Antisyzygy
It’s Edinburgh, 2018, and Muriel Spark is the celebrated novelist of the year. It’s Edinburgh, 2018, and I’m melding two experiences of walking Princes Street whilst visiting the city: the rainy morning that I hopped off the tram with a huge suitcase containing the most part of my material (and just ended) New York life; and — three days later — a walk with a much smaller suitcase, a friend from New York, cold air stinging our nostrils and the festive lights of the market winking at us.
Kirsty Gunn writes of a homecoming in The New Yorker, in an article about a perhaps new-found appreciation of Spark. The novelist was born in Edinburgh but, in spite of living most of her life in other places, still claimed to be “Scottish by formation”.
My own homecoming — returning to the suburb of Sheffield where I grew up — draws me face to face with the landscape and attitude that shaped me, that makes me Yorkshire by formation. All the muscles in my legs are singing the praises of the hills — but they’re also singing because the flat deck of New York City streets has left them ill-equipped. My crow’s feet are activated frequently in broad smiles, because smiles stand for much when speech is regularly a simple ‘how-do’. Being here, my quiet industry and reluctance to make a fuss feel spot on. But the more ways I observe that I fit in here, the more pronounced become the things that mark me out. I feel acutely…
