{"id":60970,"date":"2021-06-22T13:39:59","date_gmt":"2021-06-22T13:39:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=60970"},"modified":"2021-06-22T13:41:39","modified_gmt":"2021-06-22T13:41:39","slug":"white-like-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=60970","title":{"rendered":"White Like Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

White Like Me<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The New Yorker<\/a>
\n1996-06-10<\/p>\n

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nAnatole Broyard<\/a>, date unknown.<\/em> Photograph courtesy The New School Archives and Special Collections \/ The New School<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Anatole Broyard<\/a> wanted to be a writer, not a black writer. So he chose to live a lie rather than be trapped by the truth.<\/em><\/p>\n

In 1982, an investment banker named Richard Grand-Jean<\/a> took a summer\u2019s lease on an eighteenth-century farmhouse in Fairfield, Connecticut<\/a>; its owner, Anatole Broyard<\/a>, spent his summers in Martha\u2019s Vineyard<\/a>. The house was handsomely furnished with period antiques, and the surrounding acreage included a swimming pool and a pond. But the property had another attraction, too. Grand-Jean, a managing director of Salomon Brothers<\/a>, was an avid reader, and he took satisfaction in renting from so illustrious a figure. Anatole Broyard had by then been a daily book reviewer for the Times<\/em> for more than a decade, and that meant that he was one of literary America\u2019s foremost gatekeepers. Grand-Jean might turn to the business pages of the Times<\/em> first, out of professional obligation, but he turned to the book page next, out of a sense of self. In his Walter Mittyish<\/a> moments, he sometimes imagined what it might be like to be someone who read and wrote about books for a living\u2014someone to whom millions of readers looked for guidance.<\/p>\n

Broyard\u2019s columns were suffused with both worldliness and high culture. Wry, mandarin<\/a>, even self-amused at times, he wrote like a man about town, but one who just happened to have all of Western literature at his fingertips. Always, he radiated an air of soign\u00e9<\/a> self-confidence: he could be amiable in his opinions or waspish<\/a>, but he never betrayed a flicker of doubt about what he thought. This was a man who knew that his judgment would never falter and his sentences never fail him.<\/p>\n

Grand-Jean knew little about Broyard\u2019s earlier career, but as he rummaged through Broyard\u2019s bookshelves he came across old copies of intellectual journals like Partisan Review<\/em> and Commentary<\/em>, to which Broyard had contributed a few pieces in the late forties and early fifties. One day, Grand-Jean found himself leafing through a magazine that contained an early article by Broyard. What caught his eye, though, was the contributor\u2019s note for the article\u2014or, rather, its absence. It had been neatly cut out, as if with a razor…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anatole Broyard wanted to be a writer, not a black writer. So he chose to live a lie rather than be trapped by the truth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,1196,369,8,6462,20],"tags":[5427,31530,31531,2935,1438,2711,596,31529,3886],"class_list":["post-60970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-literary-criticism","category-louisiana","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-anatole-broyard","tag-anatole-paul-broyard","tag-greenwich-village","tag-henry-louis-gates-jr","tag-new-orleans","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-richard-grand-jean","tag-the-new-yorker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60970"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60973,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60970\/revisions\/60973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}