This Paperback Book item from New Directions Publishing Corporation was reviewed on 26-Oct-2008.
Search ISBN:081121494X offer from Abebooks or used books from Alibris. All the Stories of Muriel Spark Reference Book. Classifications : Spark, Muriel ( S ) Authors, A-Z Literature & Fiction Subjects Books General Criticism & Theory History & Criticism Literature & Fiction Subjects Books General AAS Criticism & Theory History & Critici . Click the following link to view the cover of All the Stories of Muriel Spark. Related topics: Spark, Muriel. ( S ). Authors, A-Z. Subjects. Books. General. Criticism & Theory. History & Criticism. Subjects. Books. requestid: b67b0175-daa3-4f8e-bacb-e05461cf4b08
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1) Paperback Book All the Stories of Muriel Spark by New Directions Publishing Corporation. All The Stories of Muriel Spark (2000) is the latest edition of novelist´s short fiction; four stories have been added since the book was released as Open to the Public: New & Collected Stories in 1997. The new edition is fully warranted, as Spark remains one of the greatest short story writers in English of her time, a fact rarely acknowledged in the literary world.
Best known as the author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) and typically designated in the press over the decades as ´the Catholic novelist´ or ´the Scottish novelist,´ Spark is in fact, above all, a Gnostic writer of the first order. Throughout her twenty-three novels and other works, which include drama, radio plays, criticism, autobiography, poetry, and a story for children, Spark´s elegant, kinetic work--whether through first person or omniscient narrative--is guided and revealed by intuitive but accurate sudden flashes of insight and perception which reveal the fundamental truth behind appearances. Spark has said that she "doesn´t go in for motives," and neither has she gone in for standard, consensus-reality ´rational´ explanations. For Spark, human life and reality itself are infinitely strange and mysterious, blanketed in a perpetual "cloud of unknowing" through which keen human intelligence, however, if rightfully applied, can often successfully penetrate.
In the guise of the ´supernatural,´ the mysterious plays an appropriately substantial role in Spark´s short fiction. ´The Portabello Road,´ ´The Leaf-Sweeper,´ ´The Executor,´ ´Another Pair of Hands,´ and ´The Girl I Left Behind Me´ are ghost stories of a kind, but certainly not horror stories in the grand British tradition of M. R. James. Arthur Machen, and Algernon Blackwood. ´The Seraph and the Zambesi´ features of the unexpected arrival of a grotesque angel at an African Nativity play, while the title character in ´Miss Pinkerton´s Apocalypse´ is beset by a flying ´saucer´--the kind used at tea time--in her home. Weirdly toying with the literal and the figurative, Spark allows the guardian ´personal assistant´ in ´The Dragon´ to begin breathing actual fire to demonstrate her essential nature.
But Spark never relies on the paranormal as a crutch: ´Bang-Bang You´re Dead,´ ´The Twins,´ ´The Pawnbroker´s Wife,´ ´The Ormolu Clock,´ the grim ´The Dark Glasses,´ and ´A Member of the Family´ seamlessly reveal Spark´s acute psychological understanding of the human condition.
´Come Along, Marjorie´ brilliantly examines the role of faith and gnostic insight when juxtaposed with mass belief and crowd mentality, and ´The Black Madonna,´ among the very best of Spark´s short work, hilariously exposes the hypocrisy often inherent in progressive Protestantism. Young African citizen Daphne in ´The Go-Away Bird´ finds the long-dreamt of realities of life in England to be far more precarious than playing the role of sacrificial pawn for her unsound guardians in her native country, while a manipulative power broker gets her comeuppance via a pair of tattered, uncouth garters left on public display in ´Daisy Overend.´
Often "stunned by privilege" of various kinds, many of Spark´s unconsciously predatory characters live via assumption in a comfortable fog until rudely awakened by the sharp intervention of an outside agency. Though the pompous, the smug, the condescending, the pretentious, the aggressively stupid, and the power-hungry come in for particularly painful reversals, Spark is wise enough to acknowledge the basic vulnerability of all members of mankind at all times.
In Spark´s vision, most individuals in positions of power are rarely deserving of them; correspondingly, the author never advocates mere passive goodness in the face of confrontational immorality. Spark protagonists, which exist more clearly in her novels, are action-oriented and self-responsible concerning their own spiritual and practical welfare. Thus, Spark´s often carefully delineated ´can do´ approach is one of the most exhilarating aspects of her work. One naive character innocently responds to everything she is told with "Oh, I see," but in fact sees nothing, a response which leads directly to her demise.
It isn´t terribly surprising that Spark isn´t more widely known or read, especially in America. Compared to the faux-sensitivity, bland style, and the very small kernels of ideas that went into most of Hemingway´s work, for example, Spark is and always has been a more complex literary thoroughbred. Though a small portion of her work is creatively unsuccessful, Spark remains utterly original.
The simple truth is that, while always entertaining and often thrilling, Spark´s work, regardless of its essential humanity, is often too intelligent and challenging for a mass public that continually desires a comfortable and redundant reinforcement of its basic beliefs, no matter how limiting or misguided. But like the work of William Blake, William Butler Yeats, or T. S. Elliot, Spark´s oeuvre offers readers the opportunity to glimpse life anew, cleansed free of the sterile and obsolete programs of thought which hamper essential personal freedom and invaluable individual perception.
¤ 2) Paperback Book All the Stories of Muriel Spark by New Directions Publishing Corporation. All the Stories of Muriel Spark spans Dame Muriel Spark´s entire career to date and displays all her signature stealth, originality, beauty, elegance, wit, and shock value. No writer commands so exhilarating a style -- playful and rigorous, cheerful and venomous, hilariously acute and coolly supernatural. Ranging from South Africa to the West End, her dazzling stories feature hanging judges, fortune-tellers, shy girls, psychiatrists, dress designers, pensive ghosts, imaginary chauffeurs, and persistent guests.¤ Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 23-Nov-2008, 081121494X9780811214940, 630-890-750-450-4X0-621-971-8 
All the Stories of Muriel Spark, Book, Image © New Directions Publishing Corporation
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