Volume 32, Number 7 · April 25, 1985
Green Giant
By Richard Poirier
Frost: A Literary Life Reconsidered
by William H. Pritchard
Oxford University Press, 286 pp., $15.95
William Pritchard's 'literary life' of Robert Frost is a persuasive antidote to Lawrance Thompson's official biography, which reached its demolishing conclusion in 1976 with its third and final volume. Its portrait of the poet inspired one reviewer to conclude that he was 'a monster'; another that he was 'a mean-spirited megalomaniac'; still another that 'a more hateful human being cannot have lived.' Whatever its other qualities, Thompson's biography obviously had its culturally cathartic uses. It released long-suppressed irritation at someone whose image of folksy nobility had become overexposed on the literary scene, and whose poetry remained stubbornly challenging to the current academic taste for literary modernism, as represented by Eliot and Pound.
Review, 4538 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |