Currently
reading another amazing book by Muriel Spark : Territorial Rights.
It’s all about breaking and entering. A story about
getting into personal spheres and changing positions for gain. It’s about truth and fiction. The power of
secrets even if they are fictional.
'Sometimes
it seems that writers who can write can't tell a story and those who can tell a
story can't write. Because of the unfortunate division in our century between
high art and popular entertainment, there are few novels that are both
well-crafted and immediately appealing. Our serious fiction is formally
inventive and linguistically splendid, but it seldom compels the reader to read
on. ("Lolita" is one of the few novels since World War II to possess
this miraculous double appeal.) By contrast, our compulsively readable novels
are so carelessly rendered and dully derivative that there is no reason to
reread them, much less study and admire them.
Once in a
while, however, a book comes along that is beautifully put together and
effortlessly entertaining; Muriel Spark's "Territorial Rights" is
such a novel. To declare it a great book would be to burden it with an ambition
it has lightly rejected, but it is the sort of elegant diversion we can enjoy
and esteem. It is a hilarious account of political and romantic intrigue in
Venice. The characters are little more than types, nor should they be more
complex, for each must enter into intricate alliances and disputes with the
others. When we're studying a model of a benzine molecule, we want the carbon
and hydrogen atoms to be simple and clearly distinguishable; in the same way,
when we are confronted by Muriel Spark's social polymers, we want the
individuals to be instantly identifiable. For instance, a private eye is
described early in the book as wearing an eternal smile; with the mere mention
of that smile late in the book the character and all his sinister activities
are immediately summoned up.'
2018 marks
the centenary of the birth of the iconic writer Muriel Spark. Best-known as the
author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Dame Muriel was a poet, writer of
fiction, criticism and literary biography, and was at the top of her
profession, internationally, for more than half a century.
More info : Muriel Spark 100
Interesting
:
A
Celebration of Muriel Spark with Rivka Galhen, Joseph O'Neill, Gerald Howard
and Joseph Kanon. A tribute reading to celebrate the centenary of Muriel Spark,
"whose wit produced effects and insights only matched in contemporary
fiction by the glittering jests of Nabokov," wrote Shirley Hazzard. Recorded
February 1, 2018, at 92nd Street Y.
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