{"id":4707,"date":"2016-02-24T22:43:54","date_gmt":"2016-02-24T11:43:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/?p=4707"},"modified":"2016-12-16T17:02:30","modified_gmt":"2016-12-16T06:02:30","slug":"what-ive-been-reading-muriel-spark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/what-ive-been-reading-muriel-spark\/","title":{"rendered":"What I\u2019ve Been Reading: Muriel Spark"},"content":{"rendered":"

I enjoyed A Far Cry From Kensington<\/em><\/a> so much that I wanted to know more about the author, so my next read was Muriel Spark: The Biography<\/em><\/a> by Martin Stannard. This was a very long and thorough overview of Spark\u2019s life and work, written with her cooperation, although the biographer claims his book is not \u2018authorised\u2019 or \u2018official\u2019 in any way. Nevertheless, I suspect he went out of his way to be tactful and discreet, given Spark\u2019s tendency to lambaste journalists or reviewers who dared to voice the tiniest criticism of her. She even disowned her only child when he claimed (admittedly, without much evidence) that his maternal grandmother had been Jewish, with Spark telling journalists, \u201cHe can\u2019t sell his lousy paintings and I have had a lot of success \u2026 He\u2019s never done anything for me, except for being one big bore.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"'MurielSpark did not seem to be very good at personal relationships. She married a violent, mentally unstable man when she was nineteen, then divorced him a few years later. She pretty much abandoned her young son, leaving him to be raised by his father and grandparents, while she worked in publishing in London and eventually began to enjoy critical and commercial success with her novels. There were a few boyfriends over the years, all of them insecure, controlling and disloyal. Her biographer thinks \u201cshe had a kind of death wish on all close relationships, a fear of exposure that led her to preserve distance and prevent intimacy. Boundlessly forgiving of human nature in general, she was boundlessly unforgiving of it when she saw it as obstructing her vocation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her writing was more important than anyone or anything, and she took her publishers firmly to task whenever they weren\u2019t giving her the respect and money she felt she deserved. However, I was surprised to read about how well she was<\/em> treated by her publishers, especially her American publishers, even at a relatively early stage of her writing career. She earned enough, as a \u2018literary\u2019 author, to buy houses and apartments, race horses, designer clothes, jewellery and sports cars and to travel the world in luxury. She expected to be treated as royalty at all times and became increasingly peevish, obsessional and unpleasant in her final decades.<\/p>\n

\"'TheI\u2019m always interested to learn how writers, especially women writers, balance the responsibilities of life with their work. In Spark\u2019s case, she behaved as many male writers of the time did, by being completely focused on her writing, dumping partners and friends whenever they failed to give her unconditional support, and ignoring her family, including her offspring. She was fortunate enough to acquire a \u2018wife\u2019, Penelope Jardine<\/a>, her secretary and then close friend, who gave up her own career as an artist to live with Spark and manage her business and personal affairs for thirty years. It should be noted that Spark was not born into wealth and social privilege. She had innate talent, but she worked extremely hard for her success. She refused to identify as a feminist, but claimed to be an \u201cindependent woman\u201d and said, \u201cI\u2019m in favour of women\u2019s liberation from the economic viewpoint, but I wouldn\u2019t want men\u2019s and women\u2019s roles reversed.\u201d If that seems a little contradictory, it\u2019s typical of her perspective on life. For example, she converted to Roman Catholicism but ignored any doctrine that was inconvenient to her personal life, rarely attended Mass and wasn\u2019t much interested in anything the Pope had to say.<\/p>\n

This biography also provides an interesting analysis of Spark\u2019s poetry, short stories and each of her books, which made me take The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie<\/em> down from my shelf and re-read it with a new perspective. Miss Brodie was based on a real-life teacher of Spark\u2019s, but she also comes across as a version of Spark herself. Miss Brodie is supremely confident, convinced that her opinions are fact. She either doesn\u2019t notice or doesn\u2019t care that she believes in contradictory ideas, such as despising the conformity of the Girl Guides while idolising Mussolini and his fascisti. She encourages her girls to challenge their headmistress, but is shocked when one of them rebels against Miss Brodie’s own authority. If you haven\u2019t read it, I recommend it. It\u2019s very funny and clever and full of gorgeous descriptions of pre-war Edinburgh life. <\/p>\n

\"'LoiteringI then read Loitering with Intent<\/em><\/a>, which was also highly entertaining and apparently very autobiographical. Set in post-war London, it\u2019s about a young woman writing her first novel while working for an odd organisation called the Autobiographical Association. Life appears to be imitating art, thinks Fleur, but it turns out her deranged boss has stolen her manuscript and is incorporating its events into his own life and work. I enjoyed Fleur\u2019s musings about the publishing industry (\u201cthe traditional paranoia of authors is as nothing compared to the inalienable schizophrenia of publishers\u201d) and about making personal sacrifices to be a writer (\u201cI preferred to be interested as I was than happy as I might be. I wasn\u2019t sure that I so much wanted to be happy, but I knew I had to follow my nature.\u201d) As entertaining and clever as the story was, I also kept stopping to admire Spark\u2019s language. For example, rather than write, \u201cBeryl Tims escorted the old lady out of the room\u201d, as most authors would, Spark comes up with:<\/p>\n

\u201cBeryl Tims turned up just then and grimly promoted the old lady\u2019s withdrawal; Beryl glared at me as she left.\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Grimly promoted! Especially juxtaposed with that casual, \u201cturned up just then\u201d. It\u2019s exactly right for that character, that scene and that narrator. As is a later description of Sir Eric Findlay, who \u201clived long enough to earn the reputation of an eccentric rather than a nut\u201d. Fleur herself is also beautifully portrayed throughout \u2013 whenever her confidence and ambition start to slide into arrogance and ruthlessness, we\u2019re shown her genuine affection for Edwina, the incontinent \u201cold lady\u201d, and Fleur’s relationship with her friend Solly, and we\u2019re reminded why she\u2019s the heroine of this story.<\/p>\n

I think my favourite Muriel Spark novel, though, is still A Far Cry From Kensington<\/em>. If anyone has any further Muriel Spark recommendations, I\u2019d be glad to hear them (keeping in mind my current interest in books set in post-war England).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I enjoyed A Far Cry From Kensington so much that I wanted to know more about the author, so my next read was Muriel Spark: The Biography by Martin Stannard. This was a very long and thorough overview of Spark\u2019s life and work, written with her cooperation, although the biographer claims his book is not … Continue reading What I\u2019ve Been Reading: Muriel Spark<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,22,6,18],"tags":[43,40],"class_list":["post-4707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1930s","category-1950s-and-1960s","category-books","category-my-favourite-books","tag-martin-stannard","tag-muriel-spark"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4707"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4718,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4707\/revisions\/4718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}