Frederic Prokosch

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Frederic Prokosch (May 17, 1908 – 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. 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.

He was born in Madison, Wisconsin, into an intellectual family that travelled widely, and was precociously bright, finishing his first degree at age 18. He was educated at Haverford College, Yale University and King's College, Cambridge. During World War II, Prokosch was cultural attaché of the American Legation in 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 (though, in light of Prokosch's admitted forgeries, it is conceivable that the extraordinary stories in his memoirs are partly fictional). 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.

He died in Le Plan-de-Grasse (3 km outside Grasse), France.

[edit] Selected 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 (1939) novel
  • Death at Sea (1940)
  • Sunburned Ulysses (1941) poems
  • Some poems of Friedrich Hoelderlin (1943) translator
  • Chosen Poems (1945)
  • The Age of Thunder (1945)
  • Louise Labé, Love sonnets (1947) translator
  • Storm and Echo (1948)
  • Nine days to Mukalla (1953)
  • The Missolonghi Manuscript (1968) novel
  • Voices: a Memoir (1983) autobiography
  • Several poems by Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost (1983) illustrator

[edit] References

  • Frederic Prokosch (1964) Radcliffe Squires
  • The Butterfly Books: an Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Twentieth Century Pamphlets (1987) Nicolas Barker, London: Bertram Rota.

[edit] External link

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../f/r/e/Frederic_Prokosch_34b8.html"