Limit Point [Paperback]

Michael Brodsky (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0978296168 | ISBN-13: 978-0978296162 | Publication Date: November 1, 2007

Limit Point, a new work of fiction by Michael Brodsky. Limit Point focuses on people in deep crisis. In the title piece, the drifter-hero s involvement in a heist, including his dangerously ambivalent relationship with two enigmatic women, ends in disaster. The tale goes far beyond beloved B-movie conventions to yield unsettling insights into the criminal mind as well as images of startling beauty. In Midtown Pythagoras , the efforts of a shamus straight out of Raymond Chandler to save his oddball client are stymied at every turn by Manhattan s special brand of 24/7 irrationality. Crisis in the Life of an Actress , set in the avant-garde theatre world of a decade ago, reveals how uncontrollable envy can destroy the creative spirit. Confronted head-on in Limit Point are subjects that have obsessed Brodsky over more than 30 years of unstoppable productivity casual humiliation as the hair-trigger of violence; identity theft through sexual surrender; the tragicomedy of institutional rehab; and the disconnect, engineered by the demon of language, between the dark world outside us and the even darker one within.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A veteran avant-garde novelist, playwright and translator of Beckett's Eleutheria, Brodsky (Detour) resurfaces with this beguiling collection of two novellas, one short story and three short-shorts. The title novella, which opens the collection, is written in that trickiest of forms, the second person (you feel excluded, snubbed, far more than you've ever been, ever allowed yourself to be), and follows the Beckettian peregrinations of Goodis (you, Goodis!) as he steals an overcoat, sits in a noirish diner and falls in with a low-end criminal gang, all the while commenting feverishly on what he sees: Among the trashcans that divvy up the eft-head glimmer of an expiring streetlamp, you choose the biggest one to hide behind. The second novella, Midtown Pythagoras, closes the book and is a similarly noirish, and very funny, play on detective fiction; a writer hires a private dick to strong-arm a reviewer into changing her views of the writer's work: if I could make her vision of him coincide with his own then at last all would be well with his posterities. All the work here is drenched in a weary angst, but Brodsky's joyful relief in writing—despite uncertain posterities—comes through on every page. (Nov.)
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About the Author

Michael Brodsky is the acclaimed author of 12 published works of fiction, including the novels Detour, Circuits, Xman and We Can Report Them. His plays have been staged in some of New York s most exciting venues. Publishers Weekly has hailed Brodsky as a master both of language and of technique . According to Library Journal, he is one of the most important writers working today . In the New York Times Book Review, Paul West observed that Brodsky reserves the right to amaze you several times on each page . And writing in The Village Voice, Harvey Pekar called him a sensitive, original and insightful writer, one of the best produced by this country in the last 30 years .

Product Details

• Paperback: 270 pages
• Publisher: Six Gallery Press (November 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0978296168
• ISBN-13: 978-0978296162
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,134,923 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)