SOURCE: "A Clown," in New Statesman, Vol. 73, No. 1879, March 17, 1967, pp. 364-66.

In the following review of Short Sentimental Journey, and Other Stories, Pritchett calls Svevo "a natural truth-teller, " adding that even though it may not be apparent in the beginning, every word in Svevo's works has a purpose.

Svevo is a natural truth-teller who makes the professionals look like monsters of false pretension. They confused truth-telling with a passion for disgust or with personal hatreds. The paradox is that he is an egoist who is, somehow, selfless; but when one looks at his work more closely one sees that his mind hesitates on a frontier. As Ettore Schmidtz he is the Viennese Jew of the Schnitzler-Musil dispensation; as the pseudonymous Italo Svevo he is Italianate; and in writing this gave him a double vision. Where we see one emotion, he sees two: his temperament was made for tact...