The March Hare

Muriel Spark is gone forever now. It's only been two years since her last book came out, and Wednesday night, as I was wandering through Barnes&Noble, I found her tiny section in the shelves, shoved up against Nicholas Spark. There were only three titles there, her latest, The Finishing School, Aiding and Abetting, and, of course, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Three out of over twenty, and that's not including her short stories and poems and works of criticism, biography, and autobiography.

Muriel Spark makes me want to write. When I read one of her books, I have a clear and crystallized idea of the sort of books I want to make. Her prose is so sharp and precise, so devoid of the paragraphs of 'scenery' that I like to skim over when I read other, weightier books.

And now there will never be a new book by Muriel Spark for me to rush out and buy. I'm lucky that she's been so prolific, because there are still ten or so of her books that I haven't yet read, and so I can keep being delighted over and over again. However, I can't help feeling that she was one of the last of a certain breed of fiction writers, the kind who refused to analyze their characters, who did not involve themselves in the mire of mental processes for pages at a time. She was a sharp lady.

I'm going to miss her.