Sara Frankel
AN INTERVIEW WITH MURIEL SPARK
SF: Do you find it odd that you've come to be known primarily as a
novelist, after having begun your career as a poet and a critic?
MS:
No, I always meant to be a writer. Becoming a novelist was
quite haphazard, because the publisher asked me to write a novel.
It
was a man called Alan McLean, at Macmillan, and I told him I
didn't think I would write a novel, I would give him some short
stories. He asked me to write this novel to help him keep his job,
which was to find young writers. I said okay, I'd try, and we were
both very amazed when it was successful.
SF:
Do you think your parents also pushed you in that direction?
MS:
No, not at all. They neither encouraged nor discouraged me; I
had to take jobs. But they knew I had talent and that that's what I
wanted to do . There was no opposition. On the other hand, they
weren't literary people-my mother was a music teacher, and my
father was an engineer and worked in a factory. So they had no
books about the place that I didn't bring in. My brother was more
scien tific.
SF:
Do you think that childhood is important for writers?
MS:
Yes, I think it is, because everything seems so wonderful that
you see everything as being new. There 's a poem of
Traherne's- Thomas Traherne, the English mystic poet of the six–
teenth century-that describes this feeling and in this poem he
remembers his childhood and says, "The corn was orient and im–
mortal wheat, which never should be reaped, nor was ever sown. I
thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting." It's the most
beautiful bit. The wonder of childhood, at seeing things, seeing a
field of corn-the excitement over quite little things. I suppose it's
probably something that's clearer in retrospect, but even at the time
I remember being aware of it because my mother used to
make
things
exciting: "Oh look, there's a starling," or "Oh, look over at that."
SF:
Your voice reminds me a bit of Maggie Smith's voice in the film
version of
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie .
MS:
Does it? Maybe she listened to me talking.
SF:
Did you see the movie?
MS:
Yes. I thought it was wonderful.
Editor's Note: This interview took place in Paris in 1985.
