Territorial Rights.
INSCRIBED TO WILLIAM SHAWN
Spark, Muriel. Territorial Rights. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, (1979).
8vo.; rust colored cloth; stamped in gilt; white dust-jacket, decoratively printed in various colors. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First American edition; jacket design and painting by John Alcorn. A presentation copy, inscribed to the man whom she gave first dibs on editing the book: For William Shawn/warmest good wishes/Muriel Spark. According to her correspondence with Shawn, she had sent him the manuscript for Territorial Rights in hopes it would be serialized in the New Yorker; unfortunately, Shawn wrote Sparks’s agent that the magazine could not divide sections of Territorial Rights for publication, nor could they publish the whole novel, but he enjoyed Sparks “lovely, stylish writing.”
Set in Venice – “with its fading palazzos and, its promise of sexual intrigue, and its countless hiding places for secrets best kept hidden” – Spark tells the story of Robert, who travels to get away from his complicated life. He is drawn into a situation that is equally, if not more, complicated, involving episodes of blackmail and crime.
Territorial Rights is a novel about the complications that follow deception, but for Muriel Spark such matters are also the stuff of high comedy and sharp observations on the precarious way we live now. She proves once again that what might be melodrama or operatic buffoonery is stark realism in Italy, and that when ‘we all have something to hide,’ the results can be wickedly funny. Shrewd, witty, always alert to the nuances of human behavior, this is Muriel Spark at her comparable best. (dust-jacket)
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