Complete Collected Essays

Rating:
Summary: A readers bible
Review: If you've read a lot of criticism and not liked much of it because its so overloaded with literary jargon and fadishness well Pritchett is your man. He began writing literary criticism for a WWII publication which required his essays be short and concise and to the point and he retained those virtues throughout his essay writing career which was long as he lived to be very near 100 years old. He is a man who does not read just one book and then sit down to review it, rather he reads and reads and reads many times an authors entire output plus bios and other essential peripheral data before coming to his review which nevertheless remains an insightful few pages. He will reaquaint you with the known greats and point you toward the great lights of overlooked national literatures. His essays tuned me onto the great Portugese novelist Eca De Queiros, the Austrian Robert Musil, as well he has shed his very clear and well lit lamp on already known favorites like Dostoyevsky and Turgenev and Balzac and Stendhal. He has the readers passion and so knows how to talk to readers who want to spend their life reading good books and have no time to waste on criticism except as a useful guide to the next good book. Pritchett has no agenda, just a great gift for understanding and responding to what is best in each author and each work he comes across. You will after reading him trust him. He is the one companion you will trust. There are other good critics like Edmund Wilson for one, but none who have read as much and have written about virtually every important novelist of the 18th and 19th centuries and most of the 20th century greats as well. A readers bible.