Scoundrel Days: A Memoir

Scoundrel Days is a memoir by Australian contemporary poet Brentley Frazer.

Scoundrel Days: A Memoir (2017) by Brentley Frazer. A memoir by Australian contemporary poet Brentley Frazer. Described as "a gritty, Gen X memoir, recounting wild escapades into an under-culture of drugs and violence and sex by ABC Radio National and by the publisher as "Tom Sawyer on acid, a 21st-century On the Road, a Holden Caulfield for punks" . Literary critic Rohan Wilson compared Frazer's ability to shock, surprise and unsettle with that of Marcel Duchamp, concluding: "Frazer is writing here in the tradition of Helen Garner, Andrew McGahan and Nick Earls.This is dirty realism at its dirtiest ".

Quotes

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  • Busy livin all the poems I haven’t written.
    • Part 5, Chapter 3 'Lethe' p. 220
  • Australia, land of brazen scum. Come one, come all and get a sunburned bum.
    • Part 3, Chapter 2 'Aftermath' p. 154
  • —Writin an epic? —A novel. —What about? —A true story about smut and crime and poetry and life. About running from Love. —Groovy … You writing me in? —Nope.
    • Part 3, Chapter 2 'Aftermath' p. 153
    • The character 'Reuben' and the protagonist 'Brentley' are on a Greyhound Bus and Reuben, after watching Brentley writing for some time asks if he is writing an epic.
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