The Bold Saboteurs

by Chandler Brossard

"This autobiographical novel marks Brossard's emergence from the formal influence of Flaubert and Camus into a wildly free, multilayered narrative where fantasy and reality, sanity and insanity coexist and intertwine. Set in Washington, D.C. in the late 1930s and 1940s, The Bold Saboteurs is the story of the young Brown brothers who, along with their mother, must cope with the ravages, and absence, of their violent, alcoholic father. In order to survive, the elder Roland becomes a night watchman and uneasy head of the household; the younger George, a multiple schizophrenic whose hallucinations make up some of the most vivid, free-associative passages in the book, takes up a life of crime." "Within the family, George, whose life chokes him with its "grimy emptiness," is controlled and, at times, brutally disciplined by his powerful brother. Roland, himself a borderline personality with religious delusions, creates an elaborate family mythology, convincing George they are descended from royalty. Outside the family, the rich detail of Brossard's fictional underworld points to the author's early life "near the gutter," among the outcasts of Washington thieves, muggers, extortionists, prostitutes and the Negro underclass." "By age thirteen, George is basically living on his own. While sporadically attending school (he also spends hours reading in the public library), he sustains himself with burglary, robbery, kidnapping, fencing of stolen merchandise, and hustling tennis matches. Remarkable for its in-depth treatment of alcoholism and its effects on family life, as well as for its erotically charged descriptions of George's voyeurism and his sexual initiation by older women."--BOOK JACKET.

Genres: Fiction, Literature

252 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1953

About the author

Chandler Brossard was an American novelist, writer, editor, and teacher. He wrote or edited a total of 17 books. With a challenging style and outsider characters, Brossard had limited critical success in the United States. His novels were more appreciated in France and Great Britain.

His early works have been described as "landmarks of the postwar American novel."

Reviews

[Justin Zigenis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh.

[Joe · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's energy to the story that seems oddly at war with the somewhat formal diction and language. Here's the opening:

The cops caught me only once, and it took those disgusting hyenas a remarkably long time to do it too. They caught me through Bobo, who squealed. I knew I should never have tied up with that guy. True, he was big and strong but at bottom, he was really quite yellow.
It was the summer when I was sixteen. I had been hanging around Monroe Park with the older drifters and drunks and thieves. You might say that I was their protege.

The narrator is a mix of naivete and criminality, which makes him likable. Here's the naive side:

She finished packing and turned to me, smiling. "What can I give you to remember me by?"
In my confusion I was incapable of naming anything, and if she had not come to my rescue I might have blurted out that she could give me a frying pan. "How about this?" she said, taking a photograph out of her wallet. It was a shot of her lying on a beach in a bathing suit, alone.

Here's the criminal, with the insight of burglary as rape:

Tonight I robbed the clubhouse at the tennis courts. Just now returned, still sweating from the excitement and the work.
A sleek, firm crowbar was all it took—a couple of bold twists with it and the wire cover fell right off the window—nothing to it. The sheer natural beauty of the whole thing really impressed me: the sweet little log cabin utterly alone and unprotected there in the forest-park ... pitch dark ... almost primevally quiet ... the tennis courts nude and sleeping ... and me, the little cabin's savage lover! No one to hear its cries for help, its delicious piercing protestations and pleading. Only the trees and the silent deserted courts to bear witness to its shame.
And what a precious haul it was! I took my time stripping and ravishing her; I drank Coca-Colas and ate candy bars and laughed leisurely to myself.

Maybe it was shocking in 1952, but not now. The times really have changed.

[Mat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Over the last 20 years I can pick this book up and flick to any page, start reading and am sucked in within seconds. Thrilling, strange and beautiful.

[Stella Danielson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A surreal venture into the mind and reality/dreamscape of a boy who is both much more grounded and much more insane than most people, and yet strikingly familiar.

[Jeffrey Schnitzer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Repetitive and over-written. What once was cutting-edge is now tedious.

[Sandra J. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Couldn't get into it, I tried but only made it through a few chapters and had to stop, it just wasn't holding my interest. Doesn't mean that others won't like it, it just wasn't my thing.