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London Perceived | 
 enlarge | Author: V. S. Pritchett; Evelyn Hofer (photographer)
Publisher: David R Godine
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $4.85
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Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 1057535
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 214
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6.2 x 0.7
ISBN: 1567921485
Dewey Decimal Number: 942.1
EAN: 9781567921489
ASIN: 1567921485
Publication Date: May 1, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
London of the mind, the heart, and the eye is displayed, discussed and dissected with eloquence and understated wit in this classic collaboration uniting the unfailingly elegant prose of V. S. Pritchett and the consistently revealing photographs of Evelyn Hofer.
Here is a pithy and knowledgeable distillation of the London experience - a panorama of its history, art, literature, and daily life. Here is the city that Londoners know, a paradox of grandeur and grime, the locus of bustling markets and tranquil parks, of the ancient and modern, of palaces and pubs, of docks and railroad depots. As Pritchett observes, "If Paris suggests intelligence, if Rome suggests the world, if New York suggests activity, the word for London is experience. This points to the awful fact that London has been the most powerful and richest capital in the world for several centuries. It has been, until a mere fifteen years ago, the capital of the largest world empire since the Roman and, even now, is the focal point of a vague Commonwealth. It is the capital source of a language now dominant in the world. Great Britain invented the language: London printed it and made it presentable."
Great Londoners of the past stalk these pages - Wren, Pepys, Defoe, Hogarth, Dickens, and of course, that consummate Londoner, Samuel Johnson, who said, "No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life, for there is in London all that life can afford." And here, too, are the faces of the people inhabiting London today - milkmen and master mariners, dockers and shopkeepers, messengers, Chelsea pensioners, and, inevitably, the London bobby. There is, as well, an analysis of the Londoner himself, enigmatic and enduring, with his remote but insistent respect for law, royalty, and ritual, his affection for argument, his toleration of eccentrics. This new paperback of the original 1962 edition offers a loving tribute to a great city's past and present.
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| Customer Reviews:
Cultural Archeology At Its Best May 19, 2003
18 out of 18 found this review helpful
Forty-one years ago, V.S. Pritchett went looking for what makes London itself. He wrote this before McDonald's arrived, just before the Beatles and 007 put it on the world's pop map, just as cranes were setting out the beams for glass and steel skyscrapers. Much has happened in the interim, but what Pritchett found explains not only its past but its future. He makes neat work of reconciling the many ironies in a place that reinvents itself every so often without much of a plan, but which also hangs onto traditions, ways of being and a passion for order. This is a tour of neighborhoods, but also of centuries and the historical events and personages that have contributed to the city's enduring character. It moves seamlessly between the concrete image and the abstract idea. Pritchett's prose is crystalline, his insights spooky at times (he describes those new skyscrapers as having a "smashable impermanence" to them). The photographs by Evelyn Hofer are haunting. There will always be a London. This should be required reading for visitors to that city.
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