Volume 3, Number 8 · December 3, 1964
Comedy and Beyond
By Frederick C. Crews
The Key to My Heart: A Comedy in Three Parts
by V.S. Pritchett
Random House, 107 pp., $3.95
Stations
by Burt Blechman
Random House, 138 pp., $3.95
It is hard to believe that these two works were written in the same decade of our century. The anachronistic one is V.S. Pritchett's novella, which, as the dust jacket alleges, is characterized chiefly by 'modesty' and 'charm.' The very terms of praise seem to accuse Pritchett of having regressed to the age of say, Zuleika Dobson; and the title of the book sufficiently declares Pritchett's indifference to the charge of sounding old-fashioned. Burt Blechman's Stations, in contrast, sums up the quality of much recent American fiction—its satirical fantasy, its sexual brutality, its ambitious statements, its intricacy of symbolism, and above all its confessional urgency. The pertinent questions to be asked are thus quite different for the two authors: in Pritchett's case, whether his pleasant and breezy tale has any serious claim to our interest, and in Blechman's, whether his book stands out from the somewhat pretentious mode to which it superficially belongs.
Review, 1433 words
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