Word: prokosch
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...jacket blurbs of Frederic Prokosch's latest book proudly advertise the conversion of "one of our finest descriptive writers" into a man who for the first time makes his background subordinate to his action, wastes no time on externals, and turns out a story with a good, vigorous plot. There is no doubt that plot is a fine thing, but in A Tale for Midnight, the author has used it only as a device for holding strings of words together. He was probably more honest when, in earlier works like The Asiatics he made no excuse for his writing save...
...TALE FOR MIDNIGHT (354 pp.)-Frederic Prokosch-Little, Brown...
Rotter's Rotter. The Cenci story has fascinated writers for more than three centuries. Plays, poems, novels and histories have dealt with its dark and bloody theme, and still, as in Frederic Prokosch's new novel, A Tale for Midnight, it has a surefire appeal that does not suffer from retelling. Author Prokosch has a hankering for the exotic and the violent (Night of the Poor, The Seven Who Fled). In the Cenci tale, he has contented himself with sticking pretty close to the facts. But he has given them a rich setting of sounds and smells...
...Novelist Prokosch takes no sides, is almost astringent in telling the historic tale. His Beatrice is a cool customer, victimized by her father but with a calculating streak that makes her something less than lovable. Her affair with Olimpio is described not as a great love but as a product of tawdry circumstance that came in handy when she decided on murder. Most historical novelists would wallow in the Cenci story. Prokosch moves around it with the kind of detachment that makes it as believable as it is readable...
...Bowles has dropped several John O'Hara characters into a Prokosch setting and used them to establish the fact that the human race is going into a moral Sahara fast. It is difficult to picture these people going any other way, but at the same time it is unfair to use them to symbolize all of humanity...