25 Facts About Anatole Broyard

Anatole Paul Broyard was an American writer, literary critic, and editor who wrote for The New York Times.

Several years after his death, Broyard became the center of controversy when it was revealed that he had "passed" as white despite being a Louisiana Creole of mixed-race ancestry.

Anatole Broyard was descended from ancestors who were established as free people of color before the Civil War.

Documents in the Louisiana state archives show all of Anatole Broyard's ancestors, on both sides, to have been Black, at least since the late eighteenth century, while the first Anatole Broyard recorded in Louisiana was a French colonist in the mid-eighteenth century.

Anatole Broyard was the second of three children; he and his sister Lorraine, two years older, were light-skinned with European features.

The Anatole Broyard family lived in a working-class and racially diverse community in Brooklyn.

Anatole Broyard saw his parents "pass" as white to get work, as his father found the carpenters union to be racially discriminatory.

Anatole Broyard had some stories accepted for publication in the 1940s.

Anatole Broyard began studying at Brooklyn College before the US entered World War II.

Anatole Broyard was accepted as white at enlistment and he successfully completed officers school.

Anatole Broyard used the GI Bill to study at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan.

Anatole Broyard settled in Greenwich Village, where he became part of its bohemian artistic and literary life.

Anatole Broyard did not identify with or champion black political causes.

Anatole Broyard contributed articles and essays to Partisan Review, Commentary, Neurotica, and New Directions Publishing.

Stories of his were included in two anthologies of fiction widely associated with the Beat writers, but Anatole Broyard did not identify with them.

Anatole Broyard often was said to be working on a novel, but never published one.

For nearly fifteen years, Anatole Broyard wrote daily book reviews for The New York Times.

In 1984 Anatole Broyard was given a column in the Book Review, for which he worked as an editor.

Anatole Broyard was among those considered "gatekeepers" in the New York literary world, whose positive opinions were critical to a writer's success.

Anatole Broyard first married Aida Sanchez, a Puerto Rican woman, and they had a daughter, Gala.

In 1961, at the age of 40, Anatole Broyard married again, to Alexandra Nelson, a modern dancer and younger woman of Norwegian-American ancestry.

Shortly before he died, Anatole Broyard stated that he missed his friend Milton Klonsky, with whom he used to talk every day, after Klonsky's death.

Anatole Broyard said that after Milton died, "no one talked to me as an equal".

Roth stated in a 2008 interview that Anatole Broyard was not his source of inspiration.

Anatole Broyard explained that he had only learned about Broyard's black ancestry and choices from the Gates New Yorker article, published months after he had already started writing the novel.