BOOKS
313
IMPERFECTLY TAMED
FROST: A LITERARY LIFE RECONSIDERED. By William H. Pritchard.
Oxford University Press. $15.95.
Those who love the poetry of Robert Frost have been
chafing for years at the hostile tendentiousness of Lawrance Thomp–
son's three-volume biography, completed after Thompson's death by
his student R. H. Winnick. This massive and disproportionately in–
fluential work (hereinafter called The Biography) stands squarely in
the way of a complete understanding of Frost - all the more confus–
ingly because it contains quantities of information straight from the
poet's mouth, information turned in the hand of The Biographer,
like an unfamiliar tool, to prosy misapprehension. The Biographer,
for reasons I think more his fault than Frost's, gave his best shot to
damping down Frost's life with obtuse and categorical moral disap–
proval. Moreover, if ever a prose work acted as the enemy of poetry,
this was it. Frost, of course, chose The Biographer himself, but no
good deed goes unpunished, and Frost may never recover from its
uncalled-for revenge.
(The lovely shall be choosers, shall they?IThen let
them choose!)
William H. Pritchard, in a book-length essay, has to some con–
siderable degree redressed the balance. Pritchard has helped to heal
the relation between Frost's poetry and his experience. The three most
discerning books on Frost have all been written by Amherst men:
Reuben Brower, Richard Poirier, and now William H. Pritchard.
In the Amherst manner, Pritchard reads Frost extremely well, but
he respects the art of poetry more than the art of biography and
therefore modestly avoids the challenge to become the New Biogra–
pher. He deliberately chooses for his book the subscript, "reconsider–
ation," a reconsideration of Frost's life, of The Biography, and of a
"literary life" (whatever those words may connote) all at once. In
counterbalance to The Biography, Pritchard's essay does more to re–
consider the literary output of Frost's life than to reconsider the
events of the life itself. He has worked to reread rather than to re–
explore. A new biography of Frost will probably have to await the
demise of a generation of "friends of Marse Robert," as Allen Tate
once wickedly called them, friends who prefer contracting to defend
Frost than expanding to comprehend him. Frost chose these friends
too, saying he wanted to be understood, but to be understood
wrong.
