Perhaps not uniquely, I was discouraged from reading V. S. Pritchett by nothing more than the old Penguin cover of his 1982 Collected Stories. It was simply a photograph of the author, wearing a suit, holding a pipe, with an expression of mild elderly benevolence. To callow youth, that was not what genius was supposed to look like, and I didn’t get round to him for years. Big mistake. Pritchett is a writer who delineates a unique world, and the vivid genius of his voice, encompassing so many other voices, seedy, lush, excitable, takes only a line or two to make itself felt.
August’s? On the Bath road? Twice-five August — of course a knew August: ivory man. And the woman who lived with him — her name was Price. She’s dead.
That is from ‘The Camberwell Beauty’, about rival antique dealers. Or this wonderful, confusing, immediate evocation of a London party circuit from ‘Did You Invite Me?’:
Rachel first met Gilbert at David and Sarah’s, or it may have been at Richard and Phoebe’s — she could not remember — but she did remember that he stood like a touchy exclamation mark and talked in a shotgun manner about his dog.
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