Muriel Spark - Authors' Ghosts

[bohemiabythesea.livejournal.com]

Come on, Muriel. I know you changed part of Jean Brodie yourself when I wasn't looking...


Muriel Spark
Authors' Ghosts

I think that authors' ghosts creep back
Nightly to haunt the sleeping shelves
And find the books they wrote.
Those authors put final, semi-final touches,
Sometimes whole paragraphs.

Whole pages are added, rewritten, revised,
So deeply by night those authors employ
Themselves with those old books of theirs.

How otherwise
Explain the fact that maybe after years
Have passed, the reader
Picks up the book - But was it like that?
I don't remember this...Where
Did this ending come from?
I recall quite another.

Oh yes, it has been tampered with
No doubt about it -
The author's very touch is here, there and there,
Where it wasn't before, and
What's more, something's missing -
I could have sworn...

(In: Litt, Toby and Ali Smith [eds]: 13. New Writing. London: Picador and BAC, 2005.)

Comments

[punkinelf.livejournal.com]

Believe it or not, I had the same thing happen with Tropic of Cancer. I read it in college, thought what's the fuss, then (started) to reread it on a beach in Cali and was too embarrassed to be seen in public with it!

Good poem!

[bohemiabythesea.livejournal.com]

Oh I know. That's another version of it; writers getting bored in afterlife and sneaking back to up the smutlevel.

[alittleunwell3.livejournal.com]

I love this. Thanks for posting.

[bohemiabythesea.livejournal.com]

You're welcome!

[puddleshark.livejournal.com]

Truth.

[lyryk.livejournal.com]

Brilliant!

[bohemiabythesea.livejournal.com]

She moved a scene around. I know for a fact that it was somewhere closer to the beginning when I read the book the first time.

[lyryk.livejournal.com]

Sneaky. Very sneaky.

[bohemiabythesea.livejournal.com]

I'm telling you.

Shakespeare, btw, huge offender: lines that I remember clearly from one play, taken out of said play in the dead of the night, shoved right into another play before dawn.

[lyryk.livejournal.com]

I know! Although I suppose the Doctor might be to blame for that...

[bohemiabythesea.livejournal.com]

Oh, you're right! Then I can't be mad.