And yet the source of the endlessly autobiographical would seem to rest on the psychoanalytically pertinent as opposed to the narratively focused. But Brodkey’s stories really can seem to be about nothing.
Madame Bovary, however, was never that novel: there is immense suspense in Emma's husband trying to prove himself by fixing a boy’s clubbed foot, in awaiting an assignation or in Emma's agonising death. Looking back on Flaubert’s novel it hardly seems a book about nothing, no matter if he wished to produce exactly that: a perfect novel would be of narrative irrelevance yet held together by its style.
If Flaubert could famously say “I am Madame Bovary” (or more precisely, 'Madame Bovary, C'est moi'), indicating that style is more important than narrative, that a book about nothing could be elevated by the author’s brilliance, then we can see that Harold Brodkey modifies the claim further by suggesting “I am Harold Brodkey.” While Flaubert thought there was a thin line between the ostensibly huge chasm of Bovary and himself, Brodkey would continuously write stories about a man so much like Brodkey that Flaubert’s provocative claim became a tautological one.
