The Only Problem by Muriel Spark

Patience, pallor, and deep anxiety: there goes suffering, Harvey reflected. And I found him interesting. Is it only by recognizing how flat would be the world without the sufferings of others that we know how desperately becalmed our own lives would be without suffering? Do I suffer on Effie's account? Yes, and perhaps I can live by that experience. We all need something to suffer about. But Job , my work on Job, all interrupted and neglected, probed into and interfered with: that is experience, to; real experience, not vicarious, as is often assumed. To study, to think, is to live and suffer painfully.

Harvey Gotham is studying Job. It represents, he says, the "only problem": why is it that God lets us suffer? The question to him is, perhaps at first, mostly academic; he's rich enough to be inured from most suffering. That is, until his estranged wife Effie is suspected of terrorist activity, and Harvey finds himself under intense suspicion by the police, who think he may be funding her terrorist cell. In truth, Harvey hasn't seen Effie in years; he left her in the middle of an excursion to the Italian countryside when she stole a chocolate bar from a gas station, claiming that she acted out of solidarity with the working class. But Harvey is still enmeshed with Effie's world, and even lives for a time with her sister Ruth, who has left her husband Edgar, an actor who makes up the final point in the foursquare drama.

I have fond memories of this one, and often list it among my favorite Spark novels. Re-reading it now, I'm struck by how unusual it is among Spark's works because of how unified it is. I often find that Spark's novels have one or two extraneous details that throw the whole thing into whack, forcing you to wonder how it is they fit in. Here, maybe it's the student-cum-housekeeper Nathan, who may or may not be mixed up in Effie's activities, but for the most part, The Only Problem is remarkable in how it tells a single story: Harvey, trying desperately to work on his book about Job, being pestered and interrupted by the police. It's remarkable, too, because of the sense that it is telling a story where all the events are happening somewhere else, off screen. Spark has no interest in the bloody details of Effie's terrorist cell, or the policeman they kill (you can practically see her sneering at the cop who interviews Harvey, begging him to take his colleague's death seriously), or their justification for their actions. It's a thriller with no thrills, a shoot-em-up with no shooting.

Is that the way with suffering, especially in the developed West? Are we not always thinking about suffering as something that is happening somewhere else, far away? Harvey insists that his work being interrupted is a kind of suffering, and maybe he's right. He's certainly suffering more than he otherwise would be, but is suffering that must be measured at a certain minimum level, or does it have its various shades? When we are but slightly put upon or annoyed, are we, too, partaking in some sense the story in the story of Job? After all, does an omnipotent God not have the ability to keep us from waiting in lines or having minor toothaches? What is funny, though, is the way that Harvey is always talking about Job. In a letter written to his lawyer, Harvey interrupts his refusal to offer Effie any alimony with speculation about the date of Job's composition; he just can't help himself. In one really funny scene, he forces a gaggle of reporters who want to know about his relationship with Effie to listen to an hour of rambling about Job and the nature of suffering. Harvey thinks endlessly about suffering, but it isn't at all clear he ever experiences it, or truly understands it.

Having read all of Spark's books now, I would probably rate The Only Problem a little lower than I had first thought. But it may be one of her books with the most singular vision, and one of the most thematically interesting.