Eves for the Journey

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 473, 16 July 1948, Page 9

Eves for the Journey

N the printed programme for 3YL the word was "Falls." I looked at it for some time, thinking "I’m only an ignorant Pig Islander, but surely in Yorkshire they have, Fells." Whatever they are, V. S. Pritchett lived his early life in the middle of them, at Sedburgh, and he described for the BBC his Return Journey there after 30 years’ absence. For my money, Pritchett is the best of the living short-story writers who use English. His sensitivity to his surroundings makes me feel that I walk abroad blind. He is personal enough to make me wonder what kind of a man he is, and yet is universal in that he is constantly touching off small explosions. in the minds of his’ readers, reminding them, in this case, of the dark, compelling, irrational urges of their own childhood, urges which are illuminated by the new light he throws on them. In this (continued on next page) , |

RADIO VIEWSREEL (Cont'd)

(continued from previous page) programme he talked of feeling haunted as a child by the names and presence of the mountains standing eternally outside his door, adding their weight to the dark, leaning terrors of the night. He remembered the homely violence of the North Countryman, his grandfather, who frequently remarked on the softness of the South and taught him to point a loaded gun at his grandmother. "M-U-R-D-E-R, murder," said Pritchett, the man, after the fashion of Squeers, "Go and do some." Although nobody knew him when he returned, he felt he had completed an incomplete experience, and he compared the incomplete experiences of childhood with the incomplete Romantic attitude to life and literature, against which moderns are impelled to react. It is arguable, of course, that his reaction in particular against the M-U-R-D-E-R, murder, of his. chifdhood, became his reaction in general against the Romantic. attitude when he grew up. But we should be grateful for whatever gave him his sensitivity, because it opens doors for ordinary people through which they would not otherwise see.