V. S. Pritchett: A Working Life

by Jeremy Treglown

Book Overview

Long considered the English Chekhov, V. S. Pritchett was described by Eudora Welty as one of the great pleasure-givers in our language. Here is a true literary event: the first major biography of this... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375508538
• ISBN13: 9780375508530
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: Random House (NY)
• Length: 334 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.5" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

No Soap

An outstanding biography, and a worthy successor to Jeremy Treglown's previous books on famous English novelists. Pritchett wasn't much of a novelist, but as a short story writer he attained the sort of sterling reputation that nearly went out with Queen Victoria. Even as he grew older and older (he died at age 96) his skills and powers grew and grew, and the books he wrote in his seventies are probably his best. Pritchett married twice; his first marriage, to Evelyn, collapsed after years of bitterness, and later he married Dorothy, the "marvellous girl" of his fiction. Unfortunately their fifty year union was often marred by him having numerous affairs and her being a heavy drunk who, finally, turned to this newfangled thing called AA in 1957 and it really helped her. And finally when he got too old to cheat, they attained their happiness all over again. Some of their early letters have that obscene James Joyce-Nora Barnacle tone to them--very rousing. You wouldn't believe how many women wanted to have sex with him! For he was not very attractive--a little man, round as a billiard ball, with funny teeth and a total narcissist who would, of course, being a writer, make life difficult for you afterwards by writing you cutting letters or painting horrid portraits of you in his fiction. There's a lot of high-toned gossip passing for insight: "At the Vienna Hilton, Victor and Dorothy were kept awake by violent quarrels in the adjacent bedroom between the playwright Eugene Ionesco and his wife." And some of the most amusing contretemps in the biography arrive from the differences in American and British usages of our common tongue. When an earnest coed at Smith College confided that she was an "English major," Pritchett did a double take, telling a friend that mentally he "decorated her with moustaches and gave her gout." Hitchcock fans will go bananas when they learn of the extent that Pritchett changed the script of THE BIRDS, when a disgruntled Hitch asked the visiting English prose master for some revisions to Evan Hunter's script. Treglown claims that at least one major scene was written entirely by Pritchett, and any number of smaller script changes and character developments. Annie, the school teacher played by Suzanne Pleshette, given more grit to make her less "goody goody," and Melanie Daniels now makes references to a childhood with unsatisfactory parent figures in order to balance out the (possibly over-Oedipal) relationship between Rod Taylor and Jessica Tandy. In addition, Hitchcock apparently toyed with the idea of making a film version of one of Pritchett's 50s short stories, "The Wheelbarrow." Or was he just toying with Pritchett to get him to produce more pages on THE BIRDS script? Hard to say. But anyhow I've read dozens of books on Hitchcock and THE BIRDS and never once heard anything about the involvement of V.S. Pritchett so this was a real coup for Treglown if you ask me. Elsewhere Sir Victor doesn't come