THAT PROMETHEAN SPARK
THE BOTTLE IMP – Muriel Spark Special Issue
“With a writing career that included biography, criticism, drama and short fiction as well as novels, Muriel Spark was never one to do things by halves…”
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“I advocate the arts of satire and of ridicule. And I see no other living art form for the future. Ridicule is the only honourable weapon we have left.”
—available on BBC Sounds: Alan Taylor & William Boyd join Mariella Frostrup to share their love of Muriel Spark’s writing
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“Spark had just passed on to me an unexpected gift: the gift of the future. I’m beginning to think her books are themselves a kind of fruitfulness.”
—Ali Smith on how Muriel Spark gives us the gift of the future
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“As far-right ideas spread, and misinformation abounds, her books are a piercing reminder of how extreme politics can appeal to the sanest-seeming people—and that half-truths and malfeasance are as intrinsic to human nature as breathing. Spark is a bard of nastiness and lies.”
—The Economist on the continuing relevance of Muriel Spark’s fiction
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“Muriel Spark gave me a new model for a feminist hero […] It was about loitering—about the quiet subversiveness of simply existing in public as a woman.”
—Beth Jellicoe on Muriel Spark’s LOITERING WITH INTENT
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“What hash Spark’s characters make of those eternal debates over unlikable characters or unlikable women. These women aren’t unlikable, these women are monstrous… Spark looks at her women like a wolf.”
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AFTERWORDS: Muriel Spark
“One’s prime is elusive…”
—On BBC Sounds: writers Ian Rankin & Zoë Strachan discuss Muriel Spark’s life & work with National Library of Scotland curator Colin McIlroy, & Spark’s friend & memoirist, Alan Taylor
Just finished rereading 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie'. I had forgotten how good it is, and how cruel #MurielSpark can be.
I am bit lost for words. It is obviously a brilliant take down of fascism but also of the middle classes obliviousness to its horrors, not because they are naturally fascist, but because they are cruel and stupid and banal.
There is also a very amusing and perceptive take on girlhood and a dark but profound take on adult men's relationship to those girls. Spark realises that the reason men are attracted to teenage girls is that no man can actually see what is in front of him. All women are there for him. All heterosexual male sexuality is fantasy. The girls don't just have perfect breasts, they also have pliable personalities and lack the experience and resources to resist and disturb the fantasy.
I love #MurielSpark.
'I am a descendant, do not forget, of Willie Brodie, a man of substance, a cabinet maker and designer of gibbets, a member of the Town Council of Edinburgh and a keeper of two mistresses who bore him five children between them.'
She is so cruel to her characters. What a brilliant thing to have Miss Jean Brodie say. It has to be one of the funniest lines in literature.