No Problem

The Only Problem, Muriel Spark's latest novel, slides by with the elegant concision of a parable. Spark's economical narration, piercing judgment, and marvelous ear give her story the easy-to-watch quality of a cartoon, while the explicit statement of her concerns evokes a depth which is left for the reader to supply. Reading her novel is like looking at the reflections on the surface of a slow, but full and moving stream.

Nothing could be simpler than Spark's subject, Harvey and Effie Gotham's marriage. Harvey is a rich man who doesn't have to work and who spends his abundant leisure time studying the Book of Job, on which he is preparing an essay. The problem of why suffering exists is, for him, the only problem. Effie is a generous-spirited but angry woman, an antinomian who feels that her anger at the excesses and errors of capitalism means that she does not have to abide by the rules--anyone's rules.

Spark's story is the narration of the break-up of this marriage. Harvey and Effie part ways abruptly when Effie reveals to Harvey that she has just stolen two chocolate bars. This peccadillo, superadded to other problems in the marriage--Effie married Harvey for his money, has had frequent affairs, and disagrees with him on most important things--causes their separation. Harvey retires to a village in France to continue his work on Job. Effie takes a lover, has a baby, drops her lover, and, having taken another, becomes a terrorist. Her activities for the Front de la Liberation de l' Europe causes all sorts of trouble for Harvey and impede the progress of his work. The police suspect him of complicity; his aunt believes him to he founding a new religion; no one respects his interest in the Book of Job.

Spark's novel, the fruit of a simple but profound analysis, reveals how easily a love which is not tending to perfection or at least to improvement can be perverted to supply the energy for a really malicious hatred. Effie and Harvey are attracted to each other because they are, in some sense, opposites. He admires her for her uselessness, even while criticizing the impractical applications of her idealism. Effie, on the other hand, finds Harvey quite useful. Effie uses Harvey efficiently and thoroughly, employing his house for her affairs and trying, after the split, to get a large divorce settlement from him. Disgusted by the candy bar incident, Harvey decides to leave her. Although their opposition attracts them to each other, it cannot, in the absence of adequate understanding, provide the basis for a marriage.

After the split, the polarity which supplied much of the attraction gives most of the energy to their flamboyant divergence. It is true that Harvey objects to her terrorism. He opines that

I couldn't stand her sociological clap-trap. If she wanted to do some good in the world she had plenty of opportunity. There was nothing to stop her taking up charities and causes; she could have had money for them, and she always had plenty of time. But she has to rob supermarkets and banks and sleep with people like that.

But later Spark reveals that, however much Harvey objects, "The thought that Effie was a member of a terrorist band now excited Harvey sexually." Though Harvey and Effie are still in love with each other, they exaggerate their individual characteristics--Harvey with the Book of Job, Effie with a machine gun--in an attempt to prove how really separate they are.

Spark's effortless casual linkage of a bad marriage and a shooting spree is not the least of her accomplishments. One of the lasting delights of the book is Spark's almost infallible ear. At a press conference about his wife, a reporter asks Harvey:

Your wife Effie's terrorist activities, do you ascribe them to a reaction against her wealthy matrimonial experience, with all the luxury and boredom which capitalism produces?

The Only Problem is filled with questions as sharply recorded as this. The answers are often sharper.

Spark generously and cleverly shares her wit with her characters. When, at the press conference, a reporter draws an analogy between Harvey and job, Harvey retorts, "I am hardly in the position of Job. He was covered with boils, for one thing, which I am not." Talking of Job, Harvey reveals something of Spark's own intentions when he observes that "He not only argues the problem of suffering, he suffered the problem of argument. And that is incurable." Spark, cautioned by her own character, does not argue for her own moral position but directs all her energies to the narration.

If The Only Problem has any formal difficulties, they lie in the beginning of the book. Harvey is the novel's central and most appealing character; but the story does not begin by focusing on him. Although Spark's narration is usually smooth, the reader feels something of a jolt when the camera begins to follow Harvey's life exclusively. Here the author seems to have had an unclear idea of the nature of effect she wanted for her novel; she seems to have been torn between making it a cartoon and making it a movie. Perhaps this is not a great fault, for The Only Problem is eminently re-readable: warts often resemble freckles on a second perusal.