Word: muriel
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...DISTURB by Muriel Spark. 121 pages. Viking...
...past, through sheer brains and talent, Scottish Novelist Muriel Spark has got away with pretty much anything she wanted to-ghosts, angels, a devil selling tape recorders to African witch doctors, a London mock Eden for young ladies, some of whom were immolated for lusting after a Schiaparelli dress. But what we have here is a grim little all-purpose parody and microcosm-with resonances that echo in all directions but never quite ring true...
...light of Resnais's lifelong adoration of the comics, his work with Stan Lee may be an equally interesting match, though of a decidedly different tone. The comics have been an avowed influence on Resnais's earlier works; he mentions specifically how, in Muriel, they inspired the overlapping of dialogue belonging to one scene with action of another, and how the action on Marienbad had some resemblance to Phil Davis's Mandrake the Magician...
...second playlet Matthau is a case of acute satyriasis billed as Jesse Kiplinger, Famous Hollywood Producer. When his New York schedule frees him from 2 to 4 p.m., Jesse books overcoy Muriel (Barbara Harris). He had stolen her maidenhood 17 years earlier in suburbia; now he wants to return to the crime, if not the scene. Acting under an assumed mane, the red-wigged Matthau is a Narcissus whose self-love is contagious. But Muriel is immune until Jesse discovers the secret: big names. Dropping them like rose petals, he strews the path to the bedroom...Frank Sinatra...Paul Newman...
...could go on and on. The business of the birds asking perilous questions is carried out by making Miles' double's mother a circus performer whose aviary of trained birds includes Iris, Angus, Charles, Pamela, John, Penelope, Brigid, Anthony, Muriel, Mary, Norman, Saul, Philip and Ivy-all named, it would appear, for modern novelists...