Book description
>Gibbon, Mrs. Gaskell, Dostoevsky, Fielding, Kilvert, Twain, Synge,
Swift, Browning, are some of the writers Mr. Pritchett discusses. Names
and dates are diverse, but nearly all have one common characteristic:
they demonstrate the axiom that past and present are often parallel in
most unexpected ways. Swift anticipated modern science and its
consequences nearly two hundred years ago. Thackeray drew a modern
Mayfair playboy when he created Rawdon Crawley. Huckleberry Finn is
blood relation to Charlie Chaplin.
These essays should appeal to scholars and the unlearned alike. Those
who have neglected their classics will make discoveries which they can
follow up with the aid of the appendix. The well-read cannot fail to be
stimulated by the learning, vitality and originality which make up the
texture of Mr. Pritchett s mind. His pages are peppered with
controversial statements; epigrams abound; digressions widen the range
and personal opinions focus it; but critical virtuosity is always
subordinated to the central problem, and always throws new light on it.
> >Gibbon, Mrs. Gaskell, Dostoevsky, Fielding, Kilvert, Twain,
Synge, Swift, Browning, are some of the writers Mr. Pritchett discusses.
Names and dates are diverse, but nearly all have one common
characteristic: they demonstrate the axiom that past and present are
often parallel in most unexpected ways. Swift anticipated modern science
and its consequences nearly two hundred years ago. Thackeray drew a
modern Mayfair playboy when he created Rawdon Crawley. Huckleberry Finn
is blood relation to Charlie Chaplin.
These essays should appeal to scholars and the unlearned alike. Those
who have neglected their classics will make discoveries which they can
follow up with the aid of the appendix. The well-read cannot fail to be
stimulated by the learning, vitality and originality which make up the
texture of Mr. Pritchett s mind. His pages are peppered with
controversial statements; epigrams abound; digressions widen the range
and personal opinions focus it; but critical virtuosity is always
subordinated to the central problem, and always throws new light on it.
>
