V. S. Pritchett, 1900–1997 | Jason Epstein | The New York Review of Books

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S. Pritchett, 1900–1997 | Jason Epstein | The New York Review of Books</title> <meta name="description" content="Edmund Wilson insisted that a gift for impersonation is the fiction writer's sine qua non as it is the actor's. V.S. Pritchett went a step" /> <link rel="canonical" href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/04/24/v-s-pritchett-19001997/" /> <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> <meta property="og:title" content="V. S. Pritchett, 1900–1997 | Jason Epstein" /> <meta property="og:description" content="Edmund Wilson insisted that a gift for impersonation is the fiction writer's sine qua non as it is the actor's. V.S. Pritchett went a step" /> <meta property="og:url" content="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/04/24/v-s-pritchett-19001997/" /> <meta property="og:site_name" content="The New York Review of Books" /> <meta property="article:publisher" content="https://www.facebook.com/nybooks" /> <meta property="article:modified_time" content="2020-08-27T20:49:55+00:00" /> <meta property="og:image" content="https://www.nybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/NYR-Logo-Social-1600px.png" /> <meta property="og:image:width" content="1200" /> <meta property="og:image:height" content="800" /> <meta property="og:image:type" content="image/png" /> <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image" /> <meta name="twitter:site" content="@nybooks" /> <script type="application/ld+json" class="yoast-schema-graph">{"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/04/24/v-s-pritchett-19001997/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/04/24/v-s-pritchett-19001997/"},"author":[{"@id":"https://www.nybooks.com/#/schema/person/image/7f101aa9b98757876a35b57e68b61f4b"}],"headline":"V. S. Pritchett, 1900–1997","datePublished":"1997-04-24T04:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2020-08-27T20:49:55+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/04/24/v-s-pritchett-19001997/"},"wordCount":421,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.nybooks.com/#organization"},"articleSection":["Fiction","Ideas","Literature"],"inLanguage":"en-US","articleBody":"Edmund Wilson insisted that a gift for impersonation is the fiction writer's sine qua non as it is the actor's. V.S. Pritchett went a step further:\"Throwing something of oneself away is a way of becoming, for the moment, other people, and I have always thought that unselfing oneself, speaking for others, justifying those who cannot speak, giving importance to the fact that they live, is especially the privilege of the storyteller and even the critic—who is also an artist.\" Like Wilson, V.S.P. was suspicious of general ideas: \"I have always been wary,\" he wrote, \"of what used to be called 'committal' to the social and political ideologies which numbers of my contemporaries preached…. The People dissolved as I saw real people living in conditions unlike my own but with passions like mine and as proud of something unique in them.\" He was blessed, in other words, with the power of self-effacement which Shakespeare possessed so enormously that he left hardly a trace of himself as a person. \"I…carry what Keats called the indispensable sense of 'negative capability' about with me,\" which is to say he encountered the objective world with awe. His genius was to convey this respectfulness to his readers in his literary essays (of which he contributed more than a hundred to these pages), his memoirs, his travel writing, and his fiction, with the precision and innocent enthusiasm that one finds in the great naturalists, which is not to say that he was uncritical of his findings. \"I am a humanist,\" he wrote on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, \"but I do not think human beings are rational: their greeds and passions are not quickly outgrown. We have now to school ourselves to deal with danger and tragedy.\" As for himself as a friend, the word that comes to mind is adorable. His sense of the world's triumphs and failings expressed itself in such gentleness of character, such gratitude for life's favors—especially for the love bestowed on him by his wife, Dorothy—that he seemed at times, for all his humanity, to belong to a different species from the rest of us. He had no religious faith, he wrote in his birthday memoir. \"I am no pantheist or sentimentalist in my love of Nature but simply an idolater of leaf, hill, stream and stone.\" His absence is terrible to contemplate but his presence in his work and in our memories is a constant joy."},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/04/24/v-s-pritchett-19001997/","url":"https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/04/24/v-s-pritchett-19001997/","name":"V. S. 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S. Pritchett, 1900–1997</h1> <div class="author text-center dek color-ny-red font-giza"> <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/contributors/jason-epstein/" class="dek color-ny-red font-giza hover-border-ny-red hover-text-ny-red text-decoration-none"><span class="dek color-ny-red font-giza hover-border-ny-red hover-text-ny-red text-decoration-none"><strong>Jason Epstein</strong></span></a> </div> </div> <div class="col-12 col-md-10 offset-md-1 col-lg-6 offset-lg-3 color-black"> <div class="mt-xs-6"></div> <div class="text-center"> <time> <p class="color-black text-label mb-0"> <a class="color-black hover-text-black hover-underline" href="https://www.nybooks.com/issues/1997/04/24/"><span>April 24, 1997 issue</span></a> </p> </time> </div> </div> </div> </div> </header> <section class="article-body"> <article class="article" data-post-id="19037"> <div class="container"> <div class="row position-relative"> <div class="social-desktop d-none d-lg-block"> <div class="article-social"> <div class="d-flex flex-lg-column justify-content-center align-items-lg-end"> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nybooks.com%2Farticles%2F1997%2F04%2F24%2Fv-s-pritchett-19001997%2F" data-share="facebook" class="social-icon d-flex bg-light-blue justify-content-center align-items-center mb-lg-4 fill-ny-red"> <span class="sr-only">Facebook</span> <svg width="8" height="16" viewBox="0 0 8 16" fill="none" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <path fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd" d="M5.5 3H8V0H5.5C3.57 0 2 1.57 2 3.5V5H0V8H2V16H5V8H7.5L8 5H5V3.5C5 3.229 5.229 3 5.5 3Z" fill="#990101"/> </svg> </a> <a href="https://twitter.com/share?text=V.%20S.%20Pritchett%2C%201900%E2%80%931997&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nybooks.com%2Farticles%2F1997%2F04%2F24%2Fv-s-pritchett-19001997%2F&via=nybooks" data-share="twitter" class="social-icon d-flex ml-xs-3 mr-xs-3 mr-lg-0 bg-light-blue justify-content-center align-items-center mb-lg-4 fill-ny-red"> <span class="sr-only">Twitter</span> <svg fill="none" height="13" viewBox="0 0 17 13" width="17" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><path clip-rule="evenodd" d="m16.004 1.537c-.588.263-1.222.438-1.884.516.678-.406 1.197-1.05 1.444-1.816-.634.375-1.338.65-2.084.797-.6-.638-1.453-1.034-2.397-1.034-1.813 0-3.281 1.469-3.281 3.281 0 .256.028.506.084.747-2.728-.138-5.147-1.444-6.766-3.431-.281.484-.444 1.05-.444 1.65 0 1.138.578 2.144 1.459 2.731-.538-.016-1.044-.166-1.488-.409v.041c0 1.591 1.131 2.919 2.634 3.219-.275.075-.566.116-.866.116-.212 0-.416-.022-.619-.059.419 1.303 1.631 2.253 3.066 2.281-1.125.881-2.538 1.406-4.078 1.406-.266 0-.525-.016-.784-.047 1.456.934 3.181 1.475 5.034 1.475 6.037 0 9.341-5.003 9.341-9.341 0-.144-.003-.284-.009-.425.641-.459 1.197-1.038 1.637-1.697z" fill="#990101" fill-rule="evenodd"/></svg> </a> <a href="mailto:?subject=V.%20S.%20Pritchett%2C%201900%E2%80%931997 by Jason Epstein&body=From The New York Review of Books%0D%0A%0D%0AV.%20S.%20Pritchett%2C%201900%E2%80%931997%0D%0A%0D%0A%0D%0A%0D%0Ahttps://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/04/24/v-s-pritchett-19001997/%3Futm_source%3Dnybooks%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_campaign%3Demail-share" class="social-icon d-flex bg-light-blue justify-content-center align-items-center position-relative fill-ny-red" > <span class="sr-only">Mail to</span> <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="34" height="34" viewBox="0 0 34 34"> <path d="M24.7,14.9c0.1-0.1,0.3,0,0.3,0.2v6.9c0,0.9-0.7,1.6-1.5,1.6h-13c-0.8,0-1.5-0.7-1.5-1.6V15 c0-0.2,0.2-0.3,0.3-0.2c0.7,0.6,1.6,1.3,4.8,3.8c0.7,0.5,1.8,1.6,2.9,1.6c1.1,0,2.2-1.1,2.9-1.6C23.1,16.2,24,15.5,24.7,14.9z M17,19c0.7,0,1.8-1,2.3-1.4c4.1-3.2,4.5-3.5,5.4-4.3c0.2-0.2,0.3-0.4,0.3-0.6v-0.6c0-0.9-0.7-1.6-1.5-1.6h-13 c-0.8,0-1.5,0.7-1.5,1.6v0.6c0,0.2,0.1,0.5,0.3,0.6c1,0.8,1.3,1.1,5.4,4.3C15.2,18.1,16.3,19,17,19z"/> </svg> </a> <a href="?printpage=true" class="social-icon d-flex ml-xs-3 mr-xs-3 mr-lg-0 bg-light-blue justify-content-center align-items-center mt-lg-4 hover-text-ny-red color-ny-red fill-ny-red" target="_blank"> <span class="sr-only">Print page</span> <svg width="34" height="34" viewBox="0 0 34 34" fill="none" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <circle cx="17" cy="17" r="17" fill="transparent"/> <path d="M13 11H21V13H13V11Z"/> <path d="M24 14H10C9.4 14 9 14.5 9 15V20C9 20.6 9.4 21 10 21H13V25H21V21H24C24.6 21 25 20.6 25 20V15C25 14.5 24.6 14 24 14ZM11 17C10.4 17 10 16.6 10 16C10 15.4 10.4 15 11 15C11.6 15 12 15.4 12 16C12 16.6 11.6 17 11 17ZM20 24H14V19H20V24Z"/> </svg> </a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="submit-letter sidebar-item text-xs left-border-lg mr-auto d-none d-lg-block hide-on-paywall"> <div class="pl-xs-2"> <p class="mb-xs-2">Submit a letter:</p> <p class="mb-0">Email us <a href="mailto:letters@nybooks.com">letters@nybooks.com</a></p> </div> </div> <div class="col-12"> <div class="article-col article-main-content paywall-article has-tombstone "> <p>Edmund Wilson insisted that a gift for impersonation is the fiction writer’s sine qua non as it is the actor’s. V.S. Pritchett went a step further:”Throwing something of oneself away is a way of becoming, for the moment, other people, and I have always thought that unselfing oneself, speaking for others, justifying those who cannot speak, giving importance to the fact that they live, is especially the privilege of the storyteller and even the critic—who is also an artist.” Like Wilson, V.S.P. was suspicious of general ideas: “I have always been wary,” he wrote, “of what used to be called ‘committal’ to the social and political ideologies which numbers of my contemporaries preached…. The People dissolved as I saw real people living in conditions unlike my own but with passions like mine and as proud of something unique in them.”</p> <p>He was blessed, in other words, with the power of self-effacement which Shakespeare possessed so enormously that he left hardly a trace of himself as a person. “I…carry what Keats called the indispensable sense of ‘negative capability’ about with me,” which is to say he encountered the objective world with awe. His genius was to convey this respectfulness to his readers in his literary essays (of which he contributed more than a hundred to these pages), his memoirs, his travel writing, and his fiction, with the precision and innocent enthusiasm that one finds in the great naturalists, which is not to say that he was uncritical of his findings. “I am a humanist,” he wrote on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, “but I do not think human beings are rational: their greeds and passions are not quickly outgrown. We have now to school ourselves to deal with danger and tragedy.”</p> <p>As for himself as a friend, the word that comes to mind is adorable. His sense of the world’s triumphs and failings expressed itself in such gentleness of character, such gratitude for life’s favors—especially for the love bestowed on him by his wife, Dorothy—that he seemed at times, for all his humanity, to belong to a different species from the rest of us. He had no religious faith, he wrote in his birthday memoir. “I am no pantheist or sentimentalist in my love of Nature but simply an idolater of leaf, hill, stream and stone.” His absence is terrible to contemplate but his presence in his work and in our memories is a constant joy.</p> </div> <div class="sidebar-item mb-xs-6 to-position"> <div class="current-issue-desktop d-none d-lg-block"> <section class="current-issue"> <p class="font-giza color-ny-red mb-0">This Issue</p> <p class="font-giza color-black mb-xs-2">April 24, 1997</p> <div class="sidebar-issue d-block mb-xs-3 border-light-gray"> <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/issues/1997/04/24/" class="cover"> <img loading="lazy" src="https://www.nybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/1997/04/1997-04-24.png?w=165" srcset="https://www.nybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/1997/04/1997-04-24.png?w=165 165w, https://www.nybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/1997/04/1997-04-24.png?w=330 330w" sizes="(max-width: 165px) 165px, 330px" class="mw-50 shadow-hover" 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href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/02/06/the-pain-of-animals/" class="color-black hover-text-ny-red text-deocration-none">The Pain of Animals <span class="sr-only"> February 6, 2014 issue </span></a> </div> <p class="text-label color-gray mb-xs-3"> February 6, 2014 issue </p> </article> <article> <div class="text-small semi-bold mb-xs-1"> <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2013/12/19/food-tips-christmas/" class="color-black hover-text-ny-red text-deocration-none">Food Tips for Christmas <span class="sr-only"> December 19, 2013 issue </span></a> </div> <p class="text-xs mb-xs-1">“Where the Weathermen blew up buildings and shot police officers, today’s radicals defy federal food laws, revel in unpasteurized milk, dine on fried grasshoppers, frog fallopian tubes, and Filipino <em>balut</em>.” </p> <p class="text-label color-gray mb-xs-3"> December 19, 2013 issue </p> </article> </div> </div> <div class="mb-xs-12"> <div class="author-block bg-light-blue pt-xs-3 pl-xs-3 pr-xs-3 pt-lg-6 pl-lg-6 pr-lg-6 mb-xs-6"> <div class="d-flex"> <div class="author-info wrapped-link-ny-red"> <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/contributors/jason-epstein/" class="d-inline-block hover-border-ny-red text-decoration-none text-xs-22 font-giza mb-xs-2"><span>Jason Epstein</span></a> <p class="text-xs-16 mb-xs-4 color-black">Jason Epstein (1928–2022) was for nearly twenty years the Editorial Director at Random House, as well as a founder of <i>The New York Review</i> and of the Library of America. He was the author of dozens of essays and four books, including <em>The Great Conspiracy Trial</em> (1970) and <em>Eating: A Memoir</em> (2010). (February 2022)</p> <div class="mb-xs-3 mb-lg-6"></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="current-issue-mobile d-lg-none mb-xs-14"> <section class="current-issue"> <p class="font-giza color-ny-red mb-0">This Issue</p> <p class="font-giza color-black mb-xs-2">April 24, 1997</p> <div class="sidebar-issue d-block mb-xs-3 border-light-gray"> <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/issues/1997/04/24/" class="cover"> <img loading="lazy" src="https://www.nybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/1997/04/1997-04-24.png?w=165" srcset="https://www.nybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/1997/04/1997-04-24.png?w=165 165w, https://www.nybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/1997/04/1997-04-24.png?w=330 330w" sizes="(max-width: 165px) 165px, 330px" class="mw-50 shadow-hover" alt="Image of the April 24, 1997 issue cover." > </a> </div> </section> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="pagination foot"></div> <section class="related-content"> <div class="container"> <div class="row"> <div class="col-12 text-center"> <p class="color-ny-red text-center mb-xs-5 mb-lg-12 border-yellow border-bottom-3 d-inline-block text-xs-30 text-lg-42 font-giza">Read Next</p> </div> </div> <div class="row"> <div class="col-12 col-lg-3 mb-xs-3 mb-lg-12"> <article class=""> <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2013/07/11/animal-farm-what-orwell-really-meant/" class="article-card"> <div class="text-small mb-xs-1 color-ny-red hover-text-ny-red semi-bold"> <span class="color-ny-red text-small hover-text-ny-red semi-bold"><strong>George Orwell</strong></span> </div> <p class="h4 d-block mb-xs-1 card-title card-title-ny-red">‘Animal Farm’: What Orwell Really Meant</p> <p class="text-small mb-xs-1 article-card-excerpt"></p> <p class="text-label color-gray"> July 11, 2013 issue </p> </a> <div class="rule-article d-lg-none"></div> </article> </div> <div class="col-12 col-lg-3 left-border-lg mb-xs-3 mb-lg-12"> <article class=""> <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1991/05/30/on-graham-greene/" class="article-card"> <div class="text-small mb-xs-1 color-ny-red hover-text-ny-red semi-bold"> <span class="color-ny-red text-small hover-text-ny-red semi-bold"><strong>J.M. 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