Frederic Prokosch

by Radcliffe Squires

Frederic Prokosch’s first novel, "The Asiatics," published in 1935, brought him a sudden fame which diminished almost as suddenly ten years later. Looking now at the achievement of almost thirty years – twelve novels and three collections of poetry – one asks if the early admiration was ill founded; or, if the present neglect is merited; or, if certain critics are now wise, who were foolish earlier in the century. The truth is simple. Frederic Prokosch’s novels are casualties of World War II. The daring spiritual search which characterized literature in the second and third decades of the twentieth century became irrelevant in 1945 to a generation that was looking primarily for a secure foothold in a corporation or in suburbia. As an accompaniment to this generation, a literature of querulous adjustments and maladjustments to society arose, along with a somewhat timid, formalistic criticism. Such criticism did not so much attack Prokosch’s work as ignore it. Outside of the perfunctory treatments in reference books and two rather short articles about Prokosch, virtually all the criticism of Prokosch’s work consists of reviews. Reviewers have tended to ignore theme and meaning in Prokosch’s novels, with the result that his emotional intensity has seemed unanchored and his characters grotesque. The author suspects that the fluid beauty of Prokosch’s descriptions, which, by calling attention to themselves, distract the reader from the meaning, has encouraged this unbalanced approach. Yet no critic has a right to admire beauty without working hard to find out what generates it. For there is no such thing as a style that creates itself. A style is produced by a dynamo, by some simple but powerful arrangement of forces within the artistic personality, by the flow of passion, the cerebral checks and balances.

158 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1964