d15-9365-1f4be8308b70)

EPIGRAPH (#u22ab8521-4153-512a-b288-c516858d4eb3)

SPRING 1993 (#u8d00ebe7-7b8b-53e1-93ce-843ed821e9d8)

SUMMER 1993 (#u4f86ffae-a71f-5617-b681-d60b1227ae55)

LATE WINTER 1994 (#ufa31ef84-bc6d-5844-a347-3dcc7c7962cc)

SPRING 1994 (#u05d5200d-62e7-5262-82bc-ae8740f73981)

SUMMER 1994 (#u654eef66-4d7a-5b14-98eb-16814825ec38)

EARLY FALL 1995 (#ud6e7ce70-f4c6-51f1-b204-24143efdd550)

LATE FALL 1995 (#uf863cd5a-fa87-593e-b7d9-0e5221da944f)

KEEP READING (#u445bd14b-9e46-5d90-b108-3f5df9a60f81)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR (#u3b3e6c11-545e-5b17-9240-59544ac24751)

COPYRIGHT (#uca1f7375-9e93-5869-8670-3e05bc233af9)

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER (#u0b8afecf-2a83-5222-8ed3-5dde87a261a4)