Customer Reviews

Profane Friendship

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Anyone who heeds Federico (Fred) Moramarco's review of Harold Brodkey's novel "Profane Friendship," might decide against attempting this long and challenging book, but they would do so ill-advisedly.

Other Amazon.com visitors may have seen Mr. Moramarco's topic--"Great descriptions, but not for everyone"--and hurried on. But I stayed to see what he thought I might want to miss (other than some good descriptive writing)--and why.

It didn't take me long to find out. After praising Brodkey's descriptions of Venice as "marvelous" and his book as a "major achievement," Mr. Moramarco gets down to business: "But Brodkey's homosexual eroticism fall [sic] flat for readers not turned on by male/male sexuality." A bit later he goes on to confess that "one man's obsession with his male lover . . . leaves me longing for a stronger female presence."

Not to be thought prejudiced, however, he assures us that none of these comments should be considered heterosexist.

Indeed, heterosexist remarks are not to be expected from someone with the bona fides that Mr. Moramarco posts in his Amazon.com profile: "Fred Moramarco is the editor of Poetry International, an annual journal published at San Diego State University. He teaches creative writing, poetry, and American Literature there. He is the co-author of 'Italian Pride: 101 Reasons to be Proud You're Italian,' 'Containing Multitudes: Poetry in the US Since 1950,' 'Modern American Poetry,' and co-editor of 'Men of Our Time: Male Poetry in Contemporary America.'"

Reviewing books they wish had been written rather than books the authors themselves chose to write is a common enough error among reviewers and it's one that someone with Professor Moramarco's background should know to avoid. But the problem I have with his remarks is of a different order.

"Profane Friendship" is Harold Brodkey's meditation on the bonds of an episodic friendship--and probably love--between two men, from boyhood, through youth and manhood, to old age. Suggesting that such a novel suffers from insufficient female presence is about as apt as suggesting that a Toni Morrison novel might benefit from a bigger white presence. And isn't a subtext behind this suggestion merely that Professor Moramarco is, you know, just a regular guy? (Nudge nudge, know whatahmean?)

His denial of heterosexist intent notwithstanding, Professor Moramarco reveals the curious belief that heterosexual readers must be protected against exposure to descriptions of "homosexual eroticism" and "male/male sexuality" (read "gay sex"). Is it possible he is not aware that the kind of exposure he warns against is identical to the one gay readers experience all the time? And what about Brodkey's explicit descriptions of heterosex? Why not alert gay readers to them while he's at it? If there is a clearer case of heterosexism, I'm not aware of it.

Unlike Professor Moramarco, I do not believe you have to be "turned on" by gay sex to appreciate this book. Brodkey's determination to avoid absolutes and explore the ambiguities and inconstancies of friendship/love/friendly love offers some fine reading to anyone with an open mind, of whatever sexual persuasion. ("They were not lovers after all. And yet they were.")

If you want something approaching a valid reason for rejecting this book, look at the Library Journal review on this page. There you will find someone who found Brodkey's writing "monstrously swollen, infinitely repetitious" and guilty of "misguided gigantism." I disagree with this characterization, but I do not find it repellent.

Generalising, the typical novel fits its action into a wide, undetailed character arc - neat but hardly lifelike.

Profane Frienship takes the opposite approach. Knowing interaction between two people is so changeable within a short time - a run of actions, reactions, reaction, reaction; ending only when people separate - Brodkey focuses on the moment-to-moment details of contact and lets the broader plot arc take care of itself.

As it does in real life. This novel's originality results from its intrusive depth; few other books maintain such intense focus on the undercurrents present in even the most glancing contact between friends - especially teenagers.

For most writers, achieving such emotional reality would be enough. But after dissecting young friendship, fights - the low-level continuous conflict I remember as essential to my adolescence but rarely see reflected in books - Brodkey then tops off his novel with a final adult section, where his now late-middle-aged characters present the most authentic description of the experience of making films I've read.

This is a really terrific, masterful novel - a distillation of the entire life of a highly intelligent, curious, unforgiving and sentimental man with close-to-photographic recall. <P

There are few books that enable you to discover yourself through the revelation and reflection of others thoughts and feelings, but Profane Friendship is a rare exception. The canals of venice become like the vessels in ones brain - the colour and vision created by lyrical text painting colours so vivid that they enter consciosness, half realised but fully consumed. The novel pulls no punches yet reaches and tickles its reader with a knowingness with which you have to marvel. Love,place (Venice) and memory are woven to create a superb patern.

Niles O'Hara looks back at his youth spent in Venice just before an after WWII. The son of an affluent author, Niles makes friends with the handsome young Onni when they meet for the first time at school at around the ages of six and eight. At the outbreak of war Niles and his family move the America, to return at the end of hostilities. Upon his return to Venice as a young teenager, Niles resumes his friendship with Onni, who is now a young male prostitute, having consorted with young German Officers during the war, and with aspirations to be a film star. Soon the two boys become involved a strange sexual relationship initiated by the slightly older Onni, while at the same time occasionally pursuing girls.

Later, towards the close of the book Niles returns yet again to Venice when Onni is a famous movie star, and they resume their strange relationship, one typified by teasing both in words and sex, arguing and fighting, and questioning of friendship and love.

There is no doubt that the writing here is beautiful, and the story it attempts to tell fascinating and tantalisingly and occasionally titillating. But all too often Brodkey gets carried away in his obsession with words and interminable descriptions to the detriment of the narrative. The result being that one is frequently frustrated, wishing he would simply cut to the chase. Compounding the problem Brockey's prose does not lend itself to speedy reading, it requires a slow and careful approach if any sense is to be made of it; while that is fine in small doses, it soon palls and becomes even laborious, lulling the reader into a state of languor.

The descriptions of life in Venice are marvelous, and this book is a major achievement, but Brodkey's homosexual eroticism fall flat for readers not turned on by male/male sexuality. I don't mean that to be a "heterosexist" comment, but only that I was hoping to like this book better than I did because I love Venice and love novels that evoke its atmosphere. This book certainly does that, but when it goes on about one man's obsession with his male lover it leaves me longing for a stronger female presence.