Waldo Frank's City Block
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In 1922, fearful of the latest wave of Puritan-style censorship, Waldo Frank published City Block under his own name in an edition limited to 1,250 copies. The book was actually published by Boni and Liveright but, in order to spare his publishers and not unreluctant to face censorious critics in court, Frank retained the copyright and responsibility for whatever charges might be leveled against the novel. The book was not attacked. Yet Frank waited until the latest wave of Puritanism subsided and the book was not published in a regular trade edition until 1929 (Carter 23). Most books whose treatments of sexuality earned the censors' attention in the past seem quite tame now. There are, after all, few subjects left that most popular fiction writers will not tackle. Frank's book, however, still has the power to disturb its readers. Unfortunately those readers are rare since the book has been unavailable for many years. The novel, which is actually a series of linked stories, is a work that inevitably takes its reader back in time. Aside from its fascinating historical details of life in New York City, the novel provides an introduction to Frank himself and, indirectly, the milieu of the artists, thinkers and activists who shaped the art and ideas of this century. City Block is a book of its time and, as such, it offers a glimpse at the kinds of fiction writing and the intellectual currents that were considered to be most up to date or even ahead of their time. F
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er--journalism, cultural criticism, drama, and literary criticism. Though he achieved some level of success at the time, his works are seldom read now. Edmund Wilson, who respected Frank as a critic, said of Frank's style that it was a combination of James Joyce and the Old Testament prophets;
At his best, he touches tragedy and, at his worst, embraces melodrama. He possesses a real poetic sensibility and . . . his vision is different from that of any one else; but, in his novels, where we hope to see him stage a drama, he is usually content to invoke an apocalypse (Wilson 232).
City Block does justify some of Wilson's criticism--the drama that the reader hopes for is not centered on the struggles of an individual, as in most novels. This is primarily the result of Frank's unusual form--the short stories that describe the lives of New York residents of a single block. What is lacking is the length of form in which larger lives could be created and the absence of this space for character development may deceive the reader into thinking there is no drama here. But what Frank accomplishes is sufficiently dramatic as the life of this single block is given an organic unity that makes its existence the center of the drama. Fra
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Approximate Word count = 2315
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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