Stories in an Almost Classical Mode is a short story collection by the American writer Harold Brodkey

Harold Brodkey

Harold Brodkey, born Aaron Roy Weintraub was an American writer, and novelist.-Life:Brodkey was raised in University City, Missouri outside St. Louis...

, published in 1988 by Alfred A. Knopf. Most of the stories were published in The New Yorker

The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

, between 1963 and 1988. It was Brodkey's first book in 30 years, and presaged his much-heralded but ultimately disappointing first novel The Runaway Soul

The Runaway Soul

The Runaway Soul, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 1991, first edition ISBN 9-780374-252861, Library of Congress catalog card number 91-75885, is the long-awaited first novel by Harold Brodkey...

. In fact, much of the material that would make up The Runaway Soul

The Runaway Soul

The Runaway Soul, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 1991, first edition ISBN 9-780374-252861, Library of Congress catalog card number 91-75885, is the long-awaited first novel by Harold Brodkey...

appeared in short story form in Stories in an Almost Classical Mode.

Literary critic Harold Bloom

Harold Bloom

Harold Bloom is an American writer and literary critic, and is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. He is known for his defense of 19th-century Romantic poets, his unique and controversial theories of poetic influence, and his prodigious literary output, particularly for a literary...

considered Stories in an Almost Classical Mode to be one of the essential works of Western literature (as he stated in his book, The Western Canon).

Stories

• "The Abundant Dreamer"
• "On the Waves"
• "Bookkeeping"
• "Hofstedt and Jean—and Others"
• "The Shooting Range"
• "Innocence"
• "Play"
• "A Story in an Almost Classical Mode"
• "His Son, in His Arms, in Light, Aloft"
• "Puberty"
• "The Pain Continuum"
• "Largely an Oral History of My Mother"
• "Verona: A Young Woman Speaks"
• "Ceil"
• "S.L."
• "The Nurse's Music"
• "The Boys on Their Bikes"
• "Angel"