Joseph Brodsky: A Literary Life

Nobel Prize-winning poet Brodsky grew up in the Soviet Union in the midst of WWII. "If anyone profited from the war," he writes, "it was us: its children...we were richly provided with stuff to romanticize..." A middling student, Brodsky dropped out at 15 and began his informal education. Rejected from submarine training, he held many jobs, including machinist, morgue assistant, and bath house stoker, which attracted the attention of the KGB. They arrested Brodsky in 1962, marking the start of his troubles with his government. He would soon be found guilty of "parisitism" and face exile, first to rural Norenskaya, where he read, wrote, and worked the land, and then to Vienna, where he flourished as a poet, essayist, and intellectual. But success was bittersweet, as Brodsky never returned to his homeland or saw his parents again. Loseff counts himself a longtime friend of his subject's and this account brims with respect and enthusiasm: "I cannot comment on Joseph's life and work dispassionately, not only because I loved him, but also because I thought him a genius." Yet he does employ restraint in capturing the poet's individualism, originality, whimsicality, and eccentricity, lovingly illuminating the man behind the work. (Jan.)