the cold winds of insecurity... hadn't shredded the dreamy chrysalis of his childhood. He was still immersed in the dim, wet wonder of the folded wings that might open if someone loved him; he still hoped, probably, in a butterfly's unthinking way, for spring and warmth. How the wings ache, folded so, waiting; that is, they ache until they atrophy.

Literary career
Brodkey's career began promisingly with the short story collection First Love and Other Sorrows which received widespread critical praise at the time of its 1958 publication. " In The New Criterion Bruce Bawer found the book's tone to be "extraordinarily arrogant and self-obsessed. Life
Brodkey was raised in University City Missouri outside St.

Harold Brodkey born Aaron Roy Weintraub (October 25 1930 born in Staunton Illinois – January 26 1996 Manhattan) was an American writer and novelist.