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Frog Pond
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412 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1961
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October 1, 2021The author writes: 'This book is a fragment of an autobiography, or a piece (a seven-year piece) of my life. The events in so far as they concern the narrator are true. But while truth is stranger than fiction it sometimes requires the needle of fiction to pull it together for a book. That is where the other people come in. These characters are composite pictures made from the elemental parts of many real people. No one character was or is an actual living person.'
From the back of a different edition: 'By the very nature of this book, the name of the author of The Frog Pond must be a pen name, and so we are permitted to talk about Joyce MacIver with somewhat less inhibition that might ordinarily obtain. Joyce had a problem, but the fact that it was a terrifying problem does not make it necessarily unique. Her problem was not men, but a certain type of aggressive man in whose presence she became numb, hypnotized as it were, a victim devoid of will, powerless to act in her own self-interest or even self-preservation. In the simplest and most scarifying terms,
one might almost say that she was looking for a man to murder her.
This is a shocking thing to say, but the record is there for all who care to read. But The Frog Pond is not only Joyce MacIver's story. It is also the story of Toni, "the pixie from Brooklyn," the changeling of Analytical Alley, and of the beautiful exhibitionist Daphne, who shared her duplex apartment in New York. Together, the three young women also shared their hopes and their blues, their man-hunts, their sessions of analysis, their experiences with frigidity and the other side of the coin. Can one speak of a modern, spine-chilling adventure of the psyche? This is it, and it begins the moment that Joyce decides to seek help to conquer her terrible compulsion. It continues through doctor after doctor in a series of startling episodes so fascinating in themselves that it is not until later the reader realizes he has experienced an astonishing and devastating exposé of certain varieties of psychoanalytic practice. The escapades, the parties, the encounters, the loves and frustrations of the three women are told with amazing candor, humor and skill as they, their lovers, their doctors, their friends and their enemies emerge and make themselves known to us.'
From the back of a different edition: 'By the very nature of this book, the name of the author of The Frog Pond must be a pen name, and so we are permitted to talk about Joyce MacIver with somewhat less inhibition that might ordinarily obtain. Joyce had a problem, but the fact that it was a terrifying problem does not make it necessarily unique. Her problem was not men, but a certain type of aggressive man in whose presence she became numb, hypnotized as it were, a victim devoid of will, powerless to act in her own self-interest or even self-preservation. In the simplest and most scarifying terms,
one might almost say that she was looking for a man to murder her.
This is a shocking thing to say, but the record is there for all who care to read. But The Frog Pond is not only Joyce MacIver's story. It is also the story of Toni, "the pixie from Brooklyn," the changeling of Analytical Alley, and of the beautiful exhibitionist Daphne, who shared her duplex apartment in New York. Together, the three young women also shared their hopes and their blues, their man-hunts, their sessions of analysis, their experiences with frigidity and the other side of the coin. Can one speak of a modern, spine-chilling adventure of the psyche? This is it, and it begins the moment that Joyce decides to seek help to conquer her terrible compulsion. It continues through doctor after doctor in a series of startling episodes so fascinating in themselves that it is not until later the reader realizes he has experienced an astonishing and devastating exposé of certain varieties of psychoanalytic practice. The escapades, the parties, the encounters, the loves and frustrations of the three women are told with amazing candor, humor and skill as they, their lovers, their doctors, their friends and their enemies emerge and make themselves known to us.'
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