Because The Complete Collected Stories numbers eighty-two pieces of short fiction, detailed discussion of each one may exceed the time and energy that any group wishes to devote to such an exercise. However, with short fiction, certain general areas can be traversed that will allow for discussion of larger issues: character, plot, setting, theme, language, style, character interaction, or even of the genre itself as Pritchett practiced it. One might begin, simply, with Valentine Cunningham's declaration ([London] Times Literary Supplement 23 November 1990: 1255) that Pritchett "is without exaggeration the best modern British short-story writer, as the eighty-two stories of his massive [ninetieth] birthday-celebrating Complete Stories may reveal." Exactly why those stories have endured both time and critical assault becomes the first essential question.

1. Why is the short story the ideal medium for Pritchett? In other words, how can he, and why does he, confine what he wants to...