muriel spark just died.
i think as a writer she matched my world view the best, and her subtle, wrathful, asp on the worlds breast approach to life, and how small and slight her novels were, but how wise they were to the human condition.

she was bitter, and angry, but refused to spew, constructing traps for all our sins, traps of great skill and astonishing effectivness.

abess of crewe, her allegory on nixon, was the best book on power and responsiblity written perhaps ever, but no one paid attention to it, 100 pages, about nuns and abbies, how could it say something significant.

that she failed to win the nobel is still a mark that writers prizes are dick measuring contests, the bigger, and more epic in scoipe the book the better, and small artifacts of our own darkness, will never be rewarded.

in many ways, it reminds me of w, how little seriousness people took highsmith's ripleys novels as works of literture, as medtations on desire and how it makes pychopaths of us all...(also note the love for zadie smiths white teeth, a brilliant mess versus on beauty, perhaps the first perfect novel of the 21st)

heres the bbc obit here