![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() I know, every biography is described as "magisterial," but this one really was: deeply researched and endlessly rich in its readings of Dostoevsky's life and work. Perhaps Frank's most influential argument was that modern literature was defined by "spatial form." Frank showed that modern novels like Ulysses and Nightwood regularly favor simultaneity over sequence, asking the reader to, as he puts it, "suspend the process of individual reference temporarily until the entire pattern of individual reference can be apprehended as a unity." In other words, to read the modern novel, you must read it like a poem-which is to say, you must re-read it (and then re-read it again).Frank is most well known, though, for writing his epic, five-volume biography of Dostoevsky. Joseph Frank, biographer of Dostoevsky and a brilliant literary critic, died on Wednesday. ![]()
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