The Runaway Soul

The Runaway Soul, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 1991, first edition ISBN 978-0-374-25286-1, Library of Congress catalog card number 91-75885, was the long-awaited first novel by Harold Brodkey.

It represents either part or all of the work that Brodkey labored over for more than a quarter century, and which had originally been announced as A Party of Animals.

The plot of the novel concerns Brodkey's autobiographical character, Wiley Silenowicz, whose fate closely parallels the author's own childhood in St. Louis in the 1930s.

Stylistically, the novel attempts to render sensation into language, following the style of Brodkey's celebrated New Yorker stories.

"[2] In The New Criterion, Bruce Bawer called the book "one of the literary fiascos of all time.