As I infer him from his books, V. S. Pritchett must be one of the most pleasant men in the world….

I only wish I could like his short stories, which have become his chief claim to fame. After reading them, I feel sad and somehow disappointed in myself. They, too, are generally pleasant in their way, and haphazardly piled with humanity.

Should stories be so pleasant? I ask myself in the absurd way one is forced to write about Mr. Pritchett. Is John Cheever pleasant? Or John Updike? Bernard Malamud? Was Faulkner pleasant in his stories?

Perhaps the word should be disarming. Mr. Pritchett's stories are disarming. But again one asks: Should a story disarm? Shouldn't it rather arm us with whatever it is we need to know in the interests of our vulnerability?

He fiddles while literature burns, and one wants to say "Good for him...