Практический курс английского языка: 4 курс
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| MURIEL SPARK
Many professions are associated with a particular stereotype. The classic image of a writer, for instance, is of a slightly6 demented-looking person, locked in an attic, scribbling away furiously for days on end. Naturally, he has his favourite pen and note-paper, or a beat-up old typewriter, without which he could not produce a readable word. Nowadays, we know that such images bear little resemblance to reality. But are they completely false? In the case of at least one writer, it would seem not. Dame Muriel Spark, who is 80 this month, in many ways resembles this stereotypical "writer". She is certainly not demented7, and she doesn't work in an attic. But she is rather neurotic about the tools of her trade. page 91 She insists on writing with a certain type of pen in a certain type of notebook, which she buys from a certain stationer8 in Edinburgh called James Thin. In fact, so superstitious9 is she that, if someone uses one of her pens by accident, she immediately throws it away10. As well as her "fetish" about writing materials, Muriel Spark shares one other characteristic with the stereotypical "writer" — her work is the most important thing in her life. It has stopped her from remarrying; cost her old friends and made her new ones; and driven her from London to New York, to Rome. Today, she lives in the Italian province of Tuscany with a friend. Dame Muriel discovered her gift for writing at school in the Scottish capital, Edinburgh. "It was a very progressive school," she recalls. "There was complete racial [and] religious tolerance." Last year, she acknowledged the part the school had played in shaping her career by giving it a donation of £10,000. The money was part of the David Cohen British Literature Prize, one of Britain's most prestigious literary awards. Dame Muriel received the award for a lifetime's writing achievement, which really began with her most famous novel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. It was the story of a teacher who encouraged her girls to believe they were the "creme de la creme". Miss Jean Brodie was based on a teacher who had helped Muriel Spark [?to?] realise her talent. Much of Dame Muriel's writing has been informed by her personal experiences. Catholicism, for instance, has always been a recurring11 theme in her books — she converted in 1954. Another novel, Loitering with Intent (1981), is set in London just after World War II, when she herself came to live in the capital. How much her writing has been influenced by one part of her life is more difficult to assess. In 1937, at the age of 19, she travelled to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where she married a teacher called Sydney Oswald Spark. The couple had a son, Robin, but the marriage didn't last. In 1944, after spending some time in South Africa, she returned to Britain, and got a job with the Foreign Office in London. Her first novel The Comforters12 (1957) was written with the help of the writer, Graham Greene. He didn't help with the writing, but instead gave her £20 a month to support herself while she wrote it. His only conditions were that she shouldn't meet him or pray for him. Before The Comforters she had concentrated on poems and short stories. Once it was published, she turned her attentions to novels, publishing one a year for the next six years. Real success came with The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which was published in 1961, and made into a film. By this time she was financially secure and world famous. (from BBC English, February 1998) жүктеу/скачать 186 Kb. Достарыңызбен бөлісу:
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