Anne Frank - the book, the life, the aftermath

A new book is due to be published which aims to discuss Anne's diary as a literary text rather than a historical document. It is written by Francine Prose.

It looks really interesting.

http://browseinside.harpercollins.com/inde...mc_id=pub_wm_av

I pre-ordered it from Amazon a month ago, and should have it tomorrow. It's also supposed to be available in most bookstores, at least here in the U.S., by October 1st.

You can read the first chapter at the Wall Street Journal's website;
here is the link to the excerpt.

IŽll buy it to Thank you for sharing this, I didnt knew the book already!

The amazon-co.uk link for it

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Anne-Frank-Book-Li...17&sr=8-2-fkmr1

It seems to be very interesting. How to know if it will be published in italian?
If not, I could buy it in english..I hope to understand something!

Have anyone already get it?

I've finished it; it was definitely worth the read. Prose does the Diary a great service by recognizing and analyzing it as a well-crafted piece of literature, not just as a document of historical importance.

I've just finished this book and I'm not sure what to make of it. It's not an easy book - quite a few words I had to look up. But, ultimately, I'm not sure what to make of it; I'm not sure why it was written.

It seems to suggest that the Diary is a work of art rather than merely an historical document. Anyone who's read it would find that self-evident.

It also mentions a couple of times that few people know there are several versions of the Diary yet much of what is written won't make much sense to anyone who isn't fairly intimate with the a, b and c versions.

The author talks a lot of 'Universality' and takes it to mean 'American'. Her book suffers from the same problem; it's an American book for an American audience. The Roosevelt introduction she mentions doesn't appear in UK editions of the book, and never has, as far as I can tell (I have copies of the British edition going back to the mid-50s) and there is no documentary on the UK edition of the Stevens' film DVD.

I think I'll have to re-read it to get a more rounded view.

You'd be surprised...

Most of the people I've spoken with about the Diary really don't understand how well-crafted the Diary is, probably because when it's taught in school teachers seem to completely skip over any commentary on Anne's diary as serious literature and focus mainly on using the Diary to teach kids broad, affirmative lessons about war and society. Which (I feel) does a huge disservice to Anne as a writer.

I don't think Prose's book is specifically intended for Americans. Any evaluation of how the world views Anne Frank is incomplete without addressing the Americanization (and
de-Judaization) of her story, as the cultural depictions of her here in the U.S. -- especially the Goodrich-Hackett adaptations -- have molded the way millions of people think of Anne Frank and her diary. It's impossible to imagine the Anne Frank in most of these retellings being capable of the sort of deep insight and intelligence found in the Diary itself. So people don't automatically associate Anne and her work with literary genius, as they should.

That being said, I thought that this was mainly going to be a literary analysis of the Diary; I wish Prose had spent more time on that instead of devoting so much space to tangential issues.

I doubt it is. It is, however, an American book. The cultural references to the Diary and DVD probably only make sense to US readers, as other countries have their own editions. Perhaps later prints will have have a British edition?

BTW, have you read a British English edition of the Diary? Some of the language use is interesting and I always wonder which is more true to the Dutch original.

You'd be surprised...

Most of the people I've spoken with about the Diary really don't understand how well-crafted the Diary is, probably because when it's taught in school teachers seem to completely skip over any commentary on Anne's diary as serious literature and focus mainly on using the Diary to teach kids broad, affirmative lessons about war and society. Which (I feel) does a huge disservice to Anne as a writer.

I don't think Prose's book is specifically intended for Americans. Any evaluation of how the world views Anne Frank is incomplete without addressing the Americanization (and
de-Judaization) of her story, as the cultural depictions of her here in the U.S. -- especially the Goodrich-Hackett adaptations -- have molded the way millions of people think of Anne Frank and her diary. It's impossible to imagine the Anne Frank in most of these retellings being capable of the sort of deep insight and intelligence found in the Diary itself. So people don't automatically associate Anne and her work with literary genius, as they should.

That being said, I thought that this was mainly going to be a literary analysis of the Diary; I wish Prose had spent more time on that instead of devoting so much space to tangential issues.

I haven't read the book yet, although I am hoping to get it for Christmas
I do think it is great though that someone is finally addressing the issue of the different versions of the diary and Anne's talent as a writer.

Living in the UK, I don't think there is as much education surrounding Anne's diary as there is in America. I certainly don't remember it being taught to me around 5-10 years ago when I was in secondary school. However, when it is taught (and this goes for America too) it is always within the context of the Holocaust and the Second World War. The 'diary of a young girl' seems to be told as if that was Anne's origional daily writings rather than a biography or memoirs. I find it somewhat surprising that all the pictures we see of 'the diary' are of her first checkered notebook, when in reality only about 10% of that notebook is contained in the published version. I also find it sad that hardly anyone seems to understand about the different versions of the diary even though it is explained in the preface of the book - at least in the UK definitive editions and some even forget about the psudonyms.
It would be good if Prose's book could be used in schools to clear up these issues, but I doubt it will.

As I haven't read Prose's book yet, I can't really comment on the remarks made on the documentary and diary introduction and its clarity for a worldwide audience. But I do think America is a country which has taken Anne Frank deeply to heart (there have been more books and films made about her in America then there have been in Dutch I think) and so there will be more US sources to refer to than British ones and it may be more likely that Americans will be the ones to read this book.

The differences between the American and British translations of the diary are interesting.
In the US version of the diary (published around 1993), the rewritten passage of 20th June 1942 is written as:
"... it seems to me that neither I - nor for that matter anyone else- will be interested in the unbosomings of a thirteen year old schoolgirl."

Whereas in the UK version (published around 1997) it is written as:
"...it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen year old schoolgirl.'

I have a feeling that the US version is a more literal translation (this also appears as the translated rewritten text of version b in the Critical Edition) and the UK version has been reworded slightly to make it flow better.
However "unbosomings" to me sounds a really strange word and apart from here, I have never heard it before. "musings" sounds much better.

What is the Dutch version of that passage? I wonder what the word was which was subtituted for "unbosomings" and "musings"?

I have just looked up the word "unbosoming" on an online dictionary and it came up with this:

It looks like the word "unbosom" is related to the Dutch "ontboezemen" and so I think this may be the more literal translation. I couldn't find the Dutch word for "musing" in my English/Dutch dictionary.

The Dutch is "... maar het komt me zo voor dat later ik, noch iemand anders, in de ontboezemingen van een dertienjarig schoolmeisje belang zal stellen." (... but it seems to me so that later neither I, nor anyone else, will be interested in the outpourings of a thirteen year old school-girl.) 'Ontboezemingen' here seem to translate literally as 'outpourings'. It also seems more neutral than the 'official' translations I am not a Dutch scholar. Or an English one.