Prose
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Prose reveals an ambitious writer's determination
CARL ROLLYSON, Special to the Star Tribune
Who could have imagined, at this late date, that Anne Frank, the most famous victim of the Holocaust, should require yet another full-scale treatment? After so many documentaries and biographies, after Broadway and Hollywood have done so much to make her the cynosure of the Nazi genocide, what more is there to say?
There seem to be two issues raised:
- Maybe, hidden information/interpretation has escaped the potential over-exposure of Anne Frank’s life story.
- The information/interpretation may not even be relevant/necessary at this point.
The first question really asks if we have completely exhausted the life of Anne Frank. The second question asks if there is really anything else to say. This is interesting to start with these kind of questions because I will want to continue reading to find the answer and see if I agree.
I feel like there are 2 questions being raised. Does she need another full scale treatment. The other one is that is there really more to say about her life?
The questions are asking if there is new information to be found on a topic that has been covered extensively.
This paragraph keeps the reviewer’s opinion as a mystery. The reviewer does not reveal if he likes the book or not; however, his 2 questions establish that there has been plenty of works on Anne Frank’s life already. The major issue that these questions raise is that this topic/subject has been extensively covered. We will have to wait and keep reading the review to find out if this Prose has a different approach to Frank’s life, or if this book is more of the same.
The second issue is obviously a little more complex, but just as valid. It can be a good thing that there is such a recognizable symbol for the horrors of the holocaust- but it’s far too easy for the symbol to cease being a human in the eyes of the public. Developing a more complete understanding of Anne is a good objective to have- helping others understand the girl behind the symbol.
We know Anne Frank, the young girl who kept a diary, but we do not know the emerging woman who became a mature writer. When Otto Frank first read his daughter's diary the day after returning to the shop where the Gestapo found his hidden family and learned that Anne had perished in Auschwitz, he remarked that the book revealed someone he had never really known. He may have meant only that he was now privy to her private thoughts. But to Francine Prose, what Otto discovered was a writer.
I feel like the last sentence is most important. It reveals how Otto now feels about his daughter.
the first sentence is the most important sentence of the paragraph, It gives the article a brief overview in twenty four words. Transforming from Anne Frank the girl killed in the Holocaust to Anne Frank the young writer who kept a journal of her experiences and how she not only lived through the war but how it elevated her mindset from a young confused child to a strong well aware young woman.
It serves to set up the rest of the paragraph, and therefore, the premise of the review. The succeeding content begins to “prove” that Frank is the “mature write” we should come to know her as.
the first sentence explains why it is still relevant to write about Anne Frank—more specifically, why Prose’s view of the subject as a writer is relevant. It answers the previous questions. This sentence introduces Frank as a writer and not only as the “most famous victim of the holocaust.”
Anne Frank the artist has been strangely absent from most accounts of her terrible but inspiring ordeal, Prose notes in her book, "Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife." The enormity of the historical event that overwhelmed the Franks and millions of others also served to sequester Anne Frank the stylist, who began to rewrite and polish her diary the day she heard a minister in the Dutch government in exile broadcast from London a call to his fellow citizens to preserve records of their wartime suffering.
Frank essentially used the situation as inspiration to write and give voice to her experience. She had a voice which trumped her as a victim.
The reviewers view changed praising Anne as more of a writer. This is actually the first time I have seen this view of her besides being a victim.
Prose’s focus on Anne Frank changed the reviewer’s view on the subject. Now he is also able to see her as a writer, and not only as a victim of the holocaust.
Part history, part biography, part literary analysis, Prose's book is a stunning achievement, demonstrating how a precocious Anne Frank meticulously edited and augmented a diary that she conceived of as a work of art. Prose shows how hard Anne worked to foster the seeming artlessness of her diary as the spontaneous overflow of her feelings.
After Prose, it will be impossible to ever read Anne Frank's diary again as an unmediated historical document. But to say that Anne made herself into a character, a narrator as rueful, sarcastic, high-spirited and ambitious as any encountered in the annals of fiction is to take nothing away from her work's veracity. For Anne, at 13, with only two more years to live, had already decided on a career as a writer and was honing all of her considerable talent to make her diary more like herself, not less. Now she stands before us, still that girl, a victim of the Holocaust, but now also a figure who will live not only in history but also in the literature she aspired to create.
it means that the historical document has not been edited and transformed by other people. It comes from a direct source (in this case Anne Frank)
General Document Comments 0
If one considers Anne Frank’s writings not simply as a well-written diary, but as a sculpted piece of writing, one starts to move away from a characterization imposed by dominate sexist and ageist ideals. It is easy for the dominate narrative to say, “Anne Frank was a young girl victimized by the Nazi regime and found solace in her personal diary.” It is more difficult for the dominate narrative to say, “Anne Frank was an independent artist and expressed her experiences through the medium of the written word.” The second statement challenges the notion that young girls are passive (and often placed in a victim role) and that one does not need to reach adulthood/receive a formal education to create art.
Switching the view of Anne Frank’s work to art changes her diary to something to be studied not only for historical purposes, but to be studied in all the ways art is studied, such as continued relevance, political statement, expressing the artist’s intention, effective use of medium, and on and on. Switching the view of Anne Frank also helps in switching the view of all young adult artists. Something I think Anne Frank would support.
Frank’s diary, whether written to be artistic or viewed by the general public as a piece of art, brings another dimension to something considered strictly factual and, in a sense, educational. The artistic element shows more of Anne the girl, not Anne the prisoner, Anne the victim, or Anne the Jew. Viewing her diary as a work of art is appropriate, I think, because an emotionally-ridden event like the Holocaust cannot properly be analyzed without a personal, human component.
The diary adds to the common perception of Anne as being a Holocaust victim who documented herself in a diary. As a work of the art, the diary documents a great deal of emotion and distress, often captured in works of art.
However, I think it’s beneficial to have some added nuance to who Anne was and how she arrived at her destination as a writer articulating the horrific scenario unfolding around her.
In Prose’s book, her diary is considered more than the mere testimony or historical document of the holocaust’s most famous victim. If her work is considered art, we might think that Anne actually wrote it as a writer, and not only as the young girl who just wanted to document her experience.
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