Sea Battles on Dry Land: Essays Hardcover - 1999

From the publisher

A brilliant, provocative collection of essays, profiles, and criticism, from one of the great literary figures of our time. Renowned worldwide for his fiction, Harold Brodkey may actually be better known among American readers for his work as an essayist. By turns witty and contemplative, sympathetic and scathing, Brodkey's essays, many of which first appeared in The New Yorker, treat a remarkably broad range of subjects. Whether writing on the New York City subway or country gardens, on presidential politics or haute couture, on Woody Allen or Walter Winchell, Brodkey was a master of the subtle and unexpected observation. Sea Battles on Dry Land gathers the best of Brodkey's essays into a single volume-among them lighthearted Talk of the Town pieces, the prophetic Notes on American Fascism, and a profile of Frank O'Hara, one of the most eloquent portraits of a legary American writer. Gifted with a capacious and searching intelligence, Brodkey was equally skilled at writing film reviews, celebrity profiles, and erudite discourses on the nature of fiction. Sea Battles on Dry Land provides some of the finest critical writing of our era and will remain an essential collection for many years to come.

About the author