{"id":1679,"date":"2010-04-03T13:30:39","date_gmt":"2010-04-03T20:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp\/2010\/04\/muriel_spark_-_quote_of_the_da\/"},"modified":"2010-04-03T13:30:39","modified_gmt":"2010-04-03T20:30:39","slug":"muriel_spark_-_quote_of_the_da","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/2010\/04\/muriel_spark_-_quote_of_the_da.html","title":{"rendered":"Muriel Spark – wonders never cease"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thomas Mallon’s excellent essay<\/a> on the novelist Muriel Spark<\/a> is in the April 5 edition of The New Yorker<\/i>, focused on her astringent and precise eccentricities. Her short stories in that magazine have been for me a decades-long treasure. From one I remember a sentence about champagne: “Through its murk bubbles climbed.” <\/p>\n

Fallon quotes from Spark’s Loitering with Intent<\/i> from 1981, her character Fleur Talbot, like her a writer:<\/p>\n

When people say nothing happens in their lives I believe them. But you must understand that everything happens to an artist; time is always redeemed, nothing is lost and wonders never cease.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Because Mallon’s full essay is behind a subscribers-only pay wall, here are three more moments from it:<\/p>\n

Spark in New York with an office at The New Yorker<\/i> looks out a window and sees the flashing sign of the Time-Life Building. She told Shirley Hazzard that “When it says ‘Time,’ I write. When it says ‘Life,’ I want to go out.”<\/p>\n

Spark on messages: <\/p>\n

I haven’t got a message to give to the world, it’s the world that gives me messages.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And living in Rome, she loved what she called its “immediate touch of antiquity on everyday life.” Spark died in 2006.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thomas Mallon’s excellent essay on the novelist Muriel Spark is in the April 5 edition of The New Yorker, focused on her astringent and precise eccentricities. Her short stories in that magazine have been for me a decades-long treasure. From one I remember a sentence about champagne: “Through its murk bubbles climbed.” Fallon quotes from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1679","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1679\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}