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Scoundrel Days: A Memoir

Brentley Frazer (Goodreads Author)

4.30 · Rating details · 84 ratings · 25 reviews

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, red ...more

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Paperback, 304 pages

Published March 1st 2017 by University of Queensland Press

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Jun 15, 2019 Paltia rated it really liked it

A memoir of a young man who lives in the moment and acknowledges his behaviour with the title. He’s controlled by his hormones, a relentless drive to rebel against his parent’s attempts to impose their religious beliefs on him, and the endless search for an elixir to provide the ideal altered state of consciousness. There’s a beauty and fluid motion to his writing that kept me reading. I could imagine him smiling a welcome along the way. Did I recognize him? I certainly did. The mud brown eyes h A memoir of a young man who lives in the moment and acknowledges his behaviour with the title. He’s controlled by his hormones, a relentless drive to rebel against his parent’s attempts to impose their religious beliefs on him, and the endless search for an elixir to provide the ideal altered state of consciousness. There’s a beauty and fluid motion to his writing that kept me reading. I could imagine him smiling a welcome along the way. Did I recognize him? I certainly did. The mud brown eyes he describes himself as having must have also looked full of life to most he meets - unadulterated and authentic when not obliterated on substances. He has lots to say about sex and drugs with occasional detours into humour and politics. Early on he develops an awareness of how people are treated differently based on the colour of their skin and their income level. There are aspects of his personality that blend the comic with the cosmic. Behind the scoundrel is a kid who reminded me of the fun of childhood spent by the ocean with the glint of sunlight on breaking waves. Reading and writing in his collection of notebooks offer him periods of distance from his surroundings. His story from childhood to his mid twenties rises and falls like the unique beating of a heart. There’s a simple eloquence and eventual happiness in his words. These are sometimes overshadowed by shame, anger and the disapproval of others. This doesn’t slow him down as there’s never a shortage of friends who will merrymake, thumb their noses and stick out their tongues and fight at the least provocation. From adolescence on he goes anywhere, where anything might happen, holding on to nothing. Travelling the roads of Australia he brings forward a taste of life outside the rules. There’s sorrow, lonliness and moments of pain as he searches for finding fresh hope in the next destination. Change comes knocking at his door when he least expects it. The final paragraph reads like a man who can at long last drop the armor and allow himself to experience what he’s been missing out on until that very moment in time. ...more

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Jan 27, 2019 Maru Kun rated it really liked it

Shelves: 21st-century-lit, c-australia

A book written entirely in E-prime. Pretty interesting. ...more

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Jul 12, 2018 Keen rated it really liked it

“The galahs sound like your neighbour falling down the stairs forever, with an entire crockery set filled with boiling water.”

Frazer has a beautiful way with words. At times the language almost sings and you can almost smell the ghost gums and taste the stifling heat of tropical Queensland. Without doubt Frazer’s brash experiences and dubious approach to the law and fidelity will rile many, his behaviour is routinely selfish and destructive, harming countless others on his rampant journey of sel
“The galahs sound like your neighbour falling down the stairs forever, with an entire crockery set filled with boiling water.”

Frazer has a beautiful way with words. At times the language almost sings and you can almost smell the ghost gums and taste the stifling heat of tropical Queensland. Without doubt Frazer’s brash experiences and dubious approach to the law and fidelity will rile many, his behaviour is routinely selfish and destructive, harming countless others on his rampant journey of self-satisfaction, but this is good writing and strong story telling.

We start at his childhood, where straight away we slip inside a world of crime, violence, neglect, dark corners and tramp preachers, as the author goes through the many turbulent trials of trying to establish a meaningful identity with a diet of Byron, Twain and the Beat poets for sustenance. He soon falls into some dubious company and some calamitous adventures ensue.

“Amphetamines. A new word. Mrs Crisp says having my Barlow knife at school, and the drugs, constitute illegal acts. I’ve broken the law. People will call me a criminal. It feels fantastic.”

As this memoir progressed, I thought we would get some character development and maturity towards the end of the story, where he sees the error of his ways and maybe becomes a bit less selfish, but that didn’t happen at all. Instead what we get is a remarkable capacity for self-pity with lines like, “Not a single person on earth gives a damn about me.” and “I can’t feel a single person out there who has a spare thought for me.” After he has dedicated much of his time and life to petty crime and screwing over almost every woman he meets, but we’re supposed to think, hey that’s OK you are a poet and the rules don’t apply to you man, you are a free spirit etc. Though to be fair he admits himself at one point, “You wouldn’t blame any woman for calling someone who slept with both her sisters and pashed their mother the biggest b@stard who ever lived. You’d walk right out. Love does it all the time, turns on her heel and leaves. I’d walk out on me if I could.”

For someone who repeatedly speaks out against people with money he has some curious people he idolises, the likes of Byron and Burroughs, both of whom came from well moneyed backgrounds. Like them he tries to romanticise and justify some dreadful behaviour by calling himself an artist and seems to use this as a license to act as he wishes without facing up to the consequences.

There is little mention of the cult he was brought up in, but no shortage of gratuitous violence and sexually explicit detail. To be fair to him, he certainly did his best to carpe the diem, but like so many destructive others, he appeared to care very little for the many he hurt and stole from along the way.

So there were many grating aspects to this memoir, but when all is said and done this was a really enjoyable read. It is a bold, dark and nicely crafted memoir, that may recall other fellow Aussie larrikins like Paul Carter and even Chopper Read, who both have mined and exhausted the idea of the genre to ever diminishing returns, but this is a cut above them and most other recent memoirs from the Antipodes, in terms of sheer quality. In the end the level of excess and self-indulgence got a little tired and repetitive, but there was more than enough craft and skill built into this to make for a really interesting read.
...more

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Mar 09, 2017 Ruby rated it it was amazing

Far out. What a crazy tale. I really hope that the happy ending continued on for Brentley. He wasn't kidding with the title. What a scoundrel. ...more

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Apr 15, 2017 Jimmy Jones rated it liked it

I'm in two minds about this book. It was great in parts. I get the feeling he has a much better book in him. As a memoir it's a fun easy read with delusions of grandeur. The tales of hedonistic partying wear a bit thin by the end while his attempts at deeper insight seem forced and sort of clever without depth like a Holden Caulfield or (Good) Will Hunting ...more

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Mar 12, 2017 Beatmania rated it it was amazing

One of the most astounding aspects of this memoir is the writers use of E-Prime (won't go into what e-prime is here, google it). It is an amazing feat. The story runs along barely giving the reader the chance to take a breath. Wonderful memoir of what it was like to be coming of age as a Generation X writer.
Read this, you won't regret it! ...more

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Apr 07, 2018 Cojackson68 rated it it was amazing

This book is compellingly readable - beautifully written, stark, poetic, shocking. Highly recommended.

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Mar 28, 2018 Bareknuckle rated it it was amazing

Brentley Frazer’s memoir gorges on excess of sex, drugs and violence
ROHAN WILSON
The Australian12:00AM March 11, 2017

Marcel Duchamp once said a painting that doesn’t shock isn’t worth painting. The French artist knew a thing or two about shock, that strange power art has to upset and surprise. The porcelain urinal he attempted to exhibit at the 1917 Society of Independent Artists show became a sensation after the committee refused to allow it. A urinal presented as art? It seems quaint to us toda ...more

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Apr 05, 2018 Geoffrey Datson rated it it was amazing

You will read this book in the present tense. It’s a philosophical hobo’s glyph scratched on the side of a collapsing civilisation. Best book I read last year ousting a thousand year history of Constantinople slowly imploding. It had better drugs a and sex and unlike Constantinople will not spawn a Fourth Roman Empire.Looking forward to his next book. Hopefully about space exploration, an archeological dig on an asteroid because he’s laid waste to Queensland nothing left to find here.

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Apr 06, 2018 Nathan rated it it was amazing

Great read that captures the times and locations so well. A richly poetic Australian story with a great cast of supporting characters and side kicks. Well worth a read. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

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Oct 30, 2017 OSKR rated it really liked it

This autobiographical tale traces the development of a boy into adulthood and for that reason you could call it a coming-of-age story . However, in Scoundrel Days, most of the genre conventions are turned upside down, and the narrative is so different, it feels more correct to call it an "anti-coming-of-age" story.

I just googled "anti-coming-of-age" and sure enough various critics have used the term to describe a wide variety of stories. I'd like to cautiously propose that in this type of story This autobiographical tale traces the development of a boy into adulthood and for that reason you could call it a coming-of-age story . However, in Scoundrel Days, most of the genre conventions are turned upside down, and the narrative is so different, it feels more correct to call it an "anti-coming-of-age" story.

I just googled "anti-coming-of-age" and sure enough various critics have used the term to describe a wide variety of stories. I'd like to cautiously propose that in this type of story the protagonist is far less mutable than they have any right to be. Instead they are stubbornly sure of themselves and resistant to change. Rather than stumble with trepidation through their teenage years they seem to bypass puberty entirely and charge into adult situations with an unwarranted confidence.

The Basketball Diaries is a good example of an anti-coming-of-age story (I read this recently). Another example may be "the Catcher in the Rye" (Holden Caulfield is only a school student but frequents bars and passes for an adult). But that's enough of that, let's move onto Brentley Frazer (there are spoilers that follow).

Scoundrel Days begins in outback Queensland. Young Frazer grows up with a Police officer for a father and a religious family attached to Christian cult apparently known as "the Friendlies". From here Frazer moves to Townsville and begins highschool. Incredibly, he loves literature from an early age, and often mentions the books he's reading - the collected works of Byron among others. It's not explained how he is exposed to such material. Frazer doesn't seem to frequent libraries and his attendance at school is rather thin.

Anyway, back to the story. In Townsville he commits petty crimes with a gang of other young teens and makes a close friend: Reuben. Reuben develops into a key character that dominates the first half of the book. Reuben loves fighting, is exceptionally handsome and extremely promiscuous. He is also deeply conflicted and bent on revenge - his uncle abused him as a child, culminating in a savage attack that left his feet scarred and without toes. He also has only one testicle.

Frazer and Reuben have many adventures. Occasionally they aren't above rolling kids smaller than themselves, despite complaining about the exploitative treatment they themselves receive from society. They also smoke a hell of a lot of cigarettes. So many scenes involve the sharing and smoking of cigarettes that I was surprised they didn't contract emphysema.

Towards the middle of the book Frazer meets Candy, and she becomes his girlfriend and the key character in the second half of the book. They have a lot of sex, and travel around to Port Moresby, Brisbane and Melbourne. Candy shares her girlfriend with Frazer. It's clear to the reader that Candy is a rare find. Not only a beautiful, intelligent sex-fiend, but also wealthy, and incredibly - possessed of an unending love and tolerance for a scruffy young poet with no prospects. Frazer however treats her badly. He repeatedly sleeps with her two sisters and cheats on her often.

It almost hurts to read this part. I wanted to reach into the book and brutally slap Frazer. He throws this extraordinary girl away, apparently believing instead in some libertarian code of rotten behaviour. Arguably, this relationship and the failings of the protagonist are the most important part of the story.

Following their split up Frazer returns to Townsville and then Brisbane. He becomes jaded. He hangs out with performance poets, sleeps around a little, but nothing seems fun anymore. Time goes by. It's not clear how old he is. Presumably many years have passed. The story ends as he falls into what he feels is a different kind of love. He meets a girl called Sunny and he implies he will treat her differently.

This was the best Australian novel I've read in a long time. There was a lot here I could relate to. I wanted to give this four and a half stars (but alack that's not possible in Goodreads). I have deducted points because I often found myself wanting more than the author was giving. I would have liked more description (in a couple of places the poetic description is amazing), and I would have liked just a little more consistency in detail (some years skip by, then we get pages devoted to just a day or two).

There's a lot of material here and I think the author could easily write further novels based on the same experiences. One novel might focus on Reuben, the second work on Candy (I'd like to see that anyway).

Amazing, crazy tale. Check it out. ...more

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Mar 28, 2018 María Domínguez rated it it was amazing

Scoundrel Days is an overpowering poetic read. I couldn´t drop it until I finished. An eye-kicking modern bildungsroman. I truly recommend it!

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Aug 30, 2017 Mal rated it it was amazing

I found this book at a bus stop in Melbourne and started reading and found myself utterly addicted. I was unable to stop reading, stealing glances at my desk at work between calls, reading late into the night, dreaming all the breakneck action and vivid characters. I've read it four times now and despite learning of the unique literary constraint in the author's note after my first reading I cannot explain what it is about this text that is so damn alluring. The work’s geography derives from the ...more

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Mar 27, 2017 Glenn Hunt rated it it was amazing

Cracker of a book.

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Apr 20, 2017 Melanie rated it it was amazing

wasn't expecting to like this as much as I did. not my normal type of book. the book is pretty fast paced and the end made me want to read more. ...more

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Mar 30, 2017 Erin Brown rated it it was amazing

What a great book!! Had me hooked to see how his life turned out! :)

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Mar 28, 2017 Kaeli Etheridge rated it it was amazing

Just like Hemingway's lean and athletic prose, Frazer's story tells a fast and furious tale. Impossible to put down, I loved every second like I lived it myself. ...more

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Jul 21, 2018 James Vendi rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: 16+, fans of bohemian literature/lifestyles

Recommended to James by: Library loan

I haven't felt moved to review a book here on Goodreads until now. I consider myself a bibliophile and occasionally I'll rave to a friend or sympathetic ear, but for this book I had to write something because more readers need to give this book a closer look. Scoundrel Days is an account of twenty years in the life of its anti-hero, Brentley, who shares his name with the author (all other names in the book have been changed). It begins in childhood, when the protagonist is five or six years old, I haven't felt moved to review a book here on Goodreads until now. I consider myself a bibliophile and occasionally I'll rave to a friend or sympathetic ear, but for this book I had to write something because more readers need to give this book a closer look. Scoundrel Days is an account of twenty years in the life of its anti-hero, Brentley, who shares his name with the author (all other names in the book have been changed). It begins in childhood, when the protagonist is five or six years old, and concludes when he is in his mid-twenties or perhaps a little older. As the title indicates, Scoundrel Days has a strong focus upon the illicit, the rebellious, the oppositional strategies boys, adolescents and young men are likely to embrace as they grow up. There is a lot of violence, a lot of sex; nicotine, alcohol and other drugs are a constant pre-occupation from very early on in the story. And yet they are not really what the book is about. Rather, this is a tale about a man’s journey to himself, as an artist, a lover, and a human. Scoundrel Days belongs in the tradition of bohemian writing that, in the West, goes back as far as Baudelaire and probably to the narrator’s beloved Byron too; perhaps also to some of the more rapscallion of the Elizabethan chroniclers; but its more immediate predecessors are the prose excursions of the Beats in the 1950s: Kerouac, Burroughs and the like. Currently the misogyny of the Beat writers in under the microscope, but, despite the constant eddy of fleeting sexual encounters with women the author of this book clearly loves females, perhaps too much, as in my opinion, the author seems to define his self-worth via these encounters. When the women are gone he is lost and spiritually destitute. This book is in the tradition that explores the dark side of life and it often takes wilful degradation as its subject matter, but it is still, nevertheless, one in which the writer uses the experiences gained from living on the edge as a means of what might be called soul-making. In other words the writing is at the service of the making of a self and acknowledges that we must, whatever else we may do, in some sense all follow this path into the self, via whatever means necessary. Like Rimbaud, the poet becomes a seer when all the senses are deranged and language itself falls apart. Which brings my review to the technical aspects of this work of literature. I was stunned when I read the book as the prose is unbelievably precise and vivid, and when I reached the author's note and discovered that he had performed this deliberately by using 'English Prime'. I googled it and discovered that Scoundrel Days is the first book length creative work in the history of the English Language written without any tenses of the verb to be. This is some serious Joycean shit, people. Not only is it an incredible book, it innovates the English language. Five stars, and kudos to you, Mr Frazer. ...more

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Apr 11, 2018 Kim_S rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Readers of contemporary classics

Recommended to Kim_S by: Australian Book Review

* NOTE: I updated my earlier review after a fifth read* I read very favourable criticism on Scoundrel Days in the Australian Book Review and twice in The Australian newspaper when it came out over a year ago now. It's not often good reviews turn me off but when the critics compare a new writer on the scene with some of the books I love and cherish I'm instantly sceptical. I then came across it in my local library so I borrowed it, read it twice in three days and ordered my own copy. I have read ...more

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Dec 13, 2018 Deb rated it it was ok

Shelves: australian, memoir-biography

Thought I'd love this one and I enjoyed it at first.

However, the bulk of the book is just a litany of the times and ways Frazer broke the law and abused drugs, women and friendships. It soon becomes tedious.

It feels that the author is desperate to be seen as like his heroes Byron and Kerouac, but is the only one who believes in his own legend. If this is supposed to be a coming of age book, I never felt that he had emerged at the end a new person. At one stage in the book one of his companions a ...more

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May 14, 2017 Johanna Ggg rated it liked it

It was very readable in that I kept turning the pages and there was some really well written parts, but the blurb on the back led me to believe it was about his experience in a cult and as a poet as well as his life of drugs, alcohol and sex. Yet it was the drugs, alcohol and sex that featured and I really would have preferred more on his development as a poet and also his experience in the cult. It seemed to focus on some of the worst parts of his character without too much justification and wi ...more

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Jul 10, 2020 Joel rated it it was amazing

I enjoyed reading this memoir in e-prime, a very tricky thing to pull off in a genre so much about passing off statements on the essence of things and people past as facts. The feeling after - of fleeting and direct observations at a breakneck pace - without ever judging, how much attributes to the e-prime and how much to other factors? Looking forward to reading the author’s research paper ’Beyond IS…Creative writing with English Prime’.

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May 08, 2017 Tina rated it really liked it

Wasn't entirely what I expected. I'd thought there'd be more about the cult. Still engaging though. Story of a misspent youth, with Qld and Melbourne locations. ...more

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Dec 09, 2021 Rueben rated it it was ok

1.5

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Mar 24, 2017 Carla Roebuck rated it it was amazing

I really enjoyed this coming of age tale - raw, poetic, shocking and at times even funny. There is so much to love about this book. I didn't want to put it down. Highly recommend! ...more

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Dec 17, 2018

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Mar 28, 2018

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Jan 03, 2019

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About Brentley Frazer

Brentley Frazer

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⌘ Described by the critics as a 21st century Baudelaire on acid, a literary hoon, a philosophical hobo, a delinquent genius, a legendary protagonist, a Holden Caulfield for punks and an enigmatic self-styled outsider, Dr Brentley Frazer is an Australian writer from the wrong side of the tracks.