Curriculum Vitae

...Anthony Messenger Press books are available at your St...

...to 6 p.m...

...And most fans Soyinka who insist that it is the experi- will be delighted to discover the prototype ence of the individual child which must of Miss Jean Brodie in the figure of an acbe honored...

...Taylor in fact comes closest to being a main char- vision...

...visit, and listening raptly as she spun out pany because she is a fiction writer who This adult goal occupies the latter half wonderful sentences like the one about has acquired justifiable international of the book in which she straightens the the doorbell: "That ring at the door that renown while, at the same time, enlarg- record mostly in a tone of breezy rectiI loved so much would bring, in the af- ing the scope of the genre, as well as the tude, while, at times, permitting the readternoon, my mother's friends or, on rare possibilities of the written language...

...Spark had other person's life...

...Spark's novthe others being Judgment, Hell, and Heaven...

...Readers are asked to see that erwise of old age...

...Although my thematic dyspepsia of this novel...

...to bakeries and dairies and her school, but Hardcover, 552 pages...

...Gifted cumstances or events in her life with those writers who can locate the happiness in stories or books which subsequently emtheir youth allow the simplest things: bodied them...

...I would won- possibly high, it also feels completely of bookstores and public libraries in book der who this Muriel Spark was meant to natural, and concerns the arduous respon- after book after book...

...Marie Stopes...

...Cinema and teleconverts...

...A final response rectors should feel a serious commitment to novels as original is the Christian one-to accede to the reminder and remember scenarios, and should strive for the spirit of a given text: that Death is but first among the so-called Four Last Things, the rubric "based on" ought to carry weight...

...ty-nine years of that life, is not simply Vitae, I felt gleeful...

...this is no novel...

...This plan in turn required the playing down of Jean Taylor's role and the removal from the film of Alec Warner, the gerontologist who had briefly been Jean's lover When the spark is gone and who remains both loyal to her and staunchly skeptiSomething there is that doesn't love Muriel cal of everything beyond the social scientist's raw data...

...In short, the hook is about a range of reactions...

...Spark-and that something appears to be the film indus- Jean's ideological squabbles with Alec, past and present, try...

...Their insistence is not based tual teacher, Miss Christina Kay, who on a sentimental evocation of time past, once commented, "I would like to see a but rather resides in the gradual exposure grey coat and skirt for the spring, girls, of the reader to the particular texture and worn with a citron beret...

...As in the "doorbell" Muriel Spark, the one who at once dashrace me through the chapters full of hard- sentence, Spark's art has an uncanny es through and jots down the early pages ship (a "disastrous marriage" in Africa manner of imitating life, for by the time of this volume, spouting verse and gigto a disturbed and violent man), separa- I am pacing through the adult Spark's days gling with her brother, one must simply tion (a motherhood spent apart from her with her, I too am nostalgic for her child- go to those other shelves...

...The American to discover who's literally on the other only to book-length works), the art of reading public will probably take this acside of the door...

...Anthon to feel slighted because she doesn't share 1615 Republic Street Messenger Press, call toll-free: 1-800.488.0488, her button collection...

...Anthony Messenger Press local religious bookstore...

...Muriel Spark list could go on-but, in vain, I would portively liberated from the constraints of would approve...

...Another reaction is My point is not, of course, that films can never be novto acknowledge the words (rather than the caller) and in els, or that deviation is intolerable...

...But constitute openness...

...Do producers miss Spark's fear-ridden ones and pushing those of Mortimer and Taylor...

...Of course, I miss chapof blue...

...Or do they simply regard it as death We die of this or that medically specifiable problem, in- for ratings...

...This volume provides a unique look into the life and she takes me by the hand and leads me world of one of the outstanding figures of contemporary Catholicism...

...To order direct from St...

...Dickens, Hardy, and Trot lope, of thrillers, crime this human diversity and sympathizes with it, pitying the stories, and historical romances...

...And those "married count as an example of exotic British beaunts," held at bay by word after word havior: to feel still so upset over such a after word, not to mention four commas, short tenure in a then-minor institution...

...never for a moment does it occur to me St...

...Archbishop Romero tive...

...How many With nineteen novels, two collections of past injustices...

...this volume, stated in the introduction, As soon as Spark turns to adult life, even If in the adult half of this book, there is ambitious by anyone's measure: "Ire- without her suggestion that this autobi- is no effusive and emboldening love story solved...

...BOOKS Muriel Spark: A selective silence s I was reading the firstCURRICULUM VITAE writing has shaped Muriel Spark's entwo chapters of Muriel Autobiography tire life...

...First I hear the ring...

...To find the adult be...

...Translation by Irene B. Hodgson I realize I run the risk of wanting too Foreword by Thomas E. Quigley much from an already atypically gener- Introduction by James R. Brockman, S.J...

...ous writer, but I find Spark's concerted effort to keep her own heart off the pages This diary chronicles the daily work of Archbishop Oscar Romern of El Salvador of her autobiography and my response to from March 31, 1978, through March 20, 1980...

...In sponds that he's too busy listening to life's interests to waste short, the film failed the novel, and Cooke failed both...

...but we die as well of our lives...

...including its television branch...

...Oh yes, the sure, clear voice would sibility of adulthood...

...It relishes by Janies...

...Or her first kiss...

...E.S.I), Monday through Friday...

...livering one's richly remembered child- Of greater interest to Americans should hood suggests that glee and curiosity, be the generosity with which Spark enanticipation and the sting of disappoint- courages readers to link the particular cirment are serious human matters...

...He had almost assuredly not read or not understood pronounced invitation to sort these out and to sec what rides the novel, and had difficulty smiling patronizingly (for two on the i r d i ffe re nce s. The hook is hilariously, dead-serious- weeks) over what he saw as this grand cast of oldsters enly, and intriguingly about how a number of characters-all gaged in a mysterious tale invented by a young Muriel Spark over seventy-react to their own telephone message: who, in these her later years, would very likely think oth"Remember you must die...

...to write an autobiography which ography might reveal who she is, I em- to reveal Spark's heart, it is not for lack would help to explain, to myself and oth- brace a different way of listening...

...14: 21 May 1993 Commonweal lemon, it is yellow with a sixteenth or so hood I am simply thankful that she re- love felt natural...

...I a colorful reminiscence, nor even the tale was having great, earnest fun inside an- Elizabeth Beverly of a writer's growth over time...

...A% Spark's extraordinary Muriel Spark This volume, covering the first thirlife story, Curriculum Houghton Mifflin, Co., $22.95, 213 pp...

...written since I became well known, that for the doorbell to ring to see who might Muriel Spark sits well in such com- I felt it time to put the record straight...

...At times I catch a glimpse of her, when, for instance, she launches her chapter on her African marriage with a stoic ode to the conscious repression of ARCHBISHOP "personal sorrows, frights, and horrors...

...If this standard of mine seems im- lies outside these pages, on the shelves ter to live fully on the page...

...theological foundation...

...When she writes of her childCommonweal 21 Mav 1993: 15...

...rather it presents Intelligence during World War II)-this when being both ardently loved and sup- a tantalizing invitation...

...Rather, I think that difact set one's house and one's self in order...

...er to hear a sharp rasp of outrage over occasions, my married aunts...

...But whether Spark's as a fortunate reminder of the importance of death to the books are suited to the cinema or not, most of the attempts relishing of this life as well as the Christian reactions of have proved disappointing-and none more so than Charmian Colston and Jean Taylor, both of them Catholic Masterpiece Theatre's "Memento Mori...

...I catch it again when she is being cruelly but truly humorous as she refers to one OSCAR of her arch-enemies in the Poetry Society, Dr...

...No country con- reunion for Charmian and Taylor-to absolutely no purtains so many superb actors as does England, including those pose, presumably, save to suggest how nice it would be actors capable of portraying, aged cranks and assorted other for two old ladies to make up before the reaper calls...

...By leaving Taylor in such a modest cubbyapplies as well to other attempts to film Spark novels- hole of the plot, by padding the minor role of caretaker and The Driver's Scat, The Abbess of Crewe, and The Prime giving it to Maggie Smith, and by dropping virtually evq/'Miss Jean Brothe-l will restrict my critique to "Momento erything of spiritual import imposed narratively, the film Mori...

...it's a life...

...Citron means Commonweal 21 Mav 1993: 13 the Holmesian brand of mystery supposedly behind the telephone calls...

...Nor Dickensian caricatures, all imported more or less faithful- is it gratuitous to note that Alistair Cooke, now retired from ly from Spark's novel...

...As for God, Spark book were the novel that sought to bring gance, and that I have the right to seek will not speak of that dimension of beher to life, I'd have to conclude that the her life both in her silence and in her lief, and the other great discipline, her art, author had never permitted her charac- speech...

...especially the Public Broadcasting System, have acter, and the narrator's last words emphasize Taylor's be- adapted many novels to the screen...

...Other listeners hear the same satirical insight and capacity for empathy evident the words as the threat of a murder and hasten to get in Memento Marl (1959...

...I turn once again to her childhood...

...We are what we eat, Jose plr Hyne s teaches modern liiemlutre al the University The film virtually disregards the book...

...The and again to the generative quality of a parfirst chapters of this volume place Spark, ticular incident-seeing Victoria Falls for whose extended childhood was set in the first time, for instance-and its ultiScotland in the 1920s and'30s, in the com- mate expression in a story that a reader pany of writers like Vladimir Nabokov, can find in the library-in this case "The Eudora Welty, Laye Camara, and Wole Seraph and the Zambesi...

...any time and energy thinking on death...

...members anything at all...

...of an account of her father's whiskers...

...A third kind of listener re- the producers and Cooke missed the point of this work...

...is revered throughout the world as a fearless defender of the poor and a man of It seems miraculous and fabulous that uncompromising vision...

...This observation is focus the materialistic-religious groundwork and thereby prompted by the recent "Masterpiece Theatre" presenta- direct us to the different kind of mystery that is the point tion of Memento Mori...

...If this were a novel I could say curacy, but accurate sharing of informa- thusiasms and fears, and always through that the second half simply doesn't live tion or remembered speech does not those material things which he or she up to the dazzling promise of the first...

...I think offhand of books lief...

...then I wait for children to her credit (and here I refer London from 1947-49...

...There I was in Ed- another intention when she undertook this inburgh, happily guided by little Muriel, work: "So many strange and erroneous smelling "warm, round, happy rolls with whirr of the stuff that filled the writer's accounts of parts of my life have been a powdering of flour," waiting with her childhood, as if time means nothing...

...I understand that ter 2 when I'm stranded in chapter 6. She Spark both reveres and practices ac- a child's heart is revealed through en- does too...

...Despite the mention of many ers: Who am I." If Muriel Spark were spontaneously suspect that a selective si- friends, Spark's silent eloquence sugmeant to be a character with passions and lence reveals a multitude of qualities: gests that, after parents and son, her main rages and motives and felt needs, and this stoicism, reticence, mistrust, even arro- loves are God and work...

...become both rare and precious by the time Yet Spark's devotion to detailed honesty they finally reach me...

...els, heavily dependent as they are upon narrative authoriSpark's narrative strategy does justice to these various ty for their philosophical and theological grounding, may credibly human reactions...

...El search for the person who had endured and thrived...

...The real point, however, is that Scotland Yard to trace the call...

...And yet again when she acknowledges her conversion to ROMERO Roman Catholicism in 1954 with a refusal to discuss the role of her faith in A Shepherd's Diary her life or work...

...Spark's generosity is both bread, butter, desks, bicycles, to assume graceful and casual, as she points again a significance that touches everyone...

...renders this account poignant, at the Such easy yet artful authority when de- very least...

...For example, she rewriters allow the sentence itself to imi- poetry, five of short stories, one drama, counts in detail her serious grievance as tate so effortlessly its own emotional three volumes of criticism, and one book the editor of The Poetry Society in content...

...B1701 $24.95...

...JOSEPH IHYNES deed...

...In fact, almost thirty-five years and sixsome persons succeed in forcing themselves to forget that teen novels later, Muriel Spark has continued to display the telephone bell ever tolled for them...

...I don't feel bereft Cincinnati, OH 45210 8 a.m...

...Another intention for loves...

...settles for whimsy, for the sadness and pathos of fear and In a sense, the recent two-part "Masterpiece" version of decline, and in the end for a thoroughly impossible cozy Memento Mori offered abundant delights...

...Four days after the last diary entry, that effort both problematic and instruc- Archbishop Romero was assassinated while celebrating Mass...

...This predicaown son), adventure (a stint with British hood and its lushness, I too want that time ment poses no problem...

...His study, The Art of the Real: Muriel Spark's decision was made to play up codgerly eccentricity and Novels, was published in 1988...

...Obviously the of Oregon...

...This novel has no single protago- "Masterpiece Theatre," nearly absented himself from these nist, but it does offer several prominent attitudes and a doings...

...I of love...

...At the same time, the book em- simply be unfilmable on their own moral and aesthetic phasizes, in the epigraphs, in numbers of pages allotted to terms-unlike, for example, "Brideshcad Revisited," a film particular responses, and in placement of occasions, the that used voice-over and a realistic format to render secular calmness of Inspector Mortimer, who takes the call Waugh's religious novel beautifully...