Frederic Prokosch

Frederic Prokosch (May 17 1906 – June 6 1989) was an American writer, known for his novels, poetry, memoirs and criticism. He was also a distinguished translator.

His novels The Asiatics and The Seven Who Fled were bestsellers in the 1930s. The drama in both these unusual novels takes place in Asia, a continent Prokosch had not visited but wrote about from his imagination. Landscape descriptions are prevalent in the novels, such that the landscape takes on the role of a character in its own right. Albert Camus said about The Asiatics, "Prokosch has invented what might be called the geographical novel, in which he mingles sensuality with irony, lucidity with mystery. He conveys a fatalistic sense of life half hidden beneath a rich animal energy. He is a master of moods and undertones, a virtuoso in the feeling of place, and he writes in a style of supple elegance."

New York Times critic L.H. Titterton wrote about The Asiatics:

"Whether such adventures ever happened to any one man, or whether, as seems far more likely, the author has supplemented certain experiences of his own by a rich imagination, using as its basis information gathered through wide reading, is immaterial. For this is actually a quiet, meditative book into which adventurous episodes have been introduced simply as a device for displaing various aspects of the Asiatic mind and spirit. It is the work of a man of a deeply poetic nature possessed of an astonishing ability to describe in a few words a color, a scene, an odor, an emotional situation, an attitude of mind, an idea; words so well chosen that passage after passage seems perfectly to express some truth that we have many times, in a stumbling way, attempted to state.

Writing in the New York Times, Harold Strauss said about The Seven Who Fled (which won the Harper Prize):

In singing, supple prose, with an evocative power strange to our earthbound ears, with passion and often with fury, Frederic Prokosch takes us off to the vast, mysterious reaches of Central Asia. It is a weird adventure of the spirit on which he leads us. For, mistake not, despite the apparently realistic description of the endless reaches of the desert, of the topless towers of the snow-capped mountains, of the huddling villages in which men rot away in poverty and disease, this Central Asia of Prokosch's is not actual place upon the face of the earth. Like Xanadu, like Arcadia, like Atlantis or Aea or Poictesme, it is a phantom manufactured by a restless mind. ...Whatever the meaning of this book, and there will be much debate on that score, its wild lyrinative splendor and its profound emotional content mark it as a memorable novel.

After the 1930s, popular interest in Prokosch's writing dropped away, but he gained higher status critically, with André Gide and other French writers, and Gore Vidal, among his champions.

Biography

Prokosch was born in Madison, Wisconsin, into an intellectual family that travelled widely. His father, Eduard Prokosch, an Austrian immigrant, was Professor of Germanic Languages at Yale University at the time of his death in 1938. The son was precociously bright, finishing his first degree at age 18. He was educated at Haverford College, Yale University, and King's College, Cambridge. In his youth, he was an accomplished racquetball player; he represented Yale in the 1937 New York State squash racquets championship.

During World War II, Prokosch was cultural attaché of the American Legation in Portugal and Sweden, and he remained in Europe after the war. He led a peripatetic life, mostly in Europe, meeting many of the literary figures of his time, some of whom appeared in his memoirs. His interests were sports (tennis and squash) and lepidoptery.

Prokosch was involved at least twice in forgeries for profit. In 1968 he arranged to sell his literary archives, including a set of his privately printed pamphlets ("butterfly books"). It later became clear that the pamphlets had been printed long after their alleged imprint dates and Prokosch, when presented with the evidence, admitted to the forgeries. Between 1968 and 1970, Prokosch also hired a Paris printer to falsely print additional titles. When questioned, Prokosch characterized it as a prank.

The publication of Voices: A Memoir in 1984, which described Prokosch's encounters with many of the leading literary figures of the 20th century, returned Prokosch to the limelight. His novels The Asiatics and The Seven Who Fled were reissued to much public acclaim.

Prokosch died in Le Plan-de-Grasse (near Grasse), France.

Works

• The Somnambulists (1933) poems
• The Asiatics (1935) novel
• The Assassins (1936) poems
• The Seven Who Fled (1937) novel
• The Carnival (1938) poems
• Night of the Poor (1938) novel
• Death at Sea (1940) poems
• Sunburned Ulysses (1941) poems
• The Skies of Europe (1941) novel
• The Conspirators (1943) novel (made into a movie by the same name in 1944)
• Some poems of Friedrich Hoelderlin (1943) translator
• Chosen Poems (1945) poems
• The Age of Thunder (1945) novel
• Louise Labé, Love sonnets (1947) translator
• Storm and Echo (1948)
• Nine days to Mukalla (1953) novel
• A Tale of Midnight (1955) novel
• A Ballad of Love (1960) novel
• The Seven Sisters (1962) novel
• The Dark Dancer (1964) novel
• The Wreck of the Cassandra (1966) novel
• The Missolonghi Manuscript (1968) novel
• Voices: a Memoir (1984) memoir
• Several poems by Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost (1983) illustrator

Further reading

• Squires, Radcliffe (1964) Frederic Prokosch. New York: Twayne Publishers.
• Max, Peter (1969) Frederic Prokosch, ein Romantiker des 20. Jahrhunderts: Mit bes. Berücks. d. Romane "The Asiatics" u. "The Seven who fled". Winterthur: Schellenberg.
• Barker, Nicolas (1987) The Butterfly Books: an Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Twentieth Century Pamphlets. London: Bertram Rota.
• Vidal, Gore (2000) "The Collector", in The Last Empire (Essays 1952-2000). Vintage.

External links

• Frederic Prokosch and the Butterfly Books, an account of Prokosch's forgeries of his own work.
• Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, where a large collection of Prokosch's papers is held at the (at the University of Texas at Austin).