Mr. P.'s Pleasure

THE SAILOR, SENSE OF HUMOUR & OTHER STORIES (369 pp.)--V. S. Pritchett--Knopf ($4.50).

The scene is a suburban English pub, and two middle-aged ladies named Margaret and Jill are having a quiet chat. Suddenly, a bitter accusation flashes above the gin. Margaret, hiking her skirt, declares that Jill has brought a flea into her life. It seems that the flea--not an "ordinary" London one but "some great black foreign brute"--sprang from Jill onto Margaret. But why was Jill harboring the flea in the first place? Because a young sailor had given it to her--not intentionally, of course, but because he and Jill went to bed together, and (to put it briefly) "fleas hop." By the end of the story, poor Jill is lying prone on the barroom floor, overcome by shame, double gins, and the loss of her flea-giving lover.

This flea circus, a hilarious yarn, sets the tone for this whole collection of 25 short stories by V. S. (for Victor Sawdon) Pritchett. At 55, Pritchett is perhaps the best literary critic now writing in English. He is also a subtle interpreter of national character and environment (The Spanish Temper) and an occasional but brilliant dabbler in fiction. He calls his short stories "the only kind of writing that has given me pleasure [and] always elated me." The elation is shared by the reader.

Pritchett criticism resembles an elaborately woven square of cloth which, held up at one end, hangs together all of a piece. The Pritchett short story is just the opposite. It exists (as modern life does, in Pritchett's view) "in fragments rather than as solid mass," and exults in bursts of fire, sharp changes of tempo, explosions of mood. And it is usually extremely cheerful, regardless of what it is about--as if the characters, like their author, were glad to escape from the stiffer world of Pritchett criticism.

P: The Saint, one of the best stories in the collection, starts with the words: "When I was seventeen years old, I lost my religious faith." Such a loss would weigh heavily on Pritchett in his critical capacity, but in one of his short stories, it is a sure sign of gusto to follow. Ten pages after the loss has been reported, the bereaved youth is floating disconsolately downstream in a punt, while the evangelist who has come to restore his faith is clinging hopelessly to the branch of a willow tree and slowly sinking, like "a declining dogma," into the cold river water. The moral of this brisk little story is: Be sure your feet are on firm ground before you extend a helping hand.

P: In The Oedipus Complex, a jolly dentist assures his patient he'll whip out a bad tooth "in a couple of shakes." He takes a couple of shakes; the tooth breaks. "So that's the game, is it?" crows the dentist, still merry as a grig. He assaults the tooth "with something like a buttonhook." Another piece breaks off. "We'll have to saw," cries the delighted dentist. While the tooth is sawed, button-hooked, drilled and shaken, the dentist, dropping his guard for an instant, admits to the patient that he (the dentist) has suffered hell in his private life. But that's all over now. Life is wonderful. "That gum of yours is going to be sore," the dentist blandly concludes.

P: In The Scapegoat, which will touch a chord in every urban and surburban U.S. heart, the people of Terence Street are conducting their usual feud with their neighbors, the people of Earl Street ("The truth is that you can't live without enemies, and the best enemies are the ones nearest home"). At the moment, the rivalry centers on which street will collect the most money to celebrate the King's Jubilee. Terrible things happen, e.g., when Terence Street's little angels go out with their collecting boxes, the little rats of Earl Street beat them up. The girls of Earl Street, who will stoop to anything, obtain money in ways which shock the decent girls of Terence Street. And in the end, the Terence Street collector bets all the money on the dogs, loses every penny and hangs himself. So what? Terence Street forgives him, as Christians should, and stakes him to a whopping funeral--bigger and better than any that has ever been seen on their street.

The stories in this book--the gleanings of 25 years--are not equally good. But always in evidence are an excellent ear for the spoken word, a sharp eye for the features and gestures of all sorts of men and women, an affectionate understanding for the fancies and the fleas of the common sailor.

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