Volume 38, Number 1 & 2 · January 17, 1991
Radicals
By Henry Gifford
Through the Russian Prism: Essays on Literature and Culture
by Joseph Frank
Princeton University Press, 237 pp., $9.95 (paper)
Joseph Frank writes that an interest in existentialism led him during the 1950s to make a close study of Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, and then to undertake his life's work, a biography of the Russian writer, of which three volumes have now appeared, with two to follow. The work is already established as a classic, not only for its strenuous erudition but also for the depth of insight it reveals into the relation of Dostoevsky to the social and cultural life of his age. Professor Frank's preface to the first volume claims that 'one way of defining Dostoevsky's genius is to locate it in his ability to fuse his private dilemmas with those raging in the society of which he was a part.' Hence the extensive and detailed reconstruction in his biography of that society and its intense intellectual activity. His new book, Through the Russian Prism, is a collection of twenty essays, most of them connected with his work on the biography.
Review, 2893 words
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