Editing Frederic Prokosch (section)

==Biography==
Prokosch was born in [[Madison, Wisconsin]], into an intellectual family that travelled widely. His father, [[Eduard Prokosch]], an [[Austria]]n immigrant, was Professor of Germanic Languages at [[Yale University]] at the time of his death in 1938,<ref>Editors (August 12, 1938) "Prokosch of Yale Is Killed in Crash", ''The New York Times'', p. 17.</ref> his sister [[Gertrude Prokosch Kurath]] was a dancer and a prominent [[ethnomusicologist]] and his brother Walther Prokosch was a distinguished architect. Prokosch graduated from [[Haverford College]] in 1925 and received a Ph.D. in English in 1932 from Yale University.  In his youth, he was an accomplished [[squash racquets]] player; he represented the [[Yale Club]] in the 1937 New York State squash racquets championship.<ref>Editors (January 16, 1937), "Adams Turns back Foulke in 5 games", ''The New York Times'', p. 23.</ref>  He won the squash-racquets championship of France in 1938.

During World War II, Prokosch was a cultural attaché at the American Legation in [[Sweden]].  He spent most of the remainder of his life in Europe, where he led a [[wiktionary:peripatetic|peripatetic]] existence.  His interests were sports ([[tennis]] and [[squash (sport)|squash]]),  [[lepidoptery]], and the printing of limited editions of poems that he admired.

From early on, Prokosch sought to surround himself with a veil of mystification and cast his life into a hopeless riddle.  Approaching his sixtieth year, he boasted that no person had succeeded in knowing him as an integral personality: "I have spent my life alone, utterly alone, and no biography of me could ever more than scratch the surface.  All the facts in Who’s Who, or whatever, are so utterly meaningless.  My real life (if I ever dared to write it!) has transpired in darkness, secrecy, fleeting contacts and incommunicable delights, any number of strange picaresque escapades and even crimes, and I don't think that any of my 'friends' have even the faintest notion of what I'm really like or have any idea of what my life has really consisted of. . . .With all the surface 'respectability,' diplomatic and scholarly and illustrious social contacts, my real life has been subversive, anarchic, vicious, lonely, and capricious."<ref>Frederic Prokosch, letter to [John] Radcliffe Squires, 17 June [1963], Special Collections, Washington University Libraries, St. Louis.  See also Greenfield, ''Dreamer’s Journey'', p. 17.</ref>

The publication of ''Voices: A Memoir'' in 1983, advertised as a record of his encounters with some of the century's leading artists and writers, returned Prokosch to the limelight.  His early novels ''The Asiatics'' and ''The Seven Who Fled'' were reissued to much public acclaim.  In 2010, ''Voices'' was shown to be almost wholly fictitious and part of an enormous hoax.{{clarify|date=December 2012}}<ref>Greenfield, ''Dreamer’s Journey'', "Disembodied Voices", pp. 376-390.</ref> Prokosch died in Le Plan-de-Grasse, an area of [[Grasse]], [[France]].