Introduction ‘I Don’t Know Anything about Freud’: Muriel Spark Meets Contemporary Criticism

Abstract

Muriel Spark is one of the most important novelists of the twentieth century. However, critical (as opposed to religious) orthodoxy declares that she ‘is a Catholic writer’.² For some this may appear an unproblematic formulation but much will depend here upon what is meant by ‘Catholic’, ‘writer’ and — in the immortal words of William Jefferson Clinton — what the meaning of ‘is’ is. One does not need to go far to find testaments to this universal Catholic criticism. Malcolm Bradbury is perhaps the greatest sinner in this regard. In his oft-cited essay ‘Muriel Spark’s Fingernails’ he writes that ‘Mrs. Spark’ can be compared to ‘a number of our Catholic writers (who have contributed more than their proportionate share to aesthetic speculation in the English novel).’³ It is not clear what one should be most surprised by here, the marginalizing gesture of fixing the marital status of a female author (what for heaven’s sake is wrong with referring to her as plain ‘Muriel Spark’) or the quaint assumptions about Anglo-Protestant hegemony. Who are the collective ‘we’ implied by ‘our Catholic writers’? A phrase which is on a par with ‘our best China’ or ‘our pet spaniels’. One can imagine the disquiet had Bradbury referred in such assured tones to ‘our black writers’ or ‘our Jewish writers’.

The world has surely become unhinged, and only violent movements can put it all back together. But it may be that among the instruments for doing so, there is one — tiny, fragile — which requires to be wielded delicately.

Brecht¹

Tuck the general reader,’ Solly said, ‘because in fact the general reader doesn’t exist.’

Loitering with Intent