For most Gen-Z folks, dank memes might be a steady supply of dark humour but it’s interesting to note that the setup has been around for a while. 18th Century works such as Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Voltaire’s Candide are supposed forerunners for the style but it was French Surrealist Andre Breton’s Anthology of Black Humour, which led to the term entering common parlance in the 1960s. Of course, these days in India everyone seems to be taking things way too seriously, so I get why comedians stray away from anything that could be considered taboo. Such is life.
Muriel Spark’s Not to Disturb is labeled as a gothic comedy and is supposed to be an inversion of the classic locked-room mystery. Instead of working our way through the plot, the novel in fact takes us through the build-up itself. The book revolves around a night’s proceedings at a chateau in Geneva with the residing Baron, the Baroness and their secretary engaged in a conversation behind locked doors. The estate workers, led by the shrewd Butler prepare for the impending eventuality, bumble around in a comedy of errors. I understand dark comedies thrive on efficiently combining farce with real-world happenings that people wouldn’t naturally joke about, but this is just way too bizarre to deal with. The characters have seemingly no attributes to latch on to and even the most prominent character, the butler Lister seems to dive in and out with little or no understanding of how and why. As I said, just way too bizarre. I read that Spark treated this book as an experiment and I hope to engage with some of her other works to have a better understanding of her writing style.
The Read: Quite frankly, I never really got into it. Despite its short length, the proceedings choose to focus on cursory dialogue and sundries of no concern without actually dealing with the plot directly. Numerous characters are introduced and cast away needlessly with no real focus on tying loose ends up which often had me thinking like I had missed out on reading a few pages. Turns out I hadn’t, it’s just that kind of writing. The crime and its mystery are completely ignored in lieu of debating class hierarchy which falls extremely flat considering the lack of depth. This was a tough ask to read and it’s safe to say you can choose not to disturb this book.
11/365.
Trivia: The text includes the Latin phrase “sic transit Gloria Mundi” which translates to ‘Thus passes the glory of the world’; a sentence spoken during the coronation of a new Pope, while flax is burned to represent the transient nature of earthly glory. It was first used at the coronation of Alexander V in Pisa, 7 July 1409, but is earlier in origin. (Reference)
Of course, you can choose to opt for the millennial version of ‘This too shall pass” which is a Persian adage introduced by poet Edward Fitzgerald. (I jest, there’s really no connections between the two phrases, while the origin stories are absolutely true)
Documentation:
Book: Not to Disturb
Author: Murial Spark
Year of Release: 1977
Publisher: Penguin Books