Pritchett, in his 80s,

outwrites

competitors

ON THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF, by V. S. Pritchett; Random House, 179 pp., $8.95.

By Don A. Keister

Good short story writers never fool around. The following quotation is from "The Spanish Bed," one of the nine stories in the latest packet from V. S. (Sir Victor, he is now) Pritchett, the octogenarian master who is still writing...rings around the competition...

"The doctor is a big man, overweight, as soft as an elephant, his jacket and trousers hanging on him like a hide. He walks in a creeping way, stooping as very tall men do, as if he were following a scent, often nibbling a biscuit. In the village it is felt to be unnatural for a man of his size to be living alone. 'Pure accident' he says has brought him to the village and he waves a heavy arm to give himself the careless, even frivolous air of a balloon that has slipped its mooring and taken off into the sky." (For English "biscuit" read: American "cookie.")

In two sentences, without a wasted word, Dr. Billiter, retired mining engineer and mineralogist, is solidly there, ready to follow the faint trail left by a former occupant of his house, a minor writer about whom he has become enthusiastie. Only on second reading does one realize how subtly, precisely and beautifully, right down to the dead-pan ridiculousness of the comparisons, the description fits the subsequent action.

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Characters just as skillfully drawn populate the other stories. Pritchett involves them in situations that are usual enough old man with a young mistress, for instance, or a wife-husbandlover triangle, or an elderly widow's fondness for a young homosexual. But those situations become unique because the social and emotional relationships are so thoroughly understood and vividly realized."

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The stories move like expanding anecdotes, never seeming to be in a hurry but covering the ground with deceptive speed. Dialog' that sounds like real talk often carries the story.

Pritchett's favorite territory is that region of mingled hope and desperation, comedy and tragedy, in which most lives are lived: But his art is never depressing, drawing its tough, vigorous life from the warm and living humanity upon which he has fixed his amused but affectionate regard.

Those already familiar with Pritchett's stories will find no falling off in his latest. Newcomers should find them an inducement to look up the earlier ones; G

Don A. Keister is a professor emeritus of the University of Akron.

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