Prayers

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I was amazed to see how concerned people were about me when I told them about my illness.

Everyone seems to want to help. Some have offered food, or rides to and from my treatment sessions. (I will probably take some of them up on these.)

But I didn’t expect to be on anyone’s prayer list.

I am informed that I am on the prayer list of a Episcopal church in a town in eastern Rhode Island. Also, a Jewish acquaintance told Partner that she was praying for me. Also, a number of Catholic friends are praying for me, as is one Orthodox friend.

And I confess (weak superstitious thing that I am) that I recently dug out my old Catholic St. Peregrine medal and attached it to my keychain. (Peregrine is the patron of cancer sufferers.)

I only hope that all of these prayers and intercessions and magic spells are arriving at the correct destination, and not getting crossed up by the celestial telephone operators.

From Muriel Spark’s “The Gentile Jewesses,” concerning the death of her grandmother:

“She was buried as a Jewess since she was buried in my father’s house, and notices were put in the Jewish Press. Simultaneously my great-aunts announced in the Watford papers that she fell asleep in Jesus.”

I don’t want to fall asleep in Jesus, or Abraham’s bosom, or anything else. I don’t want to go anywhere, for that matter. I’m happy right where I am.

I feel much as did Muriel Spark’s father:

“My father, when questioned as to what he believes, will say ‘I believe in the Blessed Almighty who made heaven and earth,’ and will say no more, returning to his racing papers which contain problems proper to innocent men.”

I am probably less of an innocent man than Muriel Spark’s father was. But he had the right idea.

Let us occupy ourselves with matters proper to our station.

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Book report: Anthony Powell's "Venusberg"

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There’s a certain kind of novel that was produced in great quantity by British writers in the 1920s and 1930s and 1940s and 1950s.  They are usually brief, and set in Asia, or Eastern Europe, or Africa.  The characters are almost entirely expatriates – not only British, but Canadians, Americans, exiled Russians, and are often diplomats, or con men, or spies.  The atmosphere is usually light, until something oddly serious happens: an assassination, a declaration of war, some tragic event. 

 

 

These novels were (I think) a response to the British Empire’s expansion through the world.  There were enormous numbers of British people working in countries all over the world, living in unfamiliar environments, clinging to one another (and to other English-speakers and Europeans) for a sense of community.

 

 

Think of Kipling’s “Kim” as a progenitor of the genre.  Think of Graham Greene, with his African and Asian and Caribbean comedy/dramas like “A Burnt-Out Case” and “The Quiet American” and “The Comedians” and “Our Man in Havana.”  Think of Olivia Manning’s “Balkan Trilogy” (did I ever tell you that I knew someone who knew her?).  Think of Lawrence Durrell’s “Alexandria Quartet.”  Think of Doris Lessing’s “Children of Violence” series.  Think of Muriel Spark’s first story, “The Seraph and the Zambezi,” and her novella “The Go-Away Bird.” Think of Rose Macaulay’s wonderful “The Towers of Trebizond."

 

 

I recently discovered a prime example of the genre: Anthony Powell’s “Venusberg.”

 

 

It’s a simple story: a British journalist, Lushington, goes to an unnamed Baltic country on assignment.  Lushington is in love with a Englishwoman who is, in turn, hopelessly in love with the local British attaché, who (perversely and carelessly) doesn’t care about her at all. 

 

 

Whom do we meet in our unnamed Baltic country? Not one but two displaced Russian counts, one melancholy and doomed, the other probably a fake.  A local woman who’s only too eager to have an affair with Lushington.  Her husband, a clueless eminent local professor.  An American embassy worker who rattles on endlessly about virtue and progress and the future, while pronouncing himself a man of few words.  A local military officer named Waldemar, who is very pleasant and sincere, and who is trying very hard to learn how to be a true European.

 

 

We never discover the name of the country we’re in.  Everyone is speaking English most of the time, with a little bad French thrown in.  Now and then we’re told that someone speaks “in an unknown language”; the joke is that it’s probably the local language, which few of the main characters speak.

 

 

Love affairs happen.  Death happens.  Lushington goes back to England.

 

 

All in one hundred and sixty pages.

 

 

Here is Powell’s epigraph for the novel, which explains the title:

 

 

“Here, according to popular tradition, is situated the grotto of Venus, into which she enticed the knight Tannhauser; fine view from the top.”

 

 

From the sublime to the absurd: from the airy beauty of folklore and mythology to the flat pronouncements of a travel guide.

 

 

"Venusberg" is sad and funny and lovely, and gave me a few hours of pleasure, and it will stay with me.

 

 

Try it, if you can find it in your dusty old public library.  You may like it.

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Book report: Martin Stannard's "Muriel Spark: The Biography"

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Over the past few months I have read quite a few biographies.

 

 

Most of them aren’t very well-written, but this is probably to be expected. Most books in general aren’t very well-written.

 

 

But it’s a shame to read a badly-written book, especially when it’s the biography of a writer.

 

 

There have been excellent biographies of writers, of course. Do I need to mention James Boswell’s life of Doctor Johnson? (Of course, most of the wit was courtesy of Samuel Johnson himself, but Boswell was the genius who remembered every word Johnson said, and who edited Johnson’s life and words into the joyfully lively memoir we have today.) And I remember that I almost wept when I read Quentin Bell’s opening sentence of the bio of his aunt, Virginia Woolf: “Virginia Woolf was a Miss Stephen.” It’s a perfect sentence: stiff, Victorian, but telling you something you vitally need to know (and probably don’t know) about his aunt.

 

 

And recently I discovered Martin Stannard’s biography of Muriel Spark.

 

 

Muriel Spark is one of my favorite authors. Well, I mean really: “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” and “Memento Mori,” and “The Abbess of Crewe.” I’d heard that her personal life was a ghastly mess, and now (having read some of the bio) I know it for a fact. (Her life was no more a mess than, let’s say, mine, but still – she’s an author, and it’s in a book!)

 

 

But Martin Stannard can write.

 

 

From only the first few pages of the book:

 

 

[Speaking of how to refer to Muriel Spark in the body of the book:] “At the risk of appearing over-familiar, I decided to describe her as ‘Muriel.’ This does not signify that she counted me as a friend.”

 

 

[Regarding Muriel’s grandmother Adelaide:] “Adelaide never welcomed Uncle Phil’s children. She was an appalling cook and there was always the danger that she might offer food.”

 

 

[Regarding Muriel’s mother Cissy:] “Cissy sailed through life like a ramshackle galleon.”

 

 

[A few pages later, also about Muriel’s mother:] “Cissy had once asked her mother how one kept men happy. ‘You have to feed ‘em both ends,’ she replied.”

 

 

Martin Stannard is a remarkable writer – probably more so for having dealt with a famously private and prickly writer.

 

 

Go read “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” if you haven’t already (the movie doesn’t count!). And then read Stannard’s biography.

 

 

And then get back to me, you old ramshackle galleons.

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Muriel Spark teaches us how to escape from elephants and pythons

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We learn things from novels.  From Jane Austen, I learned how an educated Englishwoman of the early 19^th Century lived.  From Melville, I learned all about whaling (really, more than I needed to know).  From Thomas Pynchon, in “Gravity’s Rainbow,” I learned a really astonishing amount about the German V2 rocket project.

 

 

And, from Muriel Spark, I have learned many other things.

 

 

I have been reading Muriel Spark since the early 1970s.  Her novels are terse – often under 200 pages – and very funny, and dry,  and odd. 

 

 

Muriel passed away in 2006, and I have been trying to catch up on the novels I haven’t read.  Each is a revelation, but her later novels often reuse themes and situations that occur in the earlier novels.  “The Finishing School,” her last novel, involves a private school (as does “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”), homosexuality (as does “The Bachelors”), novelists who aren’t sure if they’re in control of their characters (as in “The Comforters”).

 

 

“The Finishing School” does not have a very distinctive plot, and is not considered one of Muriel’s greatest novels.  But it contained the following very interesting information (this is my paraphrase):

 

If you are being chased by an elephant, wave your handkerchief in the air as you run.  It will confuse the elephant.

If you are being chased by a python, run in a zigzag fashion. The snake’s head and tail aren’t in sync, and he will fall behind.

If you don’t have time to run, drop to the ground, sit facing the python, and spread your legs.  The python will pause, not knowing which leg to consume first.  During this pause, pull out your knife and cut his head off.

 

 

(I related this to my friend Cathleen.  She objected: “So I’m supposed to have a knife?”  I responded:  “Are you an idiot to be in a python-infested jungle without a knife?”

 

 

This is why novels are important.

 

 

Keep reading, kids. You never know what you might learn.

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Book report: "The Driver's Seat," by Muriel Spark

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The folks at New Directions, Krishna bless them, have put out a new series called “Bibelots”: small books, nicely designed, that pack a large punch. A couple of them are Muriel Spark's shorter novels, and one of those is her 1970 novel “The Driver's Seat.”

 

 

Yow.

 

 

In college, I wrote a paper on Muriel's novels. I read a few of them thoroughly, and a few of them very quickly. I only glanced at “The Driver's Seat.” It's only now, thirty-five years later, that I've actually read it carefully.

 

 

It is like acid in the face.

 

 

It is the story (told in the perpetual present tense, like several of her other novels) of a woman who intends to be a murder victim. (Or somehow she knows she will be a murder victim. Whichever. It makes no difference.) She takes a “vacation” from (probably) Denmark to (probably) Italy. She buys brightly-colored clothes and such, and makes a fuss along the way, so that everyone she meets will remember her. And she keeps looking for the man who's “her type.”

 

 

Which is to say: the man who will murder her.

 

 

And she meets him, and – horribly – everything happens right on schedule.

 

 

I first knew Muriel Spark through “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.” Yes, the movie is lovely, and Maggie Smith is amazing as Jean Brodie. But the novel is ten times more amazing. It zigzags back and forth in time; it gives us Sandy Stranger, the student responsible for Jean Brodie's fall from grace, as a nun, struggling with what she's done years later.

 

 

Another of my favorite Spark novels has always been “The Abbess of Crewe,” a novelization of the American Watergate scandal, set in an Anglican convent, with lots of classic English poetry and prose thrown in. Dry, perfect, funny, beautiful. “Be still, be watchful.”

 

 

And there are her short stories, and her poems.

 

 

A beautiful craftswoman, and strange, and very perfect.

 

 

You will perhaps hear more from me on this subject.

 

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