SOURCE: Josipovici, Gabriel. “Straining after Glory.” Times Literary Supplement n.s. (15 November 1991): 5-6.

In the following mixed review, Josipovici considers The Runaway Soul an ambitious but deeply flawed novel.

Harold Brodkey is a very modern phenomenon. For over twenty years he has been famous in literary circles not so much for what he has written as for what he has been in the process of writing, a massive novel for which publishers have been giving him large advances but which he has been unable or unwilling to finish. Now at last it is out, and we can all decide for ourselves what the emperor's clothes are made of.

Publishers like to think of themselves as having both a hard head for business and a keen eye for literary quality; every now and again, they succumb to the illusion that they have come on a writer who is a...