other social science, while novelists andnpoets appear as more cunningly unscrupulousnversions of ourselves, usingntheir gifts for the same grubby vanitiesnas the rest of us.” Professor Frommndoes not point out strongly enoughnthat the logical result of this “academicncapitalism” is the ever-greater irrelevancenof the university to the generalnculture, and the loss to the humanitiesnof a generation and more of promisingnstudents. What young man or womannwith even a modicum of self-respectnwould, after all, ever want to join suchna club?nWhat Harold Fromm has to say willncome as no surprise to readers innregular contact with a college or university,nas teacher or student or interestednalumnus. But his revelations willnsurely distress those outside the immediatenorbit of the academy, men andnwomen who may fondly rememberntheir journeys through Homer andnPlato and Locke, the flotsam and jetsamnof a shipwrecked canon. Anynreader who comes to Fromm’s pagesnmust be outraged at the willful destructionnof scholarly tradition in the interestsnof Mammon, a vandalism Frommnrichly documents. One hopes that hisnbook will enjoy a wide circulationnamong legislators in charge of universitynappropriations, and that, hopenagainst hope, as Fromm puts it, “thesenself-absorbed Laputans [of the academynwill] be recalled from their narcissisticnafflatus with periodic Swiftiannslaps in the face.”nGregory McNamee is a freelancenwriter and editor in Tucson, Arizona,nand a recent refugee from a largenstate university.nThings as They Arenby William H. NoltenComplete Collected Storiesnby V.S. PritchettnNew York: Random House;n1221 pp., $35.00nFrank Kermode began his excellentnreview of this fat and feisty volumenwith a statement that is at once factualnand wildly misleading: “Sir VictornPritchett is a Victorian.” To be sure,nPritchett was born in 1900, when thenGood Queen still sat on the throne andnthe sun never set on the empire, a timenso distant that it seems almost fabulous.nBut there is nothing “Victorian” aboutnV.S. Pritchett. The moral severity ornhypocrisy (in a word, puritanism) thatnone associates with Victorianism is utteriynforeign to his nature and to hisnwork; for that matter, so too is thendidactic urge to espouse some cause ornother, correct the mistakes of both Godnand men, or propose a transvaluation ofnall values, beginning with those of thenstuffy middle class — that is, the sort ofnurge that propelled such anti-VictoriannVictorians as G.B. Shaw and D.H.nLawrence. No such animus movesnPritchett. His sole mission is to depictnthe antics, both comic and somber, ofnhis countrymen at work and play. Henwould doubtless agree with JosephnConrad that the writer’s task is, “by thenpower of the written word, to make younhear, to make you feel — it is, before all,nto make you see. That — and no more,nand it is everything,”nPritchett was fortunate, I believe, innhaving been born into the lower middlenclass — fortunate in that he hasnnever felt the need to defend or rebelnagainst his childhood conditioning.nThough conscious of all the factorsnthat determine one’s class in his highlynclass-conscious homeland, he has thusnbeen free to employ his time in observingnhis compatriots, high and low, andnthen giving to his observations thendramatic shapes necessary to the art ofnstorytelling. The son of a travelingnsalesman, he spent his childhood in thenprovinces and various London suburbs.nAt the age of 15 he left schoolnand began working in the leather trade.nWhen he was 21 he went to Parisnwhere he worked in the photographicntrade and then, again most fortunatelynfor his career, became a journalist,nliving first in Ireland and then in Spain.nAll the while he was, of course, bankingnthe precious materials that he laternused in the writing trade that he hasnpracticed for nearly seventy years. Althoughnhe has written several novels,nbooks of literary criticism, and biographiesn(of Balzac, Turgenev, and Chekhov,nwriters from whom he has probablynlearned most), he is best known fornhis short stories, which began appearingnin the 1920’s. In this most recentnnnvolume of stories — his 15 th — he includesnthe 82 tales, by no means all henhas written and published, for whichnhe wishes to be remembered. I cannthink of a few writers — Maupassant,nChekhov, Mann, Kipling, Faulkner,nKatherine Anne Porter, and maybentwo or three others — who have writtennmore famous (that is, memorable)nstories, but no one has ever written sonmany good ones, the kind that can benreread with undiminished delight.nWhile reading these stories, nevernmore than two or three at a sitting, Inwas unable to detect any great technicalndifference between those of thenearly, middle, and late periods — thatnis, between those of the 1930’s and onnthrough the next five decades. Therenmay be slightiy more dialogue andnfewer descriptive passages in the latentales, and, rather oddly, the last storiesn(they are chronologically arranged)nhave rather more to do with sexualnconcerns than the early ones. For example,nin “The Diver” (1974), thennarrator gives a hilarious accountn(probably more or less autobiographical)nof an embarrassing but nonethelessneducational encounter that took placenwhen the speaker was 20, living innParis, and trying to convince himselfnthat he was a writer. A salty yarn morenhumorous than lubricious, the storynhas been told a thousand times butnnever with more elan.nThe impressionistic manner of somenof the eady stories, which are morennearly sketches, reminds one of StephennCrane or, in “The Evils ofnSpain,” of Hemingway. It was difficult,nof course, to set a story in Spain in thenI930’s without aping a mannerism orntwo that originated with Papa, and innPritchett’s sketch there is more than anhint of parody. By the way, I thinknPritchett a better writer than Hemingway.nHe is not nearly so sentimental orn”romantic” (in the sense of beingnegotistic or self-centered, of makingnthe reader constantly aware of who isntelling the story and how he’s telling it;nin brief, Pritchett is never victimized bynhis style). More, he has a better graspnof character than Hemingway did, tonsay nothing of a wider variety of characters.nAbove all, in his realism there isnample room for the play of humor, andnwhen his characters do or say somethingnabsurd, as is frequently the case,nthey seem simply to be revealing whatnAPRIL 1992/39n