Life & Wisdom Quote by Harold Brodkey

Brodkey turns dying into a grudge match, and the insolence is the point. “Death and I are head to head” refuses the usual consolations: no serene acceptance, no cosmic framing, not even the polite euphemisms that let everyone else keep their composure. It’s intimate, almost claustrophobic, with “I” put on equal footing with the one opponent nobody beats. That forced symmetry is a kind of defiance; if he can’t win, he can at least deny death the dignity of inevitability.

“Total collision” is blunt physics, not spirituality. It suggests speed, impact, a crash you don’t narrate so much as endure. The phrase “pure and mutual distaste” sharpens the scene into something almost comic in its pettiness: death isn’t majestic; it’s offensive. “Mutual” is the sly move. Brodkey imputes taste to death, as if death, too, recoils from this particular stubborn consciousness. The subtext is control by language: personify the enemy, name the feeling, set the terms of engagement. If death is going to reduce him to a body, he’ll drag death into the realm of personality and attitude.

Context matters because Brodkey’s late work, written as he was dying of AIDS, is saturated with the friction between hyper-aware mind and failing flesh. The line performs that friction. It’s not a diary’s plea for pity; it’s an author staging experience as combat, using style as a last sovereign territory. The collision is unavoidable, but the contempt is chosen.