Broyard, Confidence Man

My friend Rick checks in:

Brendan, that great quote by Janet Malcolm that you cross-referenced on your blog came to mind this morning when I read the book review in the NYT of a memoir written by Anatole Broyard’s daughter. I read some Broyard in the 1960s; he was part of that postwar writing crowd that lived in Greenwich Village supposedly enjoying carefree vagabond lives. Later, Broyard became one of the daily critics at the NYT. In the mid-’90s, Henry Louis Gates wrote a brilliant essay published in the New Yorker about how Broyard, born in New Orleans to black parents and raised in Brooklyn, lived a white life, full of privilege (earned) and conquest (earned seduction), but fell short of literary greatness probably because of his lifestyle and effort at being charming bon vivant and sophisticated faux Caucasian. Broyard’s daughter writes of becoming friends with Gates, and then feeling betrayed when the essay was published. Ah, Malcolm so understood the subversive nature of biography and its practitioners. I look forward to reading the memoir, and I will probably read some Broyard as well. My take on Broyard was that he was a fascinating confidence man.

ELSEWHERE: Anatole Broyard serves up red meat to Philip Roth