Word: pritchetts
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...Pritchett, veteran British critic and novelist, collaborated earlier with Photographer Hofer to create a splendid portrait of London. In their new book, they perfectly illustrate the fact that a city and its citizens have a distinct soul, as much as an individual man or a nation...
...Pritchett, who has written about Spain, Latin America and the U.S., relishes foreign lands, is at ease on many social levels, and has a keen ear for class. Though no Irishman will be found to admit it, all this qualifies Pritchett to be the best historian of Dublin since James Joyce-who was, of course, a Dubliner, though he scraped its mud off his boots at 22 and returned but twice in the rest of his life...
...Pritchett went to Dublin for the first time as a boy reporter during the civil war, and he is knowledgeable about the "Troubles." Even so, he has already been reproached by Irish critics of the book, on its appearance in England, for having misunderstood the city. This must have given Pritchett great pleasure, as it confirms one of his points about Dubliners: along with the celebrated wit, malice to all is one of their qualities. So is secrecy. Having asked the whereabouts of an old friend, he got this reply: "I have no treasonable information...
Slums & Monuments. In Ireland, the English tend to become more Irish than the Irish. The taxi driver who took Pritchett to his first hotel was full of "bedads" and "begobs," but turned out to be a cockney. Ironically, the great buildings of this attractive city were erected by the Anglo-Irish in their 18th century heyday; fortunately, they escaped disfiguration during the 19th century industrial revolution that blighted England's cities but bypassed Ireland, in part because of its disastrous famines, in part because of its own preoccupation with its more romantic national affairs. The Bank of Ireland (once...
...faces, facades and streetscapes that look from Evelyn Hofer's photographs haunt the mind as much as Pritchett's luminous text. So much so that the disputatious Irish may save themselves some anguish by not buying the book-as if, at $15, they would dream of such folly...