Gotham Diary:
Exquisitely Awkward
18 October 2013
At Crawford Doyle the other day, I picked up a copy of Muriel Spark’s Loitering With Intent, even though it was hard to believe that I hadn’t read a book with such a boffo title. I ought to have opened it up first, and read the first couple of paragraphs. When I got round to doing so last night, I knew at once that I had indeed read the book before. The details were hazy, but the quirky tone was unmistakable. Unmistakably Spark, of course. But more particular than that. The young woman writing a poem on a tombstone — she’s one of a kind. She’s Fleur Talbot, budding novelist, a baleen whale feeding on bulks of tiny but clearly-observed details. She cares naught for none: it’s a portrait of the artist as a benign sociopath. With a sociopath’s genius, Fleur finds work in the employ of Sir Quentin Oliver, a baronet who runs a very silly club, the Autobiographical Association. Every now and then there is a meeting of the club, its eccentric (or would-be eccentric) members filling Sir Quentin’s drawing room. Sir Quentin has a frightful housekeeper and an aged mother, who is always escaping from the housekeeper’s vigilance.
But Lady Edwina just then came tottering into the room. “Mummy!” said Sir Quentin.
I jumped up and pulled forward a chair for her. Everyone was jumping up to do something for her. Sir Quentin fluttered his hands, begged her to go and rest and demanded, “Where is Mrs Tims?” He obviously expected his mother to make a scene, and so did I. However, Lady Edwina didn’t make it. She took over the meeting as if it were a drawing-room tea party, holding up the proceedings with the blackmail of her very great age and of her newly revealed charm. I was greatly impressed by the performance. She knew some of them by name, enquired of their families so solicitously that it hardly mattered that most of them were long since dead, and when Mrs Tims entered with the tea and soda buns on a tray, exclaimed, “Ah Tims! What delightful things have you brought us?” Beryl Tims was amazed to see her sitting there, wide awake, with her powdered face and her black satin tea-dress freshly spoiled at the neck and shoulders with a slight face-powder overflow. Mrs Tims was furious but she put on her English Rose simper, and placed the tray with solicitude on the table beside old Edwina, who was at that moment enquiring of the unfrocked father, “Are you the Rector of Wandsworth in civilian clothing?”
“Lady Edwina, your rest hour,” wheedled Mrs Times. “Come along, now. Come with me.”
“Dear no, oh dear no,” said Father Egbert, sitting up and putting to rights his Prince of Wales jacket. “I don’t belong to a religious hierarchy of any persuasion!”
“Funny, I smell a clergyman off you,” said Edwina.
“Mummy! said Sir Quentin.
So I went into the blue room, and made for the shelf where only days ago I had noticed a rank of Spark’s slim fictions, and there, in the middle of them, it was, Loitering With Intent. So I pulled it out and took it back with me to the bedroom to re-read. Don’t you agree that that’s the true test? You buy a book and then find out that you’ve already read it. Disappointed? Never! How much more fun it is to make rediscoveries. The new copy, I’ll quiet give away.
***
In the kitchen, I’m watching Flirting with Disaster, David Russell’s 1996 comedy. This has always been a favorite of mine; I fell completely in love with Téa Leoni when it came out, for one thing. The slapstick plot, perfectly executed by a top-flight cast, is a great treat, as grossly funny as a movie without a pie-throwing scene can be. But as the movie began, I realized that it has an unusual dimension. All comedy involves the discomfort of others, and there’s plenty of that in Flirting with Disaster. But the movie is so full of TMI moments and Ew! moments that the discomfort spills out into the audience. Most of these unpleasantnesses do not involve plumbing; they’re higher-order embarrassments. Such as the unforgettable scene in which Mary Tyler Moore, as Ben Stiller’s shrill adoptive mother, harrasses her sweet, new-mother daughter-in-law (Patricia Arquette) about the importance of acquiring a push-up bra, now. Moore redeemed reels of sweetness with this performance, and it makes me sick with regret that she and Doris Roberts were never teamed up for a sister act. (Were they?)
Then there’s Charlet Oberly as the owner of a B&B who insists, in her welcoming spiel, that Betty Ford is a “lovely lady,” only to behave like a witch when Ben Stiller needs to make a late-night phone call. This isn’t just situationally funny. We’ve been set up to dislike the B&B lady by the patness of her speech, but we’ve felt guilty about it, too, because she’s just an old lady; but when she pulls the phone out of Ben Stiller’s hand, our guilt is replaced by a very complicated satisfaction. When Stiller tries to apologize by pointing out that he used his calling card — his apologies are always excuses — we throw up our hands at the hopelessness of things. The moral of the story is that American niceness is thinner than nail polish, and, like so much nail polish, really unattractive.
Anyone remember calling cards?