Harold Brodkey
writer (1930–1996)
Harold Brodkey (October 25, 1930 – January 26, 1996), born Aaron Roy Weintraub, was an American short story writer and novelist.
Life
Aaron Weintraub was born to a Jewish family in Staunton, Illinois on October 25, 1930. He was the second child of Max Weintraub and Celia Glazer Weintraub (1899–1932). Samuel Weintraub (1928–2017) was their oldest child. When their mother died, Samuel was four and old enough to remain with his father, but Aaron, only two years old, was adopted by his father's cousin, Doris Rubenstein Brodkey (1896–1949) and her husband, Joseph Brodkey (1896–1946) and renamed Harold Roy Brodkey. Doris and Joseph lived in University City, Missouri, with their daughter, Marilyn Ruth Brodkey (1923–2011). Brodkey would chronicle his life with his adoptive parents and sister in his short stories and his novel, The Runaway Soul.
After graduating cum laude from Harvard University with an Bachelor of Arts in 1952, Brodkey married his first wife, Joanna Brown, a Radcliffe graduate, and their only child, Ann Emily Brodkey, was born in 1953. With the aid of his editor, William Maxwell, a childhood friend of his wife, he began his writing career by contributing short stories to The New Yorker and other magazines. His stories received two first-place O. Henry Awards.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Harold Brodkey” is writer (1930–1996). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Harold, Brodkey and writer, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q560733. VIAF identifies the subject as 68952054. The Library of Congress control number is n84123703. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1930, 1996, 1899 and 1932.
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This entry incorporates text from “Harold Brodkey” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.