Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Bits of Spark

On Monday, one of my colleagues at the library was emptying a courier box full of books and two of them were for me.  The Everyman's edition of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie comes with The Girls of Slender Means which caused me to do a little happy dance right there on the spot.  This Muriel Spark Reading Week is going to have an extended run at my house.

Last night I took Martin Stannard's biography of Muriel up to bed with me and flipped randomly through episodes of her life...and death.  Is it just me or does anyone else take a nosy little leap to the end of a biography to despair over the subject's demise?    Oh this is a complex and fascinating woman to say the least.  When she was nineteen she met thirty-two year-old Sydney Oswald Spark who was planning to emigrate to teach in Africa.

'Muriel was attracted to this exotic prospect and to his apparent lack of machismo.  She had no intention of becoming a housewife.  He promised servants to leave her free to concentrate on her poetry.  Above all, she wanted to escape from Edinburgh and its claustrophobic social microcosm.'

After a year of 'chaste courting' they sailed aboard the Winchester Castle but all was not bliss.  Muriel flirted with a young South African on the boat, things went far enough that his parents invited her to stay and marry the young man.  I'm not sure what her intended knew, or thought, about all of this.  Perhaps she should have entertained the idea.  Her wedding night with 'Ossie' was horrible, she had no idea he became violent while he was drunk, he also had a revolver which he liked to fire off in the courtyard.  Apparently Africa brought out a wee bit of machismo in the man.  He also hid the fact that he had been seeing a psychiatrist before the marriage from Muriel.  Two months into the marriage she discovered she was pregnant and things went from bad to worse.

I love having Spark's short story collection at hand as this paragraph has enticed me to begin reading A Member of the Family.

'There is a fragment of Muriel's psyche in both characters: the tough and skeptical woman and the sociable 'girl'...who loved loved her accessories and delighted paralysing people with charm.  Indeed, after that Murray interview, Muriel decided to rejuvenate herself.  Photographs of her over the next decade appear to reveal her steadily increasing youth.  Unlike Trudy, however, she did not do this to catch men but to maintain her independence, to escape the judgemental eye, and for the sheer pleasure of perfect form.  It was a magnificent mask, a game, a defence.  It was fun.  It was her public image.  If language was power, so too was beauty.  As the artist at home she would slop about in jumpers.  When she left the safety of Mrs Lazzari's house or invited guests to it, she dressed to kill.'

I have so much admiration for people who come from humble beginnings but go on to achieve great things or wade through insurmountable odds to emerge at the top of their desired field.  Muriel Spark had incredible drive but paid heavily along the way it seems and there is still so much of her biography to discover and be fascinated by.  Has this reading week spurned you on to learn more about Muriel Spark's life or writing?

10 comments:

  1. That sounds fascinating, Darlene. Made me realise that I know hardly anything about her life.

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    1. I half-expected to skim a few paragraphs here and there but then I couldn't stop! Back for more tonight.

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  2. I enjoyed reading this post and learning some things about Muriel Spark. I am inspired to learn more about her now, and especially after reading "Loitering with Intent" which seems autobiographical. Darlene, I share your admiration for people who start from humble beginnings and go on the achieve great things. I also want to learn more about her conversion to Catholicism, which seems to be a very big part of her life, and her fiction, and also her relationships with people. She settled in Italy for the last thirty years of her life and I would love to know what drew her there and what her life was life living in Italy for so long. There is much to discover and I am so glad to have participated in this reading challenge. I'm hoping I can convince one of my book clubs to read one of her books.

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    1. Clearly we have some reading ahead of us, Sunday! Muriel's relationship, or lack thereof, with her son is something that interests me as well. This week has opened my eyes to Spark as a person and a writer and I'll never skim past her books on a bookshelf again without remembering the tidbits I've learned. Thomas's Anita Brookner reading week was just the same and I'm so grateful for the English lesson. Glad you've joined in!

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  3. I've just read her autobiography, which I loved - but I could definitely see places where Spark's version of events would be read quite differently by the other people involved. Luckily I have this biography somewhere!

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    1. You have a point, Simon. My library has a copy of Curriculum Vitae and I've placed a hold. It's only fair! My biography would be full of cups of tea, work and dog walks...the perfect sleep aid for insomniacs.

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  4. This is so interesting and I am wishing so much I had got hold of this before MSRW. Look forward to more comments!

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    1. It's a fascinating read, Harriet, so better late never I say. Muriel wouldn't have been an easy friend to have but she certainly seemed courageous, resourceful and fiercely independent. Thanks for all your efforts this week!

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  5. I'm also curious about her Catholicism - it seems so intrusive sometimes as opposed to matter-of-fact. It's like she sometimes flags it without - to me, at least - it being necessary to signpost it so obviously.

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  6. Oh my goodness, it certainly sounds like Muriel had an eventful life. I've got a couple of books on my shelves but have still yet to read them (amongst with other countless authors that I still have to experience but which are in my collection). So little time, so little books it seems!

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