Anatole Broyard (1920–1990)

A waste of time and a waste of talent: 147 pages of namedropping and posing, filled with self-revelation that feels phony and superficial, and very little broader insight or depth of field. But when I read Henry Louis Gates' biographical essay "The Passing of Anatole Broyard," I got it. I realized there was nothing I could trust about this author, and his evasions infected his writing. What is the point of trying to read an autobiographical book by a guy who spent his life perfecting a fictional self to present to the world? Gates actually does a better job than Broyard of making him sympathetic, or at least an intriguing character study. Only when Broyard talks about books does any depth of feeling or integrity flicker in his writing. His life story is the essence of poetic justice - he was never able to fulfill his promise as a writer because his only real subject was himself, and he refused to acknowledge who that was.… (mehr)

After World War II, Greenwich Village became the center of the bohemian revolution in America. Artistic twenty-somethings flocked to the New York neighborhood in droves. It drew them in the same way Paris had drawn their predecessors in the 1920s.

Broyard returned from serving in the war to find that the country had changed in his absence. He, like so many others, made his way to Greenwich, where he pursued his dream of opening a bookstore.

“Looking back at the late 1940s, it seems to me now that Americans were confronting their loneliness for the first time. Loneliness was like the morning after the war, like a great hangover. The war had broken the rhythm of American life, and when we tried to pick it up again, we couldn’t find it – it wasn’t there.”

The sense of loneliness the author speaks about is palpable in this book. He explores his odd relationship with a self-involved woman that seems to leave him feeling more alone when he’s with her than when he isn’t.

I liked a few passages from this memoir more than I liked it as a whole. It gave me a better picture of the history of Greenwich Village and I’m glad I read it before spending more time in the area, but I wouldn’t recommend it as a general read.

“To open a bookshop is one of the persistent romances, like living off the land or sailing around the world.”

“Books were our weather, our environment, our clothing. We didn’t simply read books; we became them. We took them into ourselves and made them into our histories. Books were to us what drugs were to young men in the sixties.”… (mehr)