The Informed Air: Essays
Muriel Spark
(Author)
Penelope Jardine
(Preface by)
Description
A fantastic essayist, the inimitable Muriel Spark addresses here the writing life, cats, favorite writers (the Brontës, T. S. Eliot, Robert Burns, Mary Shelley), love, Piero della Francesca, life in wartime London and in glamorous "Hollywood-on-the-Tiber" 1960s Rome, faith, and parties (on her first New Year's Eve, as a baby sipping her mother's sherry: "I always loved a party").No one was as "fearless and original" (TLS) as Muriel Spark, who believed that "art is an act of daring." Here she glides from the mysteries of Job's sufferings to Dame Edith Sitwell's cocktail advice about how to handle a nasty publisher: "'My dear, ' she said, 'you must acquire a pair of lorgnettes, make an occasion to see that man again, focus the glasses on him and sit looking at him through them as if he was an insect. Just look and look.'"
Product Details
Price
$15.95
Publisher
New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publish Date
January 30, 2018
Pages
304
Dimensions
4.9 X 0.9 X 7.7 inches | 0.75 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9780811227674
BISAC Categories:
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About the Author
Muriel Spark (1918-2006) was a prolific Scottish novelist, short story writer, and poet whose darkly comedic voice made her one of the most distinctive writers of the twentieth century. Spark grew up in Edinburgh and worked as a department store secretary, writer for trade magazines, and literary editor before publishing her first novel in 1957. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), considered her masterpiece, was made into a stage play, a TV series, and a film. Spark became a Dame of the British Empire in 1993.
Penelope Jardine, a painter and sculptor, is the literary executor of Muriel Spark's estate and was her best friend for many decades.
Reviews
Witty, exacting, and wholly original. Muriel Spark's writing is sui generis, her influence unquantifiable. These essays reveal in diamond-cut fragments the things that most amused and most touched her, each facet reflecting some new, surprising aspect of the deep inner workings of her mind.--Maud Newton
Muriel's sparky prose is the best way to start your day. Reading a blast of her prose every morning is a far more restorative way to start a day than a shot of espresso.
Muriel's sparky prose is the best way to start your day. Reading a blast of her prose every morning is a far more restorative way to start a day than a shot of espresso.
