Appreciating an artist who became an icon

Francine Prose's "Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife" is, in effect, a biography of the book. Reviewers, scholars and teachers have encouraged readers of "The Diary of Anne Frank" to approach the book in many ways -- as memoir, inspirational account, history, Holocaust narrative or, simply, a diary of a girl living in extraordinary times.

But Prose offers another way of reading "The Diary" -- she examines it as a literary work and looks at Anne Frank as an artist.

First, Prose reminds us of the facts of Anne's short life in Amsterdam. During World War II, when the Nazis were rounding up Jews, Otto Frank arranged for his wife and two daughters to go into hiding in rooms above his office. They lived in this "secret annex" with four other people for 25 months. Arrested by the Gestapo in 1944, they were sent to concentration camps. Anne, age 15, died at Bergen-Belsen. Otto was the only one of the Frank family to survive.

That Anne's diary also survived was a miracle. Miep Gies, a woman who had helped the families hide, found Anne's papers and saved them. After the war, she gave them to Otto Frank. He combined work from two manuscripts -- the original diary and Anne's revision -- to produce the text we know as "The Diary of Anne Frank."

First published in English in 1952, "The Diary of Anne Frank" has touched countless readers.

But Prose wants us to see the work as more than just a young girl's diary: "The fact remains that Anne Frank has only rarely been given her due as a writer." The diary "has rarely ever been viewed as a work of art."

Herself an accomplished author of fiction and nonfiction -- including the New York Times best seller "Reading Like a Writer" -- Prose makes a strong case for viewing Anne's writing as art, as work made with deliberate intention. Prose demonstrates how Anne's revision of her diary shows her growth as a literary artist who was learning to shape a story and write with elegance. Anne worked hard to assemble a whole and vivid picture of her difficult, but far from joyless, life. In losing her, Prose says, the world certainly lost a vivacious young girl -- representative of the millions killed in the Holocaust -- but also a gifted writer.

Over the years, "The Diary" has sparked controversy, and Prose discusses some of these quarrels at length. Early on, there was disagreement over who should write the film and play adaptations, and particularly over how the character of Anne should be portrayed. Many have complained that the Anne of stage and screen is simplified, too full of Pollyannaish optimism.

Yet in some ways, Prose contends, the universalizing of Anne -- the stripping away of her Jewishness and her victimhood, the emphasis on her girlish qualities -- is part of what has made her a cultural icon. The beloved character in the play and movie may have moved people to read a book they otherwise would never have read. Similarly, Prose says, because the book is seen as "just" the diary of a young girl, it is an approachable way for children and others to learn about World War II and the Holocaust.

Prose touches briefly on other interesting aspects of the Anne Frank story, including Holocaust deniers' claim that the diary is a hoax and cases of the book being banned in schools. She describes the Anne Frank house museum in Amsterdam and talks about its effect on visitors. For readers who want to know more about a particular aspect of Anne's life or writings, she provides a selected bibliography.

At the end of the book, Prose talks about teaching "The Diary" to college students. Their reactions remind us how Anne's brave, funny, intelligent voice speaks to individual readers with an immediacy that erases time. That voice, Prose says, is an accomplishment: "The fact that a girl could write such a book is itself a piece of information, as valuable as any of the improving moral principles that can be extracted from the words that a lonely child, imprisoned in an attic, confided to her imaginary friend."

Many of us remember a first youthful encounter with Anne Frank. Prose's Anne Frank may prompt you to reread a classic you think you've outgrown and celebrate a writer who was just beginning to bloom.

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