On Satire: 'A Far Cry from Kensington' by Muriel Spark

In the final episode of their series, Colin and Clare arrive at Muriel Spark, who would never have considered herself a satirist though her writing was as bitingly satirical as any 20th-century novelist's. A Far Cry from Kensington has a deceptively simple plot: Agnes Hawkins, working for a publisher in London in the 1950s, insults Hector Bartlett, a would-be author, by calling him a ‘pisseur de copie’. Bartlett seeks revenge with the help of Hawkins’s fellow lodger, Wanda, with tragic results. Yet the true plot of any Spark novel is difficult to pin down, not least when the word ‘plot’ is deployed so frequently by her characters to imply conspiracy and misinformation. Colin and Clare discuss Spark’s kaleidoscopic view of reality and the ways in which both Catholicism and Calvinism play through her work.
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HUMAN CONDITIONS with Adam Shatz, Judith Butler, Pankaj Mishra and Brent Hayes Edwards
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[@petergelman2055]

Wonderful discussion, thank you for sharing.

[@4-dman464]

All Satire has south-of-midlands BBC accents, I've learned. Just as I learned from the British Film Institute that even the British New Wave was a south-of-midlands BBC-accented sensibility. Nothing new there, except the south-of-midlands BBC-accented sensibility has colours & genders now, very his 'n' hairs.

[@SSNewberry]

Another female satire is Louisa May Alcott. She might be a little bit before our time, I'll have to check.

[@SSNewberry]

Dorothy Parker wants to have a few words with you.