BOOKS
133
CRITICS AND SCHOLARS
THE GENTLE BARBARIAN: THE LIFE AND WORK OF TURGENEV.
By
V.S.
Pritchett.
Random House. $10.00.
Scholars exist in un easy competiti on with criti cs like V.S.
Pritchett, at times tugg in g possessively a t the same litera ry text. The
free-lance criti c addresses hi s readers-the book-buying, book-readin g
public- whom he must pl ease; th e scholars , with no one to pl ease,
address one ano ther, their captive audi en ce of students, and-as
curators of the traditi on-pos terity. Pritchett himself ho lds some such
view of their separa te spheres. T he universit y, he sa id after a year at
Princeton , is like a busy monastery. "These academi cs were a t prayer
constantl y- on e pray ing about the 'es theti cs of Conrad,' another doin g
'the rhythms o f Proust. ' " He means, of course, to contras t his own
mode of operati on with their so lemn abso rption in sma ll specia lities.
Over the years, th rough the medium of the qui ck, graceful book
review, he has covered an en cycl opaedi c range of litera ry works- as the
books were publi shed , as hi s interes t was cau ght, as he thought the
common reader's a ttenti on could be engaged. T o bypass the accumu–
lated heaps o f knowl edge, the thi ckets of footno tes, Pritchett 's
"method" (he would no t use the wo rd ) is to rely on the lunge of insight
in order to fix , in a few vivid phrases, the essence o f a writer 's vision ,
the total statement a novel ma kes, o r th e pl ace a wo rk occupi es in a
traditi on. Some academi c drudge will one day add up the rema rkable
total of usable ideas in hi s vas t output.
For the safe, subsidized scholar peerin g out of hi s wa ll ed en–
closure, Pritchett and a few like him-Edmund Wil son , above all–
have the look of critical freeboo ters who will dart in , take possess ion of,
and-as it sometimes seems-ravage the scho lar 's sacrosanct texts. (See
Wilson 's assault on
D octor Zhivago.)
But th ere is-indeed there has to
be- a steady exchange between the two emba ttl ed parti es: the criti c
needs some of th e schola r's info rma ti on if he is to opera te a t a ll , and
may well make use of the fruit s of a mo re sys temati c ana lys is than he is
willing to engage in; the criti c may show the scho la r a new way. into a
work, a new se t of relati ons within it o r an un expected conn ecti on with
other texts tha t li e outside the scho la r's necessa ril y na rrower vision .
