Word: pritchett
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Chameleon. Britain's best contemporary critic, V. S. Pritchett, who likes more delicately flavored cups of tea than the ones Joyce Cary pours, nevertheless admits Gary's sturdy authenticity. Pritchett calls him "the chameleon among contemporary novelists. Put him down in any environment or any class, rich, middling or poor, English, Irish or foreign, and he changes color and becomes whatever his subject is, from an English cook to an African delinquent, from a ten-year-old Irish hoyden to an English army wife or an evangelical lawyer. The assimilation is quick, delectable, sometimes profound. Many novelists have...
...rascally painter, an immoral man of character. Jimson is the only one who has ever been a real match for Sara: at times, in his roaring picaresque progress downhill, he seems an even bigger figure. The really last word, however, is an echo of Sara-as Pritchett calls her, this "genial, boozing, humbugging and thieving old tart, lost in the raucous mythology of her memories and affections...
...Author Pritchett's new novel, Mr. Beluncle, is in his best short-story grain. He has a mischievous eye for suburban pomposity, he invents delightfully loony characters, he writes with crisp wit. The opening 50 pages weave a fine picture of "mind-sharpening, heart-deadening warfare" between a middle-aged husband and wife. But then something goes wrong...
...stage is set, the characters in motion-but nothing much happens. Author Pritchett fails to cap his story with any recognizable climax, and it slowly sputters out. In final impression, it is more an album of sketches than an integrated novel...
...Pritchett started Mr. Beluncle more than ten years ago, set it aside for lack of wartime leisure, finished it only last year. Now that it is out of the way, he has a new book of criticism and another novel coming up. He hopes the novel can be done much faster than Mr. Beluncle, for "it's bad for a book to lie around so long." Critic Pritchett is right, as usual...