Quote of the Day (Muriel Spark, on a Most Unusual Sunset)

“There was a wonderful sunset across the distant sky, reflected in the sea, streaked with blood and puffed with avenging purple and gold as if the end of the world had come without intruding on everyday life.”—Scottish novelist Muriel Spark (1918-2006), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)

The centennial of her birth has come and gone, but I couldn’t let 2018 depart without a post about Muriel Spark. She wrote much throughout her career, but—at least partly due to the 1969 film starring Maggie Smith (pictured here)—The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is her most famous.

The quote you see here gives a marvelous impression of her style, but what it cannot do is give a sufficient idea of the treasures of the novel—very much including its unreliable narrator. For anyone considering education as a profession, it offers a morally stringent view of how teachers can form—and, as in this work, deform—the young. And it demonstrates convincingly that, no matter how the merits of a film (or, in this case, a play, too), a novel has pleasures unrivaled by visual media.