Backlisted - Memento Mori by Muriel Spark

Episode Date: May 28, 2024

John Grindrod, author of Concretopia, joins John Mitchinson and Andy Miller to discuss Memento Mori, the third novel by Muriel Spark. They also pay tribute to the author and agent David Miller, who passed away recently, and read a short story in his memory. Timings: (may differ due to adverts) 3'00 - Food For All Seasons by Oliver Rowe 9'30 - Good Evening, Mrs.Craven by Mollie Panter-Downes 18'44 - A State of Denmark by Derek Raymond* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted This is an old episode of Backlisted from 2019 which we have re-published to fix an edit. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's BetterHelp.com. meeting with friends before the show, we can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance. Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. What's the Croydon thing that's been going on on Twitter? What's that?

What is that? What is the Croydon thing? So we did a... So John and I did a series of gigs. Not last year, but the year before, already. Oh, God. In Croydon. We did a series of gigs. Not last year, but the year before already. Oh, God. In Croydon. We did a series of gigs called Croydon Till I Die.

With fellow Croydon residents. Lucy Mangan came and did one and Bob Stanley. You don't live in Croydon. Or did you used to live in Croydon? Yeah, I grew up near Croydon. He's got the tattoos. I went to Croydon every Saturday afternoon from the years 1973 to 1985. The only thing I know about Croydon is Saturday afternoon from the years 1973 to 1985

The only thing I know about Croydon is the population is the same as Iceland It is! John tell John about our triumphant homecoming gig We did a show at Croydon Fairfield Halls which you know is a famous place

Presumably if you know Croydon Only place I've ever played my mum was impressed with, I tell you. And loads of bands, loads of really famous bands like Craftwork and Sparks and people have played there over the years. So it's, you know. And Captain Sensible was? Yeah, well, he was. He cleaned the toilet.

The toilet attendant. Yes, that's right. Yes. Good music treasure, Matt. Great. And yeah, so we got to play this kind of like, you know, 350 people. They had to bring those amazing chairs in, didn't they? It's amazing.

We played the Arnhem Gallery in the Fairfield Halls. And when we arrived, the stewards said, yes, we're expecting about, oh, I don't know, 30 or 40. And we're going to move you into a smaller room. And so Peter and I and Bob went to the bar to go, oh, well, never mind. We'll put everyone down the front. And then when they opened the doors, like 350 people came in, including my auntie Linda, who I deliberately hadn't told about the gig.

It's like the producers. Yeah, it was amazing. They liked it. Yeah, or it was like a scene from Ben-Hur. All these extras just kept flooding in all the time. It was like, oh, my God, there's more people than the room can hold. What's going on? Hashtag famous in Croydon.

It was very exciting. We'll have wine, women and song. And women. My favourite line from the producers. It's one of the best nights of my life. Oh, it was a great, it was an amazing night. Amazing. Well, it was very exciting.

How was Christmas? It was brilliant. My time zones were a week in New Zealand. Oh, you were a brilliant, it was an amazing night. Amazing. Well, it's very exciting. How was Christmas? It was brilliant. My time zones were a week in New Zealand. Oh, you were in New Zealand? It was strange. No, I wasn't in New Zealand for Christmas. I came back on the 23rd. So I was a bit topsy-turvy, but it's brilliant for reading. Plane travel is, I always think I should just, every month I should go on a very, very long, because there is literally nothing else to do. You think, oh, I'll watch some of the in-flight movies.

And one good film, Captain Fantastic, and the rest of it was, I mean, I could have watched the whole of Lord of the Rings again. I could have watched the whole of The Hobbit again, although why would you? Well, weirdly, my brother was in it, which was quite amusing. At one point I was sitting next to a Japanese girl,

and I said, that's my brother in there just there and she looked and looked again she said incredible yeah what role did your brother play third orc from the left he played no he played he had a few lines they weren't totally good lines like they're over there

or this way but he was called Braga he had a not only did he have a named character but he also had a Lego model. While I was in New Zealand, he got a royalty check. And he's actually, weirdly,

he's become addicted to backlisting. It's rather touching. Oh, that's nice. Hello, Braga. But he got a royalty check from the US for the merchandise rights alone of $3,000 can you imagine what

Ian McKellen I once did some work, animated some Lego figures for a thing when I was working at the Guardian so I was in contact with the people at Lego, do you know the best thing about working at Lego? Go on.

Is they don't give you a business card, they give you a little mini-fig like you with your name printed on the front and your phone number on the front of the... I mean it would be worth working at Lego just for that wouldn't it? I thought some of us have done that ourselves. I tweeted that I was... I booked a mini-break in Mordor because the exchange rate was better than the EU. Did anybody have any tips? And Matthew came back and said you probably ought to ring ahead. It's quite a good thread, that.

Yeah, I did see it. I did see it. Amusing. Shall we start then? Why don't we? Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books. If this is the first time you're listening to us in 2017, then Happy New Year. You join us once more gathered around the kitchen table in the stripped-back, Scandi-vibed,

Islington Canal side office of our sponsors Unbound, the website which brings authors and readers together to make great books. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound. And I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. Happy New Year, everyone. And joining us today is John Grindrod, Croydon's John Grindrod. Happy New Year. Author of Concretopia, a book about the modernist rebuilding of post-war Britain, and its associated blog, Dirty Modern Scoundrel. He's most definitely not the John Grindrod

who was the Bishop of Brisbane from 1980 to 1989, who was the last Englishman to be elected Primate of Australia. Although if you do a Google search, quite often his biography comes up with my picture. Our John Grindrod, however, does have a new book coming out in May, I believe, is that right? That is true.

Called Outskirts, which is being published by Scepter. What is that book about? Like, I don't know. So that book, Andy, thank you for asking, is the story of how the Greenbelts came into being. So from the kind of Victorian ideas of kind of the countryside and the sprawling of towns and how cities were seen as evil pits of sin right through to the 1930s and 50s when they started to become an actual policy by the government

and then to now where they're all sort of falling to bits. We as Croydon dwellers, and me specifically as a Coulsdon dweller, we live near Farthing Downs, which was a lovely little bit of Greenbelt, unspoilt Greenbelt land. I don't even know if that's still there or whether that's been. No, I grew up opposite the Greenbelt as well, right on the edge of New Addington outside Croydon so a lot of the book is actually a sort of family story about my family's inability to kind of quite navigate living on the edge of the countryside or integrate with the housing estate that we lived on so there's a lot of that in it as well we're both very pro-suburban you can tell yeah well it's it's where it was where all the action happens obviously edge lands do you know

that yes yeah yeah it's a lovely book yeah. Good to have more about Croydon on there. But the book that John is here to talk about is not his own. It's Memento Mori by Meryl Spark. But actually, before we get on to that, a little bit of housekeeping. Imagine, our surprise listeners, when listening to one of our favourite podcasts, the New York Times Book Review, we got, as I think they call it, Andy, a shout out. That's what I'm told. From John Williams, the New York Times Daily Books Editor.

Would you like to hear what he said? I'd love to. Even though I'm on a podcast every week or mostly weeks, I don't really listen to many podcasts, but one that I do is this British podcast called Backlisted. And it's sort of a book club where it's about an hour long and they choose a book based on a guest who recommends it. And then they sit around and talk about it and read passages from it. And it's all very elegant and charming in that British way and very smart.

And they recently did one of my favorite books, which Greg had talked about earlier this year, called So Long, See You Tomorrow, a brief novel by William Maxwell. And so their enthusiasm for it sent me back to it. And it's short, so that's nice. And I reread that, which is just, it's one of only like a handful of books that I would say is maybe perfect. So, John Williams, that is. Thank you very much. Yes, thanks, John. Much appreciated in our charming kind of, you know, understated British way.

Thanks very much. We're really pleased. But now, Andy, can you tell us in that elegant, charming way that you have what you've been reading? So,

to slightly change the tone of what we've been talking about, we've all just come back from Christmas and I'm sorry to report many of the people

listening to this will be aware of this, that our friend, the agent, literary agent and writer david miller passed away over christmas and i was a friend of david's i saw him probably about oh i don't know six weeks ago he was on terrific form he was then as i'm sure he will be remembered an enthusiast David's enthusiasm for his authors and for writing in general your phone would ring you go yes who is it and you go Miller you say how are you David sickeningly well And then he just reads to you whatever he happened to be infused about at the time,

be it one of his authors or be it he loved Anita Bruckner, he loved Shirley Hazard. He loved Muriel Spark, in fact. He did. And one of the other projects that David worked on, which we're going to talk about briefly, was a fantastic collection of 100 short stories called That Glimpse of Truth. And David wrote a little introduction to every story that he included in that volume.

And the volume is one of those volumes of short stories where the ones you know are the right ones and the ones you don't know are usually terrific. So you look for The Nose by Gogol, and it's in here. You look for Sredni Vasht the nose by goggle and it's in here you look for sredney vashtar by sarky it's in here you look for in dreams begin responsibilities by delmore schwartz that's in here but there's all sorts of other interesting and stranger things and there's also an index as well but it isn't an index it's jg ballard story the index um which takes the form of an index but this is what David wrote about Muriel Spark

he said Muriel Spark, 1918 to 2006 was the author of several novels including The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie it should be noted that whole novel was published by the New Yorker before volume publication her finest fiction was short

The Driver's Seat is a model of sheer genius which I read like Melville's Bartleby each year. And that made me think of William Maxwell twice, because first of all, So Long, See You Tomorrow was published in its entirety in the New Yorker, and second of all, if people listened to the Maxwell episode a few weeks ago, you'll remember that William Maxwell said he wasn't frightened of death he was just sorry he wouldn't be able to read any more novels yeah which I think perhaps David at some level would have would have agreed with John did you know you knew I knew him I mean really not not not as a close friend but as somebody who I always immensely look forward to seeing he had that capacity to as you say the

capacity to enthuse you on on anything that he was representing but also just on literature in general he's he was i mean you know when people talk about being well read i mean david had read everything he was remarkable i mean you could talk you could talk to him literally pick an author out of the sky and he would have an opinion, and usually a well-informed opinion. He laughs nervously, yeah. And I just think, wonderful sitting in his office, listening to him talk. He always had wonderful music playing. He was brilliant at music.

He was generous. He was funny. He was waspish. He was kind of, in a way, concentrated. When you think of old school, the old school values of publishing, He was funny. He was waspish. He was kind of, in a way, concentrated. When you think of old school, the old school values of publishing. That's so true. He was like a character from a Muriel Spark novel, in a way. In a way, he was so well drawn.

He was so, you know, his insights were always so good. And he was also funny, you know, just used to make you roar with laughter. I mean, Frankfurt with that, Frankfurt with David, anywhere you went, he was, obviously, he enjoyed being the person who would meet, you know, he'd introduce you to somebody else or drop you into the middle of a situation. He had, he was, you know, he played pranks on you. But I just remember when we started Unbound, you know, there was a lot of kind of was a lot of agents were sceptical,

but he was fantastically supportive, had us into the Rogers Coleridge and White office, talked to us about books, and I think we did in the end, we ended up doing through him and Peter Strauss the Gautam Malkani book. What I'd been reading, I hadn't read his novel, which I'd always meant to read today,

which is a remarkable book. He called it his dead dad book because, I mean, in some strange way, that book has mirrored his own life. His father died suddenly and he found that it was a tremendous blow to him. And this book is about the sudden death of Joseph Conrad, the author that he was kind of an acknowledged expert on. We would love to have had David in on the list to talk about Conrad. He was on our long list of people to have in and talk. And the book is... It's a magnificent, I think, short novel.

Again, in that vein, the Maxwell vein. Perfect economy. In a way, I read it with massive sadness because I found it incredibly moving because he's, you know, particularly about that Conrad leaves two sons behind, the effect of sudden death and of grief and how

it transfigures families and I mean, you know, without pushing that too far obviously for Kate, his ex-wife and their two sons I mean, you know, sudden death is just a... It just is very, very difficult to deal with. But the fact that he was able to write

about it so precisely and with no sentimentality at all, it's a very unsentimental book, albeit, as you say, an incredibly moving one. It's called Today, David's novel, and he'd started writing a second novel, I think I'm right saying.

Yeah, and that's the other thing you feel, God, I mean, you know, you wanted, you know, you felt there was more to come. Like you said, he'd got rid, he said, it's my dead dad book, and he had got rid of that. Today is based on a Conrad story

called Tomorrow, and there's a quote from that story, which David put, I think built the book around which is this in the bush somewhere in the sea on a blamed mountaintop for choice at home yes the world's my home but I expect I'll die in a hospital someday what of it any place is good enough as long as I've lived. Wonderful. And the thing is, to think of the world which we inhabit, the publishing world, without David Miller in it, it's just not going to be the same.

It really is. The number of people that you see, you know, when you breeze into a party and you scan the room, I always felt when you saw David coming towards you, I'm glad I came. Yeah. Because you knew you were going to have maybe just five minutes of intense but very, very good conversation. And he'd normally say, have you read or did you see or I must send you.

And that is the difference, I think, not having a lightning rod, a lightning conductor. In the introduction to his stories I'm just going to quote him one more time he says here I hope the stories collected here reflect what writing is about life and its complications and then a bit further on he says I grew up with Saki being read to me at school and then Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected manipulated my adolescence on television. At the same time in my teens, each school day morning when I opened my bedroom curtains, I could gaze on where Somerset

and Maugham's ashes had been interred. One Christmas holiday, after he'd just won the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature, and when I was nearly 17 and stricken with some glandular thing, literature and when I was nearly 17 and stricken with some glandular thing I asked my mother if she could buy anything by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and she came back from the WH Smith in Burgess Hill with the whole sodding lot and then there's a waspish footnote about WH Smith so I shall refrain from reading perhaps they will the other thing I mean by the way, the introduction is a fantastic collection, that glimpse of truth. Published by Head of Seuss. It's a massive volume, 1,000 pages, but it's well worth investing in. And there's also a wonderful defence of the short story as a form,

which David does at the beginning. There's a wonderful, just not without reading anymore, it's just to say, bumping into a friend who said, you know, have you read Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford yet? And when David said no, he said, I envy you. And I think, if I was sort of thinking of an anecdote that sort of sums up what we're trying to do, is it's that thing of almost saying,

have you read The Vet's Daughter by Barbara Cummings? And you say, no, well, I envy you because the first time you read it. It's so true. These books, so you'll long see tomorrow. So, David, sorry we never got you on here. Yes. But next time around. But here's to you and here's to your two boys.

Yeah. Fortunately, we have a guest who's chosen a novel obsessed with death for our podcast this week. John Grindrod, may I ask you, you chose Memento Mori, not Mori, Mori, by Muriel Spark. When did you first read this book? So this was the second Muriel Spark book I read. I mean, I guess like most people, the first one I read was, you know, amazing. The Prime. Yeah, exactly.

The Prime of the History of Brodie, which I actually, I haven't read. But I have obviously, I feel like I've read it because we saw, I've seen Maggie Smith. Yeah, yeah, of course. And I saw that film when I was a teenager and then I read the book. And then I wanted to read another one. And I was one of those kind of gloomy teenagers who was obsessed with death. And so this one jumped off the shelf at me when I was looking for the next one to read.

And I just loved it. I think that it's got, you know, a lot of the things that I really loved at the time, which is that very waspish voice. I mean, I was listening to a lot of Smith songs, and I was, you know, watching a lot of Alan Bennett monologues, you know, and it just kind of felt like it was part of that world, know you paint a picture exactly a vulgar one and um uh it just felt like it was an extension of that sort of mindset really and I just absolutely loved this book I was sort

of I think one of the things I really liked about it is that I was very I was young at the time and I think it paints such a kind of vivid picture of being old and of being still absolutely fantastically alive and I found that kind of weird even though it's got so many kind of quite negative things in it it is it is an amazing portrait of being old and vital and unlikely all the time, which I very much enjoyed and sort of found quite inspiring. So when did she write it? She was 41.

It was her third novel. It was written in 1959. And she didn't start... It's an interesting book. She'd written The Comforters, which is a novel about a weird experience she'd had when she... I i mean there's so much to say about muriel spock but let's say these two things she was very poor she worked very very hard for quite a long time at doing a series of very interesting but odd jobs including being president of the poetry

society indeed and she got ill because she didn't eat enough because because she was poor. And then she was also taking dexedrine. And this made her have hallucinations, hallucinations in her mind about words, where she felt that the whole of T.S. Eliot, there was some strange acrostic meaning into the whole of T.S. Eliot's poetry. So the first book is about somebody who suffers from this strange delusion, and it got brilliant reviews. She does another kind of adventure novel called Robinson,

and then she writes Memento Mori, which I think most people feel is the first brilliant, sparkian novel. And she's also, she converts, doesn't she, to Roman Catholicism prior to writing this book. In 53. And she is sponsored, if that's the right word, by Evelyn Moore and Graham Greene.

And Graham Greene supported her in the writing of Memento Mori. He said, as long as she promised never ever to pray for him. He used to do this, I read, which is, I recommend any Spark fans to do. I mean, Spark fans, I speak now as a Spark fan. I wasn't necessarily a Spark fan. I've always thought, I never read any until we decided to do i mean spark fans i speak now as a spark fan i wasn't necessarily a spark and i've always thought i never read any until we would decide to do this podcast for which i've been roundly upbraided by george morley women on twitter yes fine upstanding women on twitter i'm quite right

too but i'm totally addicted now i think i said to you guys it's like literary crack i just i have i'm actually having to i've done four and i have to slow down because i i've worked out i i don't want to have a year where i don't have a new muriel spark to read but this is a this is yeah she became a catholic graham green had this brilliant thing where he would send to her money but in order to make it feel less kind of um this is in her autobiography curriculum vitae which i've already which've also read, he'd send a case of wine as well. So somehow it made it feel less like charity. Yeah, so Catholic. So John, what is the premise? John Grinrub, what is the premise of this book? Before I

read the blurb, what happens at the beginning of the book? So at the beginning of the book, Dame Lettietie Colson who is the daughter of a brewery magnate and a penal reformer, a grandee, she is writing a letter and she gets interrupted by a phone call and the caller who was called before says remember you must die and she's driven into a kind of state of great agitation about this and her brother godfrey reluctantly takes her in because she's a bit of a nightmare he's also a bit of a nightmare he is one of the great mansplainers of fiction he spends most of the novel telling women who are 12 times more intelligent than he is things that they wouldn't even bother thinking about ddweud wrth gyda'r ddau pethau, mae'n dweud wrth gynnal pethau sy'n ddwy fath mwy ddwyach na'i fod yn ddwych. Ac mae ei gwaith, sy'n ddwych ac yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr yn llwyr, yn llwyr yn llwyr yn llwyr yn llwyr yn llwyr yn llwyr yn llwyr yn ll It's sort of this awful scenario then where she doesn't want to stay with them. Everyone's resentful of everyone else. I should say two things that are really remarkable about this novel.

It is a novel, with one exception, that is entirely populated with people who are over 70. I mean, that is, in itself, when you're reading it, you think, my God, I haven't read the old devils by kingsley amos but i can't think of a book where old characters have been like yeah and the second thing is there's no settled you're in you're in lots of different heads it's third person right and i think that's my theory about why this book is perhaps less popular than some of the others with some readers who find it cold and mean is that you don't have a Mrs Hawkins,

you know, that you do in Far Cry from Kensington who you're rooting for. Yeah. That you think, God, what a ghastly... I mean, pretty much everybody's compromised. I mean, that's what... You know, I haven't read any Muriel Sparks other than this book,

but on reading it, I thought, at the end of it, the only two characters that are remotely engaging or pleasant, two Catholics. I don't think there's any coincidence in that. Also, the thing I thought at the end of it, the only two characters that are remotely engaging or pleasant, two Catholics. I don't think there's any coincidence in that. Also, the thing I love about the book is that Dame Muriel... And they're both converts as well. Yes, they're both converts. Dame Muriel, so everyone who hears the voice saying, remember

you, Mr. I, hears a different voice. Which is, it's a brilliant... And at the end, she just says, oh, I think it was death. Or something like that. There's no attempt to explain the plot. It's not so. Well, Miss Taylor, but then also the policeman. They both kind of come up with this idea

separately. But one of the things I love about Muriel Spark novels is that she quite often is quite happy for you not to explain people's behaviour. And also, I think, from her point of view, not to necessarily understand it herself. And I've always felt like I don't really understand other people particularly well. And as a reader, I find that incredibly satisfying in her books,

that there are no kind of pat explanations of why people are behaving like they are, why they're so deluded, why they live in these bizarre worlds. Rwy'n teimlo hynny'n ddigon ddiogel yn ei llyfrau, nad oes yna ddysgau pat o ran pam mae pobl yn ymdrech fel y maen nhw, pam maen nhw'n mor ddysg, pam maen nhw'n byw yn y bydau anodd. Hefyd, mae hi'n ysgrifennydd gwych. Rwy'n hoffi ysgrifennwyr sy'n gwneud i'r darllenwr ar ryw bwynt ac dweud neu ddychmygu mai dyma dim ond llyfr. Ie. Rydym yn ddarllen, rydych yn ddarllen llyfr. Ac felly gallaf wneud beth rwy'n ei eisiau. Nid yw hi'n gwneud hyn yn y memento mori but the turning to the reader in far cry from

yeah yes we'll read it I I mean Rachel was bored by it she said I want to read this book I don't want you to listen to this this is so good but I was just saying this this book memento mori is i mean it's mad okay it is on one side it is a it is a meditation on the impossibility of death in the mind of the living yeah yeah and at the other time it's an agatha christie yeah which is about because it's got everything it's got murder with the lead i'm i think i'm allowed to say it's got murder with the lead piping but it's also got this brilliant device that the phone call is such a brilliant... Remember you must die, and then gradually more and more of the characters.

And you don't know whether it's a kind of... It's a thing as, are the characters doing it to one another? Or is it a kind of hallucinatory hearing voices? A kind of mass psychosis. Well, Muriel, as we know, did a... Well, I was going to ask, had she laid off the blues at this point or was she still kind of strung out on amphetamine?

Yeah, she was not strung out on amphetamine. Shall I just read the blurb on the back of this Penguin edition and then we'll ask John Grinrod to read a little bit to us. So the blurb says, Dame Lettie Colston, 79 and pioneer penal reformer has much in common with the elderly residents of the maude long medical ward that's a grim scene all united by scorn resentment boredom and the humor that masks the awareness of impending death then the insidious telephone calls begin remember Remember, you must die, intones the grave anonymous voice.

As the suspicious recipients set out to unravel the macabre mystery and catch the culprit before the culprit catches them, the intrigues, duplicities and tragedies of their lives, past and present, come to light in Muriel Spark's immortally funny parable of life and death, says Evil in War, a brilliant and singularly gruesome achievement. And he wrote the loved one so so he should know i read this and a far cry from kensington and the driver's seat and the abbess of the abbess of crew have you read it no no no oh what completely amazing how best

to explore the subject of the watergate scandal than by setting it in a convent with a load of nuns, one of whom is a Nixon surrogate, one of whom is a Kissinger surrogate. I have to say, Andy, you've had a bit of a nun-tastic year, haven't you? I have. None but the brave. I have. You did the Golding one. I did The Spire by William Golding, and I did The Corner that Held Theming and I did The Corn of the Hell

by Sylvia Townsend-Ward, which is almost my favourite book of last year. But my feeling, having read several novels by Muriel Spark, thank you John, now, is that like Barbara Cummings or William Maxwell, your appreciation of each

book that you read deepens with every successive one that you read, right? And Spark is both quite... I find her quite demanding as a novelist but not as a prose stylist. No. So in the case of Memento Mori you're expected to take on board

like this massive cast of characters and to pay attention but there's one beautifully constructed sentence after another to get you there she's unbelievable i mean i would definitely say now having read four that i probably wouldn't start with momentum mori because i when i went back i read it first and was like whoa well it's really full on isn't it and then i read three more and i've gone back to and to go through the book and and I realise it really, really helps

to have read more Muriel Spark, because you realise, what a remarkable thing to do for your third novel. I mean, she is this... You know, we were talking about Jane Gardham, who just went upstairs. It's a bit like that. She always said, in Curriculum Vitae,

she says she thinks of herself as predominantly a poet. OK? So she likes short stories. You know, this is actually, I think, maybe her longest novel. I don't know. It's certainly one of the longest. Yeah. And it's only, what, barely 200, just over 200 pages.

John G, will you read this? Read some from Momentum. Can I read? Yes, OK. So this is from the first chapter, not quite the beginning. This is sort of following on from the set-up that I said earlier. Did you have a nice evening at the pictures, Taylor? said Charmian. I am not Taylor, said Dame Letty, and in any case you always call Taylor Jean during her last 20 or so years in your service. Mrs Anthony, their daily housekeeper, brought in the milky coffee and placed

it on the breakfast table. Did you have a nice evening at the pictures, Taylor, Charmian asked her. Yes, thanks, Mrs Colston, said the housekeeper. Mrs. Antony is not Taylor, said Letty. There is no one by the name of Taylor here, and anyway, you used to call her Jean latterly. It was only when you were a girl that you called Taylor, Taylor. And in any event, Mrs. Antony is not Taylor. Godfrey came in. He kissed Charmian. She said, good morning, Eric. He is not Eric, said Dame Lettie. Godfrey frowned at his sister. Her resemblance to himself irritated him. He opened the times. Are there lots of obituaries today, said Charmian. Oh, don't be gruesome, said Lettie.

Would you like me to read you the obituaries, dear, Godfrey said, turning the pages to find the place in defiance of his sister well I should like the war news Charmian said the war has been over since 1945 Dame Letty said if indeed is the last war to which you were referring perhaps however you meant the first world war the Crimean perhaps Letty please said Godfrey he noticed that Letty's hand was unsteady as she raised her cup and the twitch on her left cheek was pronounced. He thought in how much better form he himself was than his sister, though she was the younger, only 79. Mrs Anthony looked round the door.

Someone on the phone for Dame Letty. Oh, who is it? Wouldn't give a name. Ask who it is, please. Did ask. Wouldn't give. I'll go, said Godfrey. Dame Letty followed him to the telephone and overheard the male voice. Tell Dame Letty, it said, to remember she must die. Who's there, said Godfrey, but the man had hung up. We must have been followed, said Letty. I told no one I was coming over here last night.

She telephoned to report the occurrence to the assistant inspector. He said, are you sure you didn't mention to anyone that you intended to stay at your brother's home? Of course I'm sure. Your brother actually heard the voice, heard it himself. Yes, as I say, he took the call. She told Godfrey, I'm glad you took the call. It corroborates my story.

I've just realised that the police have been doubting it. Doubting your word? Well, I suppose they thought I might have imagined it. Now perhaps they will be more active. Charmian says, the police? What are you saying about the police? Have we been robbed? I am being molested, said Dame Lettie. Mrs Antony came in to clear the table. Ah, Taylor, how old are you? said Charmian. Sixty-nine, Mrs. Colston,

said Mrs. Antony. When will you be seventy? Twenty-eighth of November. That will be splendid, Taylor. You will then be one of us, said Charmian. Very good, thank you. Brilliant. I've got a review here that I found of Memento Mori by Mr. L.RR Davis that was posted on Amazon on the 24th of September 2010. Four stars. Miss Sparks' little gem of a read. I have read Memento Mori twice. The first time was in the 60s, my late 20s. The second recently. I'm approaching 80, rapidly. Age has taught me a lot and I can now appreciate Memento Mori a great deal more than I once did. All book lovers should read it. It is a remarkable work of very considerable merit. Muriel Spark is a fine writer. In Memento Mori, she does not suffer the lazy reader. Does not suffer the lazy reader is my all-time new favorite phrase the main characters quite a few

hear the imperative and experience the inevitable plot and subplot hold the reader and the careful ones will grasp connections missed by inattention if you are a stranger to Muriel spark catch up on what you have missed good reading Lionel good old line good old Lionel Why only four stars? Can I read a small passage, which this is one of those things where you, you know the books, there are moments in books where you think, she's actually doing this, she's actually pushing, she's pushing it. I'll give you one, just this brilliant, very short sentence. This is perfect Muriel Sparks sentence, okay.

There were 12 occupants of the Maud Long Medical Ward, open brackets, aged people, female. The ward sister called them the baker's dozen, not knowing that this is 13, but having only heard the phrase, and thus it is that a good many old sayings lose their force.

That brilliant thing of giving you a lesson while moving the story along, but listen to this, this is a brilliant thing. This involves Godfrey moving the story along. But listen to this. This is a brilliant thing. This involves Godfrey and the fearsome Mrs Pettigrew. On the first occasion, it had been necessary for him to indicate his requirements to her. But now she perfectly understood. Godfrey, with his thin face outstanding in the dim lamplight and his excited eyes, placed on the low coffee table a pound note.

light and his excited eyes placed on the low coffee table a pound note and then he stood arms dangling and legs apart like a stage rustic watching her without shifting her posture she raised the hem of her skirt at one side until the top of her stocking and the tip of her suspender were visible then she went on knitting and watching the television screen godfrey gazed at the stocking top and the glittering steel of the suspender tip for the space of two minutes' silence. Then he pulled back his shoulders, as if recalling his propriety, and still in silence, walked out.

After the first occasion, Mrs Pettigrew had imagined, almost with alarm, almost with alarm, that his request was merely the preliminary to more daring explorations on his part. But by now she knew, with an old woman's relief, that this was all he would ever

desire. The top of her stocking and the tip of her suspender. She took the pound note off the table, put it in her black suede handbag and loosened her stays. She had plans for the future. Meantime, a pound was a pound. So, John, you were giving us some of the biography there.

We were talking about Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. That was her sixth novel. Massively successful all over the world. In total, she wrote 22 novels, the last of which was The Finishing School in 2004. She was twice shortlisted for The Booker for loitering in intent in 1981, which is another publishing book which I very much want to read. last of which was The Finishing School in 2004. She was twice shortlisted for The Booker, for Loitering in Intent in 1981,

which is another publishing book which I very much want to read, and in 1968 for The Public Image, the title of which inspired John Lydon's post-Sex Pistols group. No. True? Absolutely true. No, that's true. There's our tenuous link, everybody.

Muriel Spark and the Sex Pistols. She also wrote poetry, essays, short stories, many of which were ghost stories. She was always winning prizes. Volume of autobiography, curriculum V-type, she mentioned. She edited selections of letters by Emily Bronte, Mary Shelley, John Henry Newman, and she wrote a biography of John Macefield. And she also wrote a children's book called The Very Fine Clock,

which was illustrated by Edward Gorey. OBE in 1967, made a dame in 1993 she wrote all her books in copper plate handwriting straight in a single draft into special spiral bound notebooks imported from Edinburgh stationer as James Thin using only one side of the paper. Did you know that? Incredible. Incredible. One, never went back and edited in one draft. Apparently not. Would try and stick as closely as possible to the first attempt. Wow.

Which is incredible given her kind of, you know, the brevity of those sentences and the way that she's able to communicate things so elegantly and also the structure of all of the books of hers that I've read, and I've read quite a few of them, that the structure is incredible in each of them. And I think there are lots of reasons why I like different novelists. You know, I like one for, you know, the amazing characterisation,

another one for kind of, you know, fantastic plots or whatever. I think she's got everything going on there's a beautiful writing style incredible characters, amazing dialogue brilliant plot Did she plot it out? No, I think she tended to make it up as she was going along

that's one of the other things that she would see where the story would take her I mean, she kept notebooks she was a massive hoarder. And in a way, she's also an incredible control freak. So one of the things you get from Curriculum Vitae is that a lot of the book is spent settling scores, really. Including with her own son.

People feel that she's been misinterpreted, that details of her life have been misinterpreted. And there was a certain amount of it. There was a poor man called Derek Stanford who wrote an early account of her life who becomes Hector Bartlett in Far Cry from Kensington. But can I give you just this for a put down from Curriculum Vitae. When she was Poetry Society president, she was very unpopular for backing the moderns. And it went, went i mean as only

kind of the world of poetry can be it got incredibly vituperative so this is her account of one of her critics one enraged reader who joined in the campaign of harassment against me was dr mary stokes the famous birth control expert on that account much to be admired she was absolutely opposed to my idea of poetry. Up to his death three years earlier, she'd been living with Lord Alfred Douglas, the fatal lover of Oscar Wilde, an arrangement which I imagine would satisfy any woman's craving for birth control. I met her at one of our meetings and knew she disliked me intensely on sight. I was young and pretty

and she had totally succumbed to the law of gravity without attempting to do a thing about it. Crikey. Normally on Backlisted we have a clip of our author talking. Where possible. Where possible. That hasn't been possible,

but there is a fantastic episode of A Good Read from 2004, which you can download for free from iTunes, with Dame Muriel talking about the prime of Miss Jean Brodie to James Nocte, which is terrific. I just want to... So can I just say, that vituperativeness and the fact that she was a member of the Poetry Society makes me wonder which poet she based the green-fanged, slightly malevolent poet in Memento Mori on.

Oh, Memento Mori, yeah. Who is absolutely fantastic. Interestingly, the only person that she ever sort of said, she says that dealing with her grandmother when she was a child, 12 years old, having to hump her grandmother in and out of bed or carry her gently, she loved her grandmother, and the amazing details of her grandmother. Most of the book is about incredibly detailed childhood memories of dresses i mean she she didn't become an academic because she thought they were all dull and she liked

charming clothes and there was always that sort of that thing but i think i think it could be any one of the one who was the defending Percy Manoring the one who's defending Ernest Dowson yeah and the whole kind of Percy Manoring and Guy Leet who's the kind of you know punched over two sticks from the past he's kind of wandering over the two sticks and they have an amazing physical fight at the end of the book that's right and then um and they're having a fight over um a review of a book that one of them's done and they you know clearly all of this kind of passion and hatred and then they end up sort of staying together for three weeks after that you know and they're talking about poetry and and you know that kind of passion

that they've got for what they're doing um there's a fantastic bit as well where he sends a uh a telegram that runs to about five pages oh yeah are you sure you want to send all this yes I do there's a character in we keep talking about I always meant to read A Far Cry from Kensington when I worked in Kensington but I never did I'm just going to read a little bit here which anyone

who's spent any time in book selling or publishing will recognise the truth of this he's a publisher a large publisher called Macintosh and Tooley, the narrator. She says, I remember random scenes and I also remember my subsequent memories so that I recall that I was lying

awake in the dark about ten years ago when to my mind came the image of a meeting I had had in my office at Macintosh and Tooley with a young man one of the most beautiful I have ever seen the author of a large novel about nothing in particular. It proved only

that he passionately wanted to write, and I told him we couldn't take the book, but he should try another, more concise, not so long and rambling, and about something in particular. I recall very little else of that interview, but that he embarked on a lengthy discourse

citing famous long novels about nothing in particular Had I read Finnegan's Wake? I had to admit I hadn't not from cover to cover I didn't know at the time that very few people had He spoke for an hour He accepted my coffee and biscuits and went on talking I wish I could remember more of what he said.

It was extremely above my head. Had I read Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann? I hadn't, but I had heard of it. I evaded the question by taking a chance. But that is about something in particular. He said it contained nothing but details and went on. Had I read Proust? Yes, I had read Proustoust and you say it's about something

in particular well my novel is about everything in particular so it is i said but it isn't proust so you're looking for another proust he said one isn't enough i forget how i got him out of the office i only remember he's going i mean you have to say that that there's a gorgeous there's a great thing that al kennedy says in the introduction to this which i i think this sums up i mean it sparks work delights in mentioning the unmentionable that nice people think nasty thoughts and do nasty things that dressed people can also be naked that sex is rarely as elevated or romantic as we'd wish, that the idea of strangers or old people or ugly people having sex can be appalling,

that forgetting death renders us foolish, and that dying can make us seem more foolish still. The eccentric joy and energy of this novel, what may be the rush of the author's enthusiasms, her mature passions, is part of what makes a book on an unsupportable subject not just philosophically stimulating but also delightful it's it's a really nice kind of way of i mean she's she's such an interesting novelist i mean she's i mean this book is a really interesting book it really is an interesting meditation on the on the on the how death

functions but she she has this way there's a great line another contemporary writer had which i love uh ali smith her whole work is a sprightly philosophical rejection of 20th century angst one of the great things about this podcast reading women writers of the of the 20th century i do wonder whether i've spent a lot of my time just reading a lot of very self-indulgent men because they're so these novels are not light social novels

these are really this is a proper complex but done with such I mean you know reading the first few pages of Far Cry from Kensington if you can't read that and want to read on it's the way she puts big philosophical themes down ychydig o ffyrdd cyntaf o Far Cry gan Kensington, os nad ydych chi'n gallu darllen hynny ac yn hoffi ei ddarllen, mae'n ffordd y mae hi'n rhoi themau ffilosofol mawr i lawr gyda lles o ddechrau ac yna'n creu'r

charakterau hynny ac hefyd gwahaniaeth anhygoel. John G, a wnaethoch chi ei fod yn ddiddorol pan oeddech chi'n cyntaf? O, ie, ac roedd hynny'n un o'r ymddiriedolaethau gwych, mewn gwirionedd, o sut ddiddorol oeddwn i'n ei fod yn ei dod o hyd. Ac hefyd, un o'r pethau eraill yr oeddwn i'n ei fwynhau amdano oedd ei fod yn cynnwys how funny I found it. And also, one of the other things I really loved about her was that she would incorporate elements of other sorts of books that I really love. So, like Murder Mystery or particularly a kind of supernatural element. Ghost stories, aren't they? Often crops up, like The Ballad of Peckham Rye

where the devil, you know, joins a company in Peckham as, you know, as the HR guy. I mean, that isn't the best premise for a novel ever. I don't know what it is. There's a film of The Driver's Seat. Yeah, which I've not seen. And there's a film of The Abyss of Crewe called Dirty Habits.

Is there? Yeah, and there's a film of Memento Mori. Is there? A TV film that was made by the director Jack Clayton, who in the 60s made The Innocents and Our Mother's House and an adaptation of Penelope Mortimer's novel The Pumpkin Eater. And it's Who's In It? It's an amazing cast. It's amazing. So Michael Horden plays Godfrey.

Maggie Smith plays Mrs Pettigrew. Dame Letty is Stephanie Cole. But Charmian is played by Rennie Asherton, who is absolutely heartbreakingly wonderful in it. You kind of can't stop looking at her. But basically every single role in it is portrayed by some incredible actor you've watched all your life. And I think one of the things that he also did

was I think he only employed a really elderly crew to work on it. So the editors editors the camera people everybody were you know they'd all kind of worked on each other's stuff throughout their whole lives he made it for tv in the early 90s and he'd wanted to make it since 1959 that he but that he had access to the rights and held on to it until he was old enough. No. No, it's not, which is a real shame. It's completely brilliant. I had it on video. I know I don't have a video or, in fact, a tape,

which is a real shame, but I did watch it so much because I loved it. And it's interesting. There were a few structural changes that happened in it. So it's made much more of a murder mystery by moving the revelation until the very end that it is death that is phoning them all up. Eric is in it a lot more. Spoiler alert. Yeah. Well there we are. Oh well. We have said that already. We have to be fair. You know there are kind of quite a few things like that. There's also the

resolution is kind of much softer than it is in the book but one of the things I think that is so wonderful about the book is the very last kind of third of it becomes a much more kind of philosophical and meditative thing and all of the characters it feels like they kind of break through this kind of very brittle wall that they have of their own understanding of death and life and they all start

thinking more profoundly even Godfrey who you know is the most infuriating character because he's the refugious splitting matches in half I know even Godfrey, who is the most infuriating character. There's that thing about him splitting matches in half. So he doubles the number of matches. He sits with relish, drinking a scotch and soda with a razor blade, splitting the matches in half, so he has twice the number of matches.

I also loved how Muriel Spark, who is a very literary writer with a very clever, clear understanding of the heritage of the British of the british american and american novel plays a joke with you in the last two pages of this book by instead of doing what dickens would have done which is tell you little life stories of what happened to all the characters you've been reading about she tells you how all the characters die in the one by one at the end of the book you You know, they don't live happily ever after. And you've got to say that

I think my favourite character I'm not going to read it all, but it's the guy, the gerontologist, what's his name? Alec. Oh yeah, Alec. Who is like, it's like Kasaumon, this ridiculous kind of... That's right. And it's all these wonderful things. Could you also

write down your temperature? I know this must be a shock for you, but do you think you can take all these wonderful things do you and when you're when could you could you also write down your temperature if you well i know this must be a shot for you but do you think you can take all these details down so and he has this amazing card file i mean it's the kind of the futility of scholarship uh well everybody has got their own way of trying to kind of cope with life and death in the book and his way is so banal the way that you know the way that the details it's collecting is so useless I think though I would say it's foolproof you know it's foolproof spark and if people want to I would start if you start with girl of slender means or far cry which are slightly later novels I think that I think it's it's it's a it's a I went back to it and enjoyed it more

when I went back to it I did not I enjoyed it hugely a... As I say, I went back to it and enjoyed it more when I went back to it. I enjoyed it hugely the first time, but I think it is... You are slightly, as the reviewer said, you are slightly bamboozled by the amount of stuff going on. So now we're going to do something a bit different. Thanks, John G., very much. Thank you. Brilliant.

What a huge treat. I mean, that's been sorted for years now. Muriel Spark, here we come. At the beginning, we were talking about David Miller, who, as we said, unfortunately died over Christmas. And when we were preparing for our William Maxwell episode a few weeks ago, I know that David was a huge fan of Maxwell. And I said to him, well, what should I read?

Which novel is your favourite? What story should I read? Which novel is your favourite? What story should I read? And he said to me, I included a story in that glimpse of truth a very short story called Love which will take you five minutes to read and stay with you forever and so as a little

tribute to David and because we have connections with Maxwell here on Backlist is John and I are going to read you to say farewell, love by William Maxwell. John, shall I read the first half? OK. Miss Vera Brown, she wrote on the blackboard,

letter by letter in flawlessly oval Palmer method, our teacher for the fifth grade. The name might as well have been graven in stone. As she called the roll, her voice was as gentle as the expression in her beautiful dark brown eyes. She reminded me of pansies. When she called on Alvin Ahrens to recite and he said, I know, but I can't say. The class snickered, but she said, try, encouragingly, and waited to be sure that he didn't know the answer, and then said to one of the hands waving in the air, tell Alvin what one fifth of three eighths is.

If we arrived late to school, red-faced and out of breath and bursting with the excuse we had thought up on the way, before we could speak, she said, I'm sure you couldn't help it. Close the door, please, and take your seat. If she kept us after school, it was not to scold us, but to help us pass the hard part. Somebody left a big red apple on her desk for her to find when she came into the classroom, and she smiled and put it in her desk out of sight. Somebody else left some purple asters, which she put in her drinking glass. sight. Somebody else left some purple asters which she put in her drinking glass. After that the presents kept coming. She was the only pretty teacher in the school. She never had to ask us to

be quiet or to stop throwing erasers. We would not have dreamed of doing anything that would displease her. Somebody wormed it out of her when her birthday was and while she was out of the room the class voted to present her with flowers from the greenhouse. Then they took another vote, and Sweet Peas won. When she saw the florist's box waiting on her desk, she said, oh, look inside, we all said. Her delicate fingers seemed to take forever to remove the ribbon. In the end, she raised the lid of the box and exclaimed, In the end, she raised the lid of the box and exclaimed, Read the card! we shouted. Many happy returns to Miss Vera Brown from the fifth grade, it said.

She put her nose in the flowers and said, Thank you all very, very much, and then turned our minds to the spelling lesson for the day. After school, we escorted her downtown in a body to a special matinee of D.W. Griffith's Hearts of the World. She was not allowed to buy her ticket. We paid for everything. We meant to have her for our teacher forever. We intended to pass right up through sixth, seventh and eighth grades and on into high school, taking with us but that isn't what happened. One day there was a substitute teacher. We expected our real teacher to be back the next day but she wasn't.

Week after week passed and the substitute continued to sit at Miss Brown's desk calling on us to recite and giving out tests and handing them back with grades on them and we went on acting the way we had when Miss Brown was there because we didn't want her to come back and find we hadn't been nice to the substitute. One Monday morning she cleared her throat and said that Miss Brown was sick and not coming back for the rest of the term. In the fall we had passed on into the sixth grade and she was still not back. Benny Irish's mother found out that she was living with an aunt and uncle on a farm a mile or so beyond the edge of town. One afternoon after school, Benny and I got on our bikes and rode out to see her. At the place where the road turned off

to go to the cemetery and the Chautauqua grounds, there was a red barn with a huge circus poster on it, showing the entire inside of the Sells Floto Circus tent and everything that was going on in all three rings. In the summertime, riding in the back seat of my father's open charmers, I used to crane my neck as we passed that turn, hoping to see every last tiger and flying trapeze artist, but it was never possible. The poster was weather-beaten now, with loose strips of paper hanging down. It was getting dark when we wheeled our bikes up the lane of the farmhouse where Miss Brown lived. You knock, Benny said, as we started on the porch. No, you do it, I said. We hadn't thought ahead to what it would be like to see her. We

wouldn't have been surprised if she'd come to the door herself and thrown up her hands in astonishment when she saw who it was. But instead, a much older woman opened the door and said, what do you want? We came to see Miss Brown, I said. We're in her class at school, Penny explained. I could see that the woman was trying to decide whether she should tell us to go away but she said I'll find out if she wants to see you and left us standing on the porch for what seemed like a long time

then she appeared again and said you can come in now as we followed her through the front parlour I could make out in the dim light that there was an old fashioned organ like the kind you used to see in country churches, and linoleum on the floor, and stiff, uncomfortable chairs, and family portraits behind curved glass in big oval frames. The

room beyond it was lighted by a coal-oil lamp, but seemed ever so much darker than the unlighted room we'd just passed through. Propped up on pillows in a big double bed was our teacher, but so changed. Her arms were like sticks and all the life in her seemed concentrated in her eyes, which had dark circles around them and were enormous. She managed a flicker of recognition, but I was struck dumb by the fact that she didn't seem glad to see us she didn't belong to us anymore she belonged to her illness Benny said, I hope you get well soon

the angel who watches over little boys who know but they can't say it saw to it that we didn't touch anything and in a minute we were outside, on our bicycles, riding through the dusk toward the turn in the road and town. A few weeks later I read in the Lincoln Evening Courier that Miss Vera Brown, who taught the fifth grade in Central School, had died of tuberculosis, aged 23 years and seven months. Sometimes I went with my mother

when she put flowers on the graves of my grandparents. The cinder roads wound through the cemetery in ways she understood and I didn't, and I would read the names on the monuments. Brower, Cadwallader, Andrews, Bates, Mitchell, in loving memory of, infant daughter of, beloved wife of. The cemetery was so large and so many people were buried there, it would have taken a long time to locate a particular grave if you didn't know where it was already. But I know, the way I sometimes know what it is in wrapped packages, that the elderly woman who let us in and who took care of Miss Brown during her last illness went to the cemetery regularly and poured the rancid water out of the in such a way as to please the eye of the living and the closed eyes of the dead.

And that's it. Thank you, David. Thanks, David. © BF-WATCH TV 2021