Literature
Read on April 3, 2012
- Deal Me In Challenge: Oh! He's Charming! By Dorothy Parker
Card Drawn: 7 of Spades. Penguin Classic editions tend to have some of the most well-designed and evocative covers around. Dorothy Parker's Complete Stories is one of them--a cartoon drawing of a woman peeking out of a men's washroom. Simple,...
- Memento Mori By Muriel Spark
?Final perseverance is the doctrine that wins the eternal victory in small things as in great.? When Muriel Spark is on the ball, she is an absolute pleasure to read and Memento Mori showcases the author in top form. It's hard to believe that...
- The Ballad Of Peckham Rye By Muriel Spark
"All human beings who breathe are a bit unnatural." Well, it turns that out my initial positive feeling after reading the first couple pages of Muriel Spark's The Ballad of Peckham Rye were short-lived and quickly replaced by indignation. This...
- Teaser Tuesdays: The Ballad Of Peckham Rye By Muriel Spark
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. The idea is to open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. And try not to include spoilers! Trevor was seen to approach Humphrey and hit him on...
- The Comforters By Muriel Spark
Muriel Spark's debut novel The Comforters is an utterly bizarre and whimsically ambitious meta-fiction that is structured around the literary equivalent of the Chinese box technique: a novel within a novel, within a novel. Paradoxically, Spark is...
Literature
Not to Disturb by Muriel Spark
?I'm old-fashioned beyond my years.?
The use of satire and irony are trademark characteristics Muriel Spark's writing although with this novella, her technique is not nearly effective, nor compelling as some of her other works such as "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" or even "The Comforters." After finishing, I could not help but ask myself: what does it all add up to? My conclusion is, not a whole lot. The story unfolds very much like a 19th century Romantic stage play by Joanna Baillie or Mary Robinson that is interested in gender relations while cheekily ridiculing the follies of the aristocracy but it lacks the emotional depth and complexity of her predecessors. Perhaps one could make the observation that Spark is playing with the Gothic genre although these conventions do not serve any particular purpose other than establishing the setting. Of course, such a criticism may seem questionable since Spark is working within a constrained narrative framework but there still lacks a considerable amount of potentially rich subtext that does not get fully developed. The prose consists of very little descriptive passages and the bulk of the story (or lack thereof) is driven by playful and witty dialogue that Spark is exceptionally capable of delivering. She attempts to cleverly explore the tensions between class hierarchy by focusing on the perspectives of the servants who work for the Baron and Baroness of a wealthy Geneva estate only to come up short in delivering any kind of substantial social critique.
Led by an inscrutable and devious butler named Lister, the household servants plan an elaborate and utterly bizarre plot to benefit from the tragic scandal of their rich employers by accumulating wealth and becoming glorified celebrities through the media as witnesses to a tragic incident that occurs late at night on the estate. Spark seems to be commenting on media culture and the way it is purposefully manipulated to benefit those in power (or those seeking to establish themselves amongst the echelons of society) in order to maintain their dominant ideologies. Unfortunately, the novella does not leave much room to explore this central theme in much profundity and instead, comes across as a mildly entertaining farce.
Read on April 3, 2012
- Deal Me In Challenge: Oh! He's Charming! By Dorothy Parker
Card Drawn: 7 of Spades. Penguin Classic editions tend to have some of the most well-designed and evocative covers around. Dorothy Parker's Complete Stories is one of them--a cartoon drawing of a woman peeking out of a men's washroom. Simple,...
- Memento Mori By Muriel Spark
?Final perseverance is the doctrine that wins the eternal victory in small things as in great.? When Muriel Spark is on the ball, she is an absolute pleasure to read and Memento Mori showcases the author in top form. It's hard to believe that...
- The Ballad Of Peckham Rye By Muriel Spark
"All human beings who breathe are a bit unnatural." Well, it turns that out my initial positive feeling after reading the first couple pages of Muriel Spark's The Ballad of Peckham Rye were short-lived and quickly replaced by indignation. This...
- Teaser Tuesdays: The Ballad Of Peckham Rye By Muriel Spark
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. The idea is to open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. And try not to include spoilers! Trevor was seen to approach Humphrey and hit him on...
- The Comforters By Muriel Spark
Muriel Spark's debut novel The Comforters is an utterly bizarre and whimsically ambitious meta-fiction that is structured around the literary equivalent of the Chinese box technique: a novel within a novel, within a novel. Paradoxically, Spark is...