Anatole Broyard Quotes

Anatole Paul Broyard was an American writer, literary critic, and editor from New Orleans who wrote for The New York Times. In addition to his many reviews and columns, he published short stories, essays, and two books during his lifetime. His autobiographical works, Intoxicated by My Illness and Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir , were published after his death. He had moved to Brooklyn, New York, with his family as a youth.

Several years after his death, Broyard became the center of controversy when it was revealed that he had "passed" as white as an adult. Moving to Greenwich Village, where there were other aspiring writers and artists who had moved from their pasts, he had wanted to be accepted as a writer, rather than a "black writer". Some friends said they always knew he had black ancestry. A Louisiana Creole of mixed-race ancestry, Broyard was criticized by some black political figures for his decisions, as he had acted as an individual during a period of increased communal political activity by African Americans. Since the late twentieth century, advocates of multiracial culture have cited Broyard as an example of someone insisting on an independent racial identity before it was widely popular in mainstream America. Wikipedia  

✵ 16. July 1920 – 11. October 1990
Anatole Broyard: 5   quotes 0   likes

Famous Anatole Broyard Quotes

“The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait.”

‘About Books, Recoiling, Rereading, Retelling’, New York Times, February 22, 1987.

“Two people making love, she once said, are like one drowned person resuscitating the other.”

Source: Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir

“A good book is never exhausted. It goes on whispering to you from the wall.”

‘About Books, Recoiling, Rereading, Retelling’, New York Times, February 22, 1987.

“An aphorism is a generalization of sorts, and our present-day writers seem more at home with the particular.”

‘Wisdom of Aphorisms’, New York Times, 30th April 1983.

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