SOURCE: "Sholom Aleichem: Pain and Laughter," in Lasting Impressions: Selected Essays, Chatto & Windus, 1990, pp. 11-15.

In the following essay, Pritchett favorably assesses Aleichem's humor and storytelling ability.

Sholom Aleichem is one of the prolific masters of Yiddish comic storytelling, an art springing from the oral folk traditions of Eastern Europe and crossed by the pain and laughter of racial calamity. Like all comics he is serious, has one foot in the disorder and madness of the world and, as a Jew, the other foot in the now perplexing, now exalted, adjuration of the Law and the Prophets. Did God really choose their fate for the Jewish people? If so, was He being irresponsible, or why doesn't He make it clear? There is no answer. The oppressed stick to their rituals and are obliged to perfect the delights of cunning, the consolations of extravagant fantasy, the ironies and pedantries...