Volume 26, Number 11 · June 28, 1979
Secrets of the Shell
By Gore Vidal
The Myth Makers: Literary Essays
by V.S. Pritchett
Random House, 190 pp., $8.95
Thirty-three years ago in a preface to The Living Novel, V. S. Pritchett described how it was that he came to be the 'critic' that he is. I put quotes around the word critic because that is what he himself does when, with characteristic modesty, he tells us how he stopped writing novels and short stories during the Second World War and turned to criticism. 'Without leisure or freedom to write what I wanted, I could at least read what I wanted, and I turned to those most remarkable men and women: the great novelists of the past, those who are called the standard novelists.' As he read, he made notes. These notes or reports or reviews were first published in the New Statesman and Nation; then collected in The Living Novel. Since 1946 he has continued to report regularly on his reading, and The Myth Makers is his latest collection of literary essays.
Review, 2751 words
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