V.S. Pritchett is another novelist and storyteller who has come under Balzac's spell, and he writes about him in a manner suited to the subject-Balzac would have enjoyed his book. The derogatory epithet "coffee table" is often applied to illustrated biographical studies of this type, but I cannot see why a great number of prints and portraits, admirably chosen and reproduced, should be assumed to diminish the value of a serious work, or why it should be taken for granted that people who put books on coffee tables look at nothing but the pictures. In any case, Balzac loved display, and nothing could be less literary than his hold over his original clientele; his appeal was to their sentiment and curiosity, their snobbery, greed, and sensationalism-all the things be wrote about himself...

Pritchett's task, well accomplished, is to remind us that Balzac is an extraordinary man, worth reading for the sake of himself and his characters (Pritchett is very good on the device of the recurring figure in the Comedie Humaine).