Tom Sawyer on acid, a 21st-century On the Road, a Holden Caulfield for punks … a profound, provocative memoir of self-destruction and self-discovery.
In Scoundrel Days Brentley Frazer tells the story of his youth - wild, disillusioned, impassioned and desolate. Born into a Christian cult in outback Queensland, Frazer escapes through literature and poetry, drugs and violence, sex and alcohol; and his ensuing rejection of religion, authority and the 'way things are' leads to adventures, desperation and, just possibly, redemption.
Beautifully written and urgently told, Scoundrel Days is a visceral, compelling assault on the senses. An at times brutal story articulated with a poet's sensibility, it portrays a walker of edges exploring the dark side while searching for the love essential to build a soul.
AN ASIDE: Frazer wrote Scoundrel Days using an obscure literary constraint known as English Prime. No tenses of the verb 'to be' (are, am, is, was, were, be, been, being and contractions) appear in the text. Read more about this unusual approach in Frazer's article Beyond Is: Creative Writing with English Prime published in TEXT Journal.
About the Author
Brentley Frazer is an Australian author whose poems, prose and academic papers have been published in numerous national and international anthologies, journals, magazines and other periodicals since 1992. He holds a MA (writing) from James Cook University and authored Scoundrel Days as part of a submission for a PhD in creative writing at Griffith University. He is also a lecturer at Griffith University and the editor-in-chief of Bareknuckle Poet Journal of Letters.
Industry Reviews
'How brilliant is the writing in Scoundrel Days? Like poetry written with a nail gun. Shit he's good. Uncommonly good. He's got a great eye, but also a lot of muscle to his writing, and that combo doesn't come along often enough. I hope he's got a lot more prose in him.' Nick Earls 'Can't remember the last time I read anything this gritty and compelling. Frazer doesn't write like an angel. He writes like a demon. Scoundrel Days is one of the finest Australian works in years.' Brett D'Arcy, winner of WA Premier's Book Award for Mindless Ferocity of Sharks 'With a poet's eye for locating the marvellous within the commonplace and a novelist's ear for the nuances and rhythms of natural speech, Brentley Frazer has crafted a unique narrative from the myths and rumours of life and a wild imagination. Scoundrel Days is fiercely original, inspirational, and will no doubt find a wide, varied readership.' Anthony Lawrence 'An artist's true journey from blindness (or, what we call youth) into glimmerings of sight (coming of age). The writing is wonderful, and the writer lives in the tradition of the Beats, yet has managed to create something new through his use of the E-prime constraint.' Dr Venero Armanno, author of Black Mountain and The Dirty Beat
