Editing Frederic Prokosch (section)

==Literary work==
Prokosch's novels ''The Asiatics'' and ''The Seven Who Fled'' received widespread attention in the 1930s. The action in both of these narratives takes place in Asia, a continent Prokosch had not visited but wrote about from his imagination and from books and maps. Landscape descriptions are so prevalent that the landscape often takes on the role of a character in its own right.  [[Albert Camus]] said about ''The Seven Who Fled'', "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."<ref>Greenfield, ''Dreamer’s Journey'', p. 42.  See also note 16, p. 409.</ref>

''[[The 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.<ref>Titterton, L. H. (October 27, 1935), "A Glowing Evocation of the Asian Way of Life", ''The New York Times'', p. BR3.</ref>

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 [[Shangdu#By Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1797)|Xanadu]], like [[Arcadia (utopia)|Arcadia]], like [[Atlantis]] or [[Aeaea|Aea]] [''sic''] 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.<ref>Strauss, Harold (August 29, 1937), "A Strange and Haunting Tale Set in Central Asia; Frederic Prokosch, in 'The Seven Who Fled,' Writes a Memorable Novel of Spiritual Adventure", ''The New York Times'', p. 81.</ref>

After the 1930s, popular interest in Prokosch's writing declined, but he continued to write steadily and to solidify his reputation as a writer’s writer with an elite following that included [[Thomas Mann]], [[André Gide]], [[Sinclair Lewis]], [[Albert Camus]], [[Thornton Wilder]], [[Dylan Thomas]], [[Anthony Burgess]], [[Raymond Queneau]], [[Somerset Maugham]], [[Lawrence Durrell]], [[Gore Vidal]], and [[T.S. Eliot]].  “Pondering about Prokosch and his fate, I have come to the conclusion,” wrote [[Isaac Bashevis Singer]], “that he is himself in a way at fault for being so woefully neglected.  He has not cared to husband his natural riches... His roots are in this land.  If Prokosch, like [[William Faulkner|Faulkner]], had limited his creative energies to one milieu, one region, he would certainly be counted today among the pillars of American literature.”<ref>Singer, Isaac Bashevis, "On the Courage to be Old-Fashioned," ''Book World'', January 14, 1968, p. 6. See also Greenfield, ''Dreamer's Journey'', p. 19.</ref>

Among the most noteworthy of Prokosch’s latter-day writings are ''The Idols of the Cave'' (1946), a sophisticated story about a circle of aesthetes and socialites in New York City through the war years; ''Nine Days to Mukalla'' (1953), a dreamlike journey into the Arabian world; ''A Tale for Midnight'' (1955), a Gothicized retelling of the Cenci story; ''The Wreck of the Cassandra'' (1966), a realistic and poetic story of nine people castaway on a savage island; ''The Missolonghi Manuscript'' (1968), a “meditation” on the romantic artist; and ''America, My Wilderness'' (1972), an excursion into magical realism. Prokosch was named a Commander in the [[Ordre des Arts et Lettres]] by the French government in 1984 and awarded the Volterra Prize two years later.  His novels have been translated into 15 languages.