Muriel Spark

Muriel Spark's death was announced this week. by Massimiliano Dindalini, the mayor
of the Tuscan village of Civitella della Chiana. She was 88. Described as a writer of finely polished darkly comic prose. She died in Florence. To have lived in village with such a lyrical name and with an equally lyrical Mayor's name is is just fine. Romantic enough and somehow very final. When you die far away from your place of birth which for Ms. Sparks (her married name) was Scotland, it does seem final. She lived in a sprawling mediveal church with her companion "an old fashioned friendship" Penelope Jardine. Her first novel "The Comforters" was published when she was 39 and subsequently produced a "steam of slender novels and enigmatic short stories". In her work "evil is never far away, violence is a regualr visitor and death is a constant companion." She said she saw her craft as driven by inspiration from an "outside force" unlocking memory in a manner derived from reading Marcel Proust. The obituary is long and appeared in the April 16th issue of the New York Times. You may remember her for "The prime of Miss Brodie" adapted for the stage in 1964. The obit did not make me want to read her books. I had enough hints about what I would find in her work to turn the page.Two photos of Ms. Spark taken 21 years apart added a Proustian touch to her story. Obituaries that cover the span of an artist's life in detail are always interesting to me. It's not like reading about the life of a banker. It's about art and life.