Anatole Broyard Books
July 16, 1920 – October 11, 1990
This American author established himself as a literary critic and editor. His writing delves into the complex facets of identity and societal expectations. His prose is marked by sharp introspection and keen social commentary. Later in life, his personal choices and racial identity became subjects of significant discussion and debate.
Kafka Was the Rage
- 160 pages
- 6 hours of reading
What Hemingway's A Moveable Feast did for Paris in the 1920s, this charming yet undeceivable memoir does for Greenwich Village in the late 1940s. In 1946, Anatole Broyard was a dapper, earnest, fledgling avant-gardist, intoxicated by books, sex, and the neighborhood that offered both in such abundance. Stylish written, mercurially witty, imbued with insights that are both affectionate and astringent, this memoir offers an indelible portrait of a lost bohemia. We see Broyard setting up his used bookstore on Cornelia Street—indulging in a dream that was for him as romantic as “living off the land or sailing around the world” while exercizing his libido with a protegee of Anais Nin and taking courses at the New School, where he deliberates on “the new trends in art, sex, and psychosis.” Along the way he encounters Delmore Schwartz, Caitlin and Dylan Thomas, William Gaddis, and other writers at the start of their careers. Written with insight and mercurial wit, Kafka Was the Rage elegantly captures a moment and place and pays homage to a lost bohemia as it was experienced by a young writer eager to find not only his voice but also his place in a very special part of the world.
Verrückt nach Kafka
- 192 pages
- 7 hours of reading
Anatole Broyard erinnert sich an das Leben im Greenwich Village der fünfziger Jahre, als Bücher und Sex gleichermaßen heilig waren. Er erzählt von seiner Ankunft als hellhäutiger Afroamerikaner, seiner Liebe zur Malerin Sheri Donatti und dem kulturellen Aufbruch der Intellektuellen, die Literatur und Sexualität neu definierten.