Curriculum Vitae

Hopkins turned me (and many others) onto The Girls of Slender Means. I also heard her talk about Curriculum Vitae, Spark's autobiography, so I picked it up at this past Arlington book sale (one of the great things of the world).

The book was different for an autobiography: it covers only the first 39 years of Sparks life, mostly the part of her life related to her becoming a writer. It vacillates between loads of detail and very little detail--she talks more about her grandmother, for instance, than she does about her husband (whom she shortly divorces--he had some sort of mental disorder). She goes into detail about her memories of her teachers, but not much, for instance, about her son. She also barely touches on her conversion:

"When I am asked about my conversion, why I became a Catholic, I can only say that the answer is both too easy and too difficult. The simple explanation is that I felt the Roman Catholic faith corresponded to what I had always felt and known and believed; there was no blinding revelation in my case. The more difficult explanation would involve the step by step building up of a conviction; as Newman himself pointed out, when asked about his conversion, it was not a thing one could propound 'between the soup and the fish' at a dinner party. 'Let them be to the trouble that I have been to,' said Newman. Indeed, the existential quality of a religious experience cannot be simply summed up in general terms." (How true about the soup and the fish!)

While she doesn't say much about her conversion itself, she does mention occasional experiences of transcendence: "I made one trip with my husband to the Victoria Falls, hoping this would make him feel better. That by itself was wonderful; but I knew my married life was over. Strangely, the experience of the Victoria Falls gave me courage to endure the difficult years to come. The falls become to me a symbol of spiritual strength. I had no settled religion, but I recognized the experience of the falls as spiritual in kind. They are one of those works of nature that cannot be distinguished from a sublime work of art. I think everyone should try once to visit this true wonder of the world; it should become a sort of Mecca and place of pilgrimage for the human race. I don't know why peace conferences are not held in the vicinity of the Victoria Falls. I can think of no other experience that makes for the reasonable contemplation of our humanity, and a sense of the proportions in which we should think."

Honestly, I found the detailed discussion of her childhood to be a bit slow, but it picked up as it went on. I thoroughly enjoyed the references to TSE throughout CV: Describing her grandmother's underwear: "It was called combinations.It was an all-in-one wool suit with knee-length leggings and wrist-length sleeves, and, like the drawers, it had no gusset. These were very 'modern' to my grandmother. They belonged to that generation of young ladies one of whom is described by T.S. Eliot in The Waste Land, as drying her combinations on the window sill."

On a biography of her by an ex-boyfriend that was partially made up: "He says that I was in love with T.S. Eliot. (My comment: I never met Eliot. He was my parents' age. But if Stanford thought I was in love with another man, why was he hanging around? He claims that I went to 'Eliot's church' in Gloucester Road."

Oh, and I can't leave out her references to her time at the Helena Club (after which the May of Teck was modeled): "At the Helena Club my friends there would come to my room after dinner to talk and make coffee. Sometimes we had sherry, a precious present from Colin."

And: "More than anything, according to the hundreds of letters he sent me and which I find among my papers, he disliked what he called my 'liking for male company'. I was unable to take this as seriously as he evidently meant it. I agreed heartily that I liked male company, especially as I lived in a club with at least sixty girls. I told him I also liked the company of women who liked male company." (Also: I want hundreds of letters from someone! Diana and I probably exchanged hundreds, although I guess I stupidly suggested we throw them away!)


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