SOURCE: "Sofa and Cheroot," in A Man of Letters: Selected Essays, Random House, 1985, pp. 193-96.

Pritchett, a modern British writer, is respected for his mastery of the short story, and for what critics describe as his judicious, reliable, and insightful literary criticism. In the following essay, originally published in 1942, he discusses how Gil Blas has positively influenced English writers and helped shape the growth of the picaresque narrative. Pointing out that Lesage served as an "intermediary between ourselves and that raw, farcical, sour, bitter picaresque literature of Spain, " the critic suggests that the novel's appeal arises from its "clear, exact, flowing style which assimilates the sordid, the worldly, or the fantastic romance with easy precision, unstrained and unperturbed."

When we ask ourselves what the heroes of novels did with themselves in their spare time, a hundred to a hundred and fifty years ago, there can be no hesitation...