"You have to live with the mystery. That's the answer in my books."

February 1, 2018 12:44 AM

It's the centenary of the birth of the poet, novelist, short-story writer, biographer & critic Muriel Spark (d. 2006). To mark the occasion, all 22 of her novels are being re-published in new hardback editions; and there's an exhibition about her ('The International Style of Muriel Spark') at the National Library of Scotland.

A miscellany of Spark-related links:

• I lived with Muriel Spark by Penelope Jardine.
• Ian Rankin on the genius of Muriel Spark.
• Ghost Writing: The Work Of Muriel Spark by Gerard Carruthers.
• “We All Have a Fatal Flaw:" Spark's aphorisms.
• The Pearl-Miners: one of Spark's poems.
• An overview of Spark's poetry by Dorothy McMillan.
• The Muriel Spark Scoiety's blog.
• Muriel Spark tells a joke [YouTube].
• Lose weight the literary way with the Muriel Spark diet.

Previously at Metafilter.

posted by misteraitch (3 comments total)

Fascinating! Thanks for the links. Just last night I read The Abbess of Crewe, Spark's Watergate farce set in a Benedictine Abbey. Oh, how I would have loved to read her Trump reboot! We've got a real Sister Winifrede in Devin Nunes.
posted by apparently at 6:16 AM on February 1, 2018

"The Brodie set did not for a moment doubt that she would prevail. As soon expect Julius Caesar to apply for a job at a crank school as Miss Brodie. She would never resign. If the authorities wanted to get rid of her she would have to be assassinated."

-Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie


"Of course great hotels have always been social ideas, flawless mirrors to the particular societies they service."

-Joan Didion.

My dream cocktail hour in heaven.
posted by clavdivs at 1:41 PM on February 1, 2018

A recent piece about Spark's Loitering With Intent.

Muriel Spark gave me a new model for a feminist hero, one that made more sense to me. The feminist act in Loitering With Intent wasn’t about deadly eyeliner or bold sexuality or anything else that seemed far out of my reach. It was about loitering — about the quiet subversiveness of simply existing in public as a woman.

posted by fuzzy night at 8:36 PM on February 1, 2018