Memento Mori by Muriel Spark

“Final perseverance is the doctrine that wins the eternal victory in small things as in great.” 

When Muriel Spark is on the ball, she is an absolute pleasure to read and Memento Mori showcases the author in top form. It's hard to believe that this is the sixth novel that I have read by her and now ranks as my favorite, closely followed by The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Graham Greene, one of my favorite authors, was a great admirer of Mrs. Spark and had nothing but high praise to bestow upon this novel: "This funny and macabre book has delighted me as much as any novel that I have read since the war." I am inclined to agree with Mr. Greene to a certain extent; the novel certainly has dark sense of humor but I wouldn't go so far as to refer to it as "macabre." Indeed, mortality and death is the central focus (Memento Mori in Latin translates to "remember you must die," hence the title and recurring punch-line used throughout the novel) but the gloomy subject matter is never presented in a morbid fashion, nor is the tone depressing or grim. Spark always maintains a sardonic sense of humor, using playful irony with such subtle skill that even when death does rear its ugly head, the outcome is both darkly humorous and surprisingly poignant. 

The premise is rather simple: a bunch of elderly Londoners begin to receive anonymous phone calls from a mysterious person who tells them "Remember you must die" before hanging up. The colorful cast of characters are all interconnected in some way; either through family relations, acquaintances or life-long relationships. The story unfolds in a similar fashion to a screwball comedy: quirky characters, fast-paced dialogue and outrageous situations that is light-hearted and entertaining. However, as in most of her novels, there is a lot more going on beneath the surface. Spark pokes fun at detective fiction by utilizing the classic "who done it?" scenario but subverts many conventions associated with the genre. A crime is committed, albeit a trivial one, and is blown way out of proportion. Instead of there being a damsel in distress, there is a dame in distress who is the most determined to discover the culprit behind the prank phone calls. Her older brother Godfrey who has a fetish for female suspenders along with his wife Charmian who used to be a famous author now suffering from dementia, are not nearly perturbed by the odd high jinks, while others find the whole charade amusing. One of the other main characters takes pride in collecting valuable data on the overall well-being of his geriatric circle of friends; obsessed with studying old age, embarking on a complex series of coded filing techniques to keep track of past relationships and personal histories as a reference just in case his memory starts to fade due to alzheimer's. See? Quirky. Furthermore, replacing the typical hard-boiled detective is a retired inspector who seems in on the joke, hired by the wealthy Dame to solve the case since the local police are reluctant to follow any leads. The Inspector is reminiscent of Edgar Allen Poe's famous C. Auguste Dupin who is always smarter than everyone in the room but once again, Spark is intent to play around with genre tropes. Instead of going into elaborate and painstaking detail of how he managed to solve the crime, Spark's detective is laid-back, nonchalant and embellishes in moral philosophy instead. 

Ostensibly, the whimsical story is an innocuous fable. However, Spark delivers an astringent satire on senior citizens and gerontology. In the wrong hands, this novel could easily have turned out to be one of those awful Saturday Night Live skits that tries too hard to be edgy and funny but is only embarrassing. Muriel Spark's saving grace is her brevity, sharp wit and talent for writing such great dialogue. The snippy back-and-forth banter between characters is positively droll. One of my main complaints about Spark's writing is that sometimes the characters are often one-dimensional, merely serving as props for jokes and running gags. However, with this novel, she finally manages to create an effective balance between the absurd and sentimentality. Even with her detached authorial voice that she uses frequently in her writing, Spark grants just enough depth to these characters to take them seriously even when they seem to be operating within the realm of the bizarre. Familiar Spark-isms crop up again: conniving characters, infidelity, black-mail, murder, upper-class snobbery and Catholicism but it is handled with such inventiveness that it does not come across as redundant for those who have encountered the author's work before. 

The afterlife obviously tends to be at the forefront of a lot of these character's minds because they are getting on in years, afflicted with health problems or living in retirement homes.  While most people would rather not think about their inevitable fate, these phone calls don't exactly help to calm the nerves of these poor individuals who are already well aware that Death is on the doorstep. Are the phone calls actually real or just early signs of senility often accompanied by old age? Is it a hoax played on the reader as well or perhaps a grand metaphor of some kind? I will not spoil the ending but in typical Spark fashion, she plays with the reader's expectations in such a clever way that brought a smile to my face. Dame Muriel Spark continues to surprise and delight.

The Ballad of Peckham Rye by Muriel Spark

 "All human beings who breathe are a bit unnatural."

Well, it turns that out my initial positive feeling after reading the first couple pages of Muriel Spark's The Ballad of Peckham Rye were short-lived and quickly replaced by indignation. This novel tries too hard to be some kind of bizarre satire but ends up as nothing more than an affectedly quaint and nonsensical farce without any substantial value. The characters are all flat; their motivations entirely incomprehensible. Muriel Spark can often be applauded for her sly wit, snappy dialogue and wildly humorous stories but none of these attributes are found here. I didn't laugh once. However, I will admit that some of the dialogue is slightly amusing in a droll way but rendered inconsequential since it is not supported by engaging characters or a credible story, which drifts around without any purpose. The only true redeemable quality here is the Penguin edition's snazzy cover-art. Feel free to admire the striking photograph from afar but I would not recommend venturing to read any of the written content inside.

Let me try and attempt to describe the basic plot and perhaps, highlight some of its many absurdities. A Scottish man named Dougal Douglas  arrives in the town of Peckham and gets two jobs working for rival textile factories as a consultant on the board of Human Resources to investigate and better understand the discontent amongst workers. The main problem is the increased absenteeism and slacking on the job. Dougal describes his field of research as the study of "industrial psychology" (84). In order to fully understand the situation, he decides to personally interact with the workers and establish relationships with them in order to derive a more thorough understanding of the labor unrest spreading in the small town. Spark alludes to the negative effects of capitalism but never fully engages with the issue. This ambiguous approach to narrative recurs throughout the rest of the novel where she cruelly teases the reader by introducing various ideas, characters or plot developments that seem important but contain no value and go nowhere. Dougal is also keen to point out to others that the two bumps on his head are the result of having his horns removed--of course, the implication that he is the devil incarnate. Unfortunately, Spark gives the reader no reason to care. The story could have potentially been a lot more interesting as an allegory but she decides to indulge in ridiculous inanity instead. 

Dougal makes friends with a young man named Humphrey who is a Marxist but referred to as a "union man" although has no affiliation with factory work. He is engaged to marry a teenager named Dixie who holds down two jobs because she wants to save money for the marriage. Unfortunately for her, she is left at the alter by Humphrey for reasons that are never explained. There is also a gang of young thugs lead by Trevor who want to run Dougal out of town and these two find themselves in physical confrontations on more than one occasion. Additionally, a wandering evangelist, a managerial typist, an old landlady with visions of her dead brother walking around the street and a woman working with Dougal to write an autobiography of her life growing up in Peckham all get mixed up in the baffling plot. Dougal is a strange character who is prone to to acts of impulsive behavior: dancing with a trash-can lid, having an emotional break-down at work for "losing his girl," getting into bar fights and his obsession with a tunnel excavation taking place in town. The wild story is all over the place and includes blackmail, violence and even murder but it's all pointless.

It's almost as if Spark had a general idea of what she wanted to write about but couldn't figure out where to take the story, so instead of tossing it in the rough draft pile she decided to string a bunch of arbitrary plot threads together with the hope that utilizing ambiguity would somehow amount to something meaningful. Wrong. I want my time back Miss Spark, this novel was terrible.