Miss Brodie and The Finishing School

“You begin,” he said, “by setting your scene. You have to see your scene, either in reality or in imagination. For instance, from here you can see across the lake. But on a day like this you can’t see across the lake, it’s too misty. You can’t see the other side.” Rowland took off his reading glasses to stare at his creative writing class whose parents’ money was being thus spent: two boys and three girls around sixteen to seventeen years of age, some more, some a little less. “So,” he said, “you must just write, when you set your scene, ‘the other side of the lake was hidden in mist.’ Or is you want to exercise imagination, on a day like today, you can write,’The other side of the lake was just visible.’ But as you are setting the scene, don’t make any emphasis as yet. It’s too soon, for instance, for you to write, ‘The other side of the lake was hidden in the fucking mist.’ That will come later. You are setting your scene. You don’t want to make a point as yet.”

So begins Muriel Spark's last novel, The Finishing School,
a satiric look at a private progressive institution that Miss Jean Brodie in her prime would have been quick to deem a “crank” school and would have been loathe to be associated with.

Rowland Mahler and his wife Nina Parker operate College Sunrise, a school where parents with “dire wealth” consent to send their teenagers for a year or two to get them out of the way. College Sunrise could not in any way compete with the famous schools and finishing establishments recommended by Gabbitas, Thring and Wingate in shiny colored brochures. Indeed, College Sunrise was almost unknown in the more distinctive educational circles, and in cases where it was known, it was frequently dismised as being rather shady. The fact that it moved house from time to time, that it seldom offered a tennis court and that its various swimming pools looked greasy, were the subject of gossip when the subject arose, but it was known that there had so far been no sexual scandals and that it was an advanced sort of school, bohemian, artistic, tolerant. What they smoked or sniffed was little different from the drug-taking habits of any other school, whether it be housed in Lausanne or in a street in Wakefield.

When the novel opens College Sunrise is in operation on the lake at Ouchy after previously being located in Brussels and Vienna. Nina conducts “casual afternoon comme il faut talks” with the school’s eight students ("'Be careful who takes you to Ascot,' she said, 'because, unless you have married a rich husband, he is probably a crook.'") while Rowland teaches creative writing. In fact, one of the students, 17-year-old Chris Wiley, red-haired, handsome, annoyingly self-assured, has enrolled in College Sunrise specifically so that he can write his historically inaccurate novel on Mary, Queen of Scots.

Rowland reads the opening pages of Chris' novel, finds them "quite good," and then experiences a debilitating case of writer's block where his own novel is concerned. Most of Spark's novel is thereafter concerned with the uneasy relationship between Rowland and Chris: Rowland's jealousy at first amuses Chris, who taunts Rowland with his hidden-away work-in-progress and thrives on reports that Rowland has been searching his belongings in a desperate attempt to find it. Later, after Nina is finally able to convince Rowland that his obsession with Chris' novel is bordering on insanity and he seeks a cure by temporarily checking into a monastery, Chris finds he requires Rowland's presence or else he is unable to write. Clearly, the madness goes both ways.

Nina wants Chris gone but realizes his tuition is needed less the school go under. She begins an affair with an art historian who lives in a neighboring villa. Rowland knows and doesn't care; he's busy attempting to sleep with the servant who is sleeping with Chris.

Nina, her lover, and the students all speculate whether Rowland's obsession with Chris' novel is actually a case of misplaced homosexual desire.

Finally, two of the publishers Chris has sent his novel to come to Ouchy and begin to offer a bit of perspective on Chris's talent and prospects. Chris' confidence is momentarily shaken, but he's quick to once again manipulate those around him, especially when he sees Rowland's chances at literary success wax considerably. I won't say who or how, but someone almost dies.

Now, while I loved The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, I remained largely indifferent to The Finishing School. I read it twice to see if I could put my finger on what kept it from being a more enjoyable, a more memorable read. The best I could come up with is that Spark’s natural inclination to omit all but of vital import undercut her efforts here. Chris and Rowland discuss whether they feel their characters take on a life of their own; Chris maintains that his are firmly under his control and can do nothing he does not will. Spark’s characters here definitely fall under strict authorial control; she pushes them about to advance her story without bringing them fully to life. And why she chose to have the character whose writing is called "actually a lot of shit" by a prospective publisher, who recognizes that Chris' approaching success is based on his youth, not his talent, be the one whose methods most mimic her own is definitely beyond my understanding.

I also thought that the use of flash forwards, which I am, in general, exceedingly fond of, and found most effective in Jean Brodie (and in The Driver's Seat, which I read last month), undercut my concern in The Finishing School. While knowing that Miss Brodie is to be betrayed, that Sandy will become a nun, that Mary will be killed in a fire (or that that strange Lise is going to be murdered before morning comes), heightens the suspense and keeps me engaged with how future events are to come about, foreknowledge here deflated my interest. Why should I care now about the state of Rowland and Nina's marriage when I know she's going to be much happier as an art historian married to someone else? Why should I care now that Chris' novel is no good if he's still going to manage to get it published? Why should I care now about any of the students at the Sunrise School when I know they all have enough money or family prestige to take the rough edges off their years to come?

Based on these two books, I'd have to say that if an author can't or isn't willing to vary her style and technique from book to book, she ought to take care that the stories she has to tell will work with her style rather than against it.

I'm late getting this posted compared to everyone else, so I'll wait to discuss Jean Brodie in the Metaxu Cafe forums. I will say I'm glad this Slaves of Golconda reading gave me reason to read it again--I read it back in high school and retained very little--and that I do intend to read more by Spark. I'm going to chose titles for the most part, though, from the first half of her career when her style is economical, but not yet miserly. I don't have a problem meeting a writer halfway, but I'm not willing to do more than that.

Ellie in a bag, or Friday cat blogging resumes

Our camera has been in the shop the last few weeks. The guys broke it in this week on its return by taking pictures of Ellie in one of her favorite environments: the plastic bag.










Be sure to check out the 93rd Friday Ark today. Carnival of the Cats will be at Watermark on Sunday.

Rebecca WestEnglish journalist, novelist and critic. "I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute."

Instead of starting on my Slaves of Golconda posts on Muriel Spark last night the way that I should have (posts due Friday), I spent my prime reading hours thinking about how I need to get back on track with my summer reading challenge. So far I've read six out of 21 books from the list, plus three impulse reads, although I'm not going to think of any books by or about Rebecca West as impulse reads from this point on; if I deviate from the summer titles it should be because of West.

Or because of Proust. Stefanie is starting a separate blog for the reading of In Search of Lost Time, with discussion starting in mid-July. Since Swann's Way is actually on my original priority reading list for the year, I'm going to squeeze Proust into my summer reading instead of holding off until fall. I made an attempt to find In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower and How Proust Can Change Your Life in the library last night, but the in-progress shifting of materials onto compact shelving had worked its way to the PQs up on the fifth floor and it was simply too difficult to navigate around the moving crew and all their huge plywood carts. Maybe in a few days.

I did start Mary Lee Settle's The Scapegoat and I'm already in love with the young narrator's voice. The story is based on a 1912 coal strike massacre in West Virginia's Kanawha Valley. Mother Jones is to make an appearance.

Oh, and if you are yet unaware of Ella's Nosy Questions series, my interview at Box of Books went up on Saturday.

Boys, girls, books, parents

A week ago Thursday while I was eating breakfast I happened to read a David Brooks op-ed in my local paper. Brooks begins his piece on why boys don't read as much as girls with a nod to the "angst and Orwell" study that came out earlier this year, then claims that the books women chose as their favorites are "a lot better than the books the men chose." Considering that this was a David Brooks column, I immediately smelled a trap.

By the end of the article, sure enough, Brooks has put boys' falling reading rates on the shoulders of schools that force boys to sit still and subject them to consciousness-raising material, which, of course, fall under the category of books with female protagonists. Boys should be taught more Hemingway, Tolstoy, Homer and Twain or else the schools will turn "many of them into high school and college drop-outs who hate reading."

Later in the day I followed a link to a Boris Johnson piece in the Telegraph that opined as well on the falling reading rates among men, in a much more obnoxious, yet entertaining way. I was quite heartened still later to come across The Kids and Family Reading Report, which does not address the differences between males and females at all, but indicates that parents need to become more involved, not less, when their children become independent readers—by serving as reading models and by helping their kids and teens find books of interest. Thirty-one percent of kids are classified as "high frequency" readers; although 74 percent of parents say reading is the most important skill their children can have, only 21 percent of parents read daily themselves.

But before I could pull anything together for a post on these items, all my time and energy went into caring for the pug.

Fast forward to yesterday, when I discovered Victoria's fabulous insights in "Women, Books and Boris," and this Washington Post article, which casts doubts on a gender crisis in the schools (it appears to be more one of race and class): "much of the pessimism about young males seems to derive from inadequate research, sloppy analysis and discomfort with the fact that although the average boy is doing better, the average girl has gotten ahead of him."

I hope this means boys can be expected to have a Margaret Atwood or a Harper Lee mixed in with their Hemingway and Homer in the schools now without the adults having full-scale hissy fits.

And I hope more parents will take their kids to the bookstore or the library, and that they'll chose something for themselves on the trip.

We had Ginger put to sleep this morning. We're very sad, but otherwise we're doing okay. She didn't suffer, and for that we are grateful.

So glad I don't live in Raleigh. This article doesn't mention it, but the one back in the spring indicated that some of the people challenging Beloved, The Color Purple, and The Chocolate War didn't even have kids in the system--they were homeschooling.

Obviously for some it's more about censoring books in general than "protecting" their own children.