Profane Friendship Author:Harold Brodkey Niles O'Hara, son of an American expatriate novelist, grew up in Venice in the 1930s, taking as his best friend an Italian boy named Giangiacomo Gallieni, or "Onni." After World War II, Niles returns to a sleazier, shell-shocked Venice and resumes his friendship with Onni, now a drug-addicted male prostitute and aspiring movie star. O'Hara's obs... more »essive analysis of their sexual relationship, written from the vantage point of old age, is almost Proustian in scope, much like Brodkey's monumental first novel, The Runaway Soul. The goal is to capture the reality of love, stripped of fantasy and illusion.« less