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The Ormolu Clock
- GenresShort StoriesAudiobook
Paperback
Published September 9, 1960
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About the author
Muriel Spark
209 books1,260 followersDame Muriel Spark, DBE was a prolific Scottish novelist, short story writer and poet whose darkly comedic voice made her one of the most distinctive writers of the twentieth century. In 2008 The Times newspaper named Spark in its list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Spark received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1965 for The Mandelbaum Gate, the Ingersoll Foundation TS Eliot Award in 1992 and the David Cohen Prize in 1997. She became Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1993, in recognition of her services to literature. She has been twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, in 1969 for The Public Image and in 1981 for Loitering with Intent. In 1998, she was awarded the Golden PEN Award by English PEN for "a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature". In 2010, Spark was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize of 1970 for The Driver's Seat.
Spark received eight honorary doctorates in her lifetime. These included a Doctor of the University degree (Honoris causa) from her alma mater, Heriot-Watt University in 1995; a Doctor of Humane Letters (Honoris causa) from the American University of Paris in 2005; and Honorary Doctor of Letters degrees from the Universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, London, Oxford, St Andrews and Strathclyde.
Spark grew up in Edinburgh and worked as a department store secretary, writer for trade magazines, and literary editor before publishing her first novel, The Comforters, in 1957. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, published in 1961, and considered her masterpiece, was made into a stage play, a TV series, and a film.
Spark received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1965 for The Mandelbaum Gate, the Ingersoll Foundation TS Eliot Award in 1992 and the David Cohen Prize in 1997. She became Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1993, in recognition of her services to literature. She has been twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, in 1969 for The Public Image and in 1981 for Loitering with Intent. In 1998, she was awarded the Golden PEN Award by English PEN for "a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature". In 2010, Spark was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize of 1970 for The Driver's Seat.
Spark received eight honorary doctorates in her lifetime. These included a Doctor of the University degree (Honoris causa) from her alma mater, Heriot-Watt University in 1995; a Doctor of Humane Letters (Honoris causa) from the American University of Paris in 2005; and Honorary Doctor of Letters degrees from the Universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, London, Oxford, St Andrews and Strathclyde.
Spark grew up in Edinburgh and worked as a department store secretary, writer for trade magazines, and literary editor before publishing her first novel, The Comforters, in 1957. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, published in 1961, and considered her masterpiece, was made into a stage play, a TV series, and a film.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 5, 2020
Spark seems to like writing unnerving women.
Having lived in the Austrian alps, this rivalry between two businesses to monopolise a small town rang a humorous truth, as did the coffee-shop gossip. But this story is sinister - mostly because you can't quite work out why.
It ends abruptly and certainly leaves you with many more questions than answers. A hardworking, onion-shaped Austrian lady, diligently scrubbing her own pots and pans, building her business from the ground up should be a character of admiration. But she's not. She's creepy. Spark makes her creepy by smattering the page with puzzling symbolism.
We puzzle over a misplaced exotic palm tree, a lavish crimson bedroom and the eponymous Ormolu clock (which turns out to be riddled in mercury and super-poisonous but that requires a Google search - something that didn't exist in 1960 - or circumstantial antique-dealer trivia to know...) I can't help thinking Spark doesn't want us to decode her symbols, but they do the job of creating a rising sense of unease about Frau Lublonitsch and her motives to take over the town.
It's her methods I suppose - leaving the clock visible to signal her gradual but inevitable takeover of Herr Stroh, controlling him and his business' slow and painful demise. The locals of the town certainly believe she will own and control the stretch of town down the river - but across the bridge? She's getting old. She may own the clock, but she can't control time. What will she achieve before her time runs out? And to what end?
I listened to the New Yorker discussion of this story and they likened it to Ozymandias - a poem about hubris and the inevitability that time and nature outlast all of us. Even when we build monuments, civilisations, monopolies... eventually everything returns to dust. To that end, Frau Lublonitsch's determined quest for power is futile. But for me, there was something more of the Macbeth about it, 'the dead butcher and his fiend-like queen', a tale of what power can do to people. The misconception that to gain power, you must diminish someone else's and Lublonitsch didn't seem to care who she crushed on her route to the bridge.
I remain puzzled and not entirely satisfied - is this a Spark trait?
Having lived in the Austrian alps, this rivalry between two businesses to monopolise a small town rang a humorous truth, as did the coffee-shop gossip. But this story is sinister - mostly because you can't quite work out why.
It ends abruptly and certainly leaves you with many more questions than answers. A hardworking, onion-shaped Austrian lady, diligently scrubbing her own pots and pans, building her business from the ground up should be a character of admiration. But she's not. She's creepy. Spark makes her creepy by smattering the page with puzzling symbolism.
We puzzle over a misplaced exotic palm tree, a lavish crimson bedroom and the eponymous Ormolu clock (which turns out to be riddled in mercury and super-poisonous but that requires a Google search - something that didn't exist in 1960 - or circumstantial antique-dealer trivia to know...) I can't help thinking Spark doesn't want us to decode her symbols, but they do the job of creating a rising sense of unease about Frau Lublonitsch and her motives to take over the town.
It's her methods I suppose - leaving the clock visible to signal her gradual but inevitable takeover of Herr Stroh, controlling him and his business' slow and painful demise. The locals of the town certainly believe she will own and control the stretch of town down the river - but across the bridge? She's getting old. She may own the clock, but she can't control time. What will she achieve before her time runs out? And to what end?
I listened to the New Yorker discussion of this story and they likened it to Ozymandias - a poem about hubris and the inevitability that time and nature outlast all of us. Even when we build monuments, civilisations, monopolies... eventually everything returns to dust. To that end, Frau Lublonitsch's determined quest for power is futile. But for me, there was something more of the Macbeth about it, 'the dead butcher and his fiend-like queen', a tale of what power can do to people. The misconception that to gain power, you must diminish someone else's and Lublonitsch didn't seem to care who she crushed on her route to the bridge.
I remain puzzled and not entirely satisfied - is this a Spark trait?
January 22, 2019
The horrific truth behind this story didn't sink in the first few times I read it, or rather heard it on the podcast, and then later saw it in its original format, in the September 17, 1960 issue of the New Yorker, along with "Imagine Kissing Pete" by John O'Hara, which is by comparison a much more forgiving and bourgeois sort of tale. What creatures we all are, dominating, working on instinct, winning glory, shaping ourselves after our spirit, even, but still time will come to dominate all, and all comes to an end. I'll dip back and read this a few more times, I'm sure.
June 10, 2018
Source: New Yorker Fiction Podcast
I don't really get the point of this story. Frau Lublonitsch is an interesting character but the story is much too short to really go anywhere.
Narrated by Joseph O'Neill.
I don't really get the point of this story. Frau Lublonitsch is an interesting character but the story is much too short to really go anywhere.
Narrated by Joseph O'Neill.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews