Somerset Maugham

[Jackson Richardson]

I just idly took down Volume 4 of Somerset Maugham's complete short stories from the shelf and read one. Then I read another. Then another. Very moreiish.

Details of concrete life just thrown away. Despite the cynicism (all those Malayan unfaithful couples) I will admit to tear being in my eyes in a coffee bar as I finished P & O, the story of a middle aged woman returning home from the Far East after here husband was unfaithful and learning to forgive him when someone she meet casually on board dies.

A curious writer. Definitely not Victorian, indeed anti-Victorian, but not interested in C20 modernism either. A 30s Maupassant?

[WICKES]

I just idly took down Volume 4 of Somerset Maugham's complete short stories from the shelf and read one. Then I read another. Then another. Very moreiish.

Details of concrete life just thrown away. Despite the cynicism (all those Malayan unfaithful couples) I will admit to tear being in my eyes in a coffee bar as I finished P & O, the story of a middle aged woman returning home from the Far East after here husband was unfaithful and learning to forgive him when someone she meet casually on board dies.

A curious writer. Definitely not Victorian, indeed anti-Victorian, but not interested in C20 modernism either. A 30s Maupassant?

I enjoy his stuff- definitely worth re-visiting.

[Scheherazade]

Admittedly, I have only read his Razor's Edge but I found it utterly dull and, dare I say, lacking in style (yes, I did dare!)

I aim to read Of Human Bondage one of these days so that he gets a chance to redeem himself.

What do you like about him as an author?

[tonywalt]

He addresses alot of existentialist issues in a way that benefits me. I prefer his short stories, such as:

Red
The colonels lady
The lotus eater (pretty amazing story, likely been done in some form before - still love it today)

[Jackson Richardson]

It's the short stories that tell - his knowingness could tire in a novel, but wors in the short run where usually the last paragraph turns everything around. The detail is extraordinarily telling.

[Emil Miller]

He addresses alot of existentialist issues in a way that benefits me. I prefer his short stories, such as:

Red
The colonels lady
The lotus eater (pretty amazing story, likely been done in some form before - still love it today)

I agree with all three and there are so many more of similar quality. Here's the film version of The Colonel's Lady. It's in 3 short parts and perfectly captures the comedy and pathos of the original.

https://youtu.be/OaneIxxdpf8

[logonaut]

I definitely intend to read more of his work. I first encountered him via the short novel The Moon and Sixpence, which was based loosely on the life of Paul Gauguin. I found his attitude towards life and people extremely humane; as for his prose, it is simultaneously mellow and carefully-constructed. I got the curious feeling that he could write about almost any type of human being, even the most noxious, in such a way as to give them their due. In a life where people are generally more one-sided in their reactions to others, this trait is, well, golden. One is pleased that he wrote in the way that he did despite the then-prevalent obsession with experiment for its own sake.

[Emil Miller]

I definitely intend to read more of his work. I first encountered him via the short novel The Moon and Sixpence, which was based loosely on the life of Paul Gauguin. I found his attitude towards life and people extremely humane; as for his prose, it is simultaneously mellow and carefully-constructed. I got the curious feeling that he could write about almost any type of human being, even the most noxious, in such a way as to give them their due. In a life where people are generally more one-sided in their reactions to others, this trait is, well, golden. One is pleased that he wrote in the way that he did despite the then-prevalent obsession with experiment for its own sake.

Anyone who thinks they know something about art would benefit from reading The Moon and Sixpence.
You might try Cakes and Ale that's based on the life of Thomas Hardy and is said to have been Maugham's favourite novel.

[Hacienda]

In reply to Scheherazade, I would echo the sentiments of the others and encourage you to explore his short stories; there is an intensity of expression and character that is perhaps dissipated in the long-form novel (though Maugham is one of my favorite authors in both long and short form).

Regarding Maugham as an author, there's an extended digression in Cakes and Ale near the beginning - what it is to be a 'Grand Old Man of Letters'; I can't do it justice in abbreviation and I encourage re-/visiting the passage (it's in the area of Ashenden's lunch with Kear). It is clear that Maugham was very well aware of the ironies of posterity and the mutability of 'literary immortality'. Extra-textually, this made me more amenable to a style we might now call formalistic and over-exact.

I quite like Maugham's frequent deployment of a quasi-Maugham as narrator, whether by his own name or Carey or Ashenden. Despite handily disposing of the difficulty of how a person can consort with aristocrats and prostitutes in the same day (and pay for all their lunches), then to hear the colonial gossip in the Club later than evening, it never feels contrived to me. To an extent, this dilettantish hovering eye reminds me of Poirot, going from stately home to stately home, uncovering existential angst and malaise rather than dead-bodies and scheming footmen. This Edwardian world-that-never-was is immensely charming (as the success of Downton Abbey testifies, and that is a far inferior thing).

Furthermore, I'm sure Maugham's treatment of the South Seas and Malaya, and the 'Far East' in general, would have (Edward) Said falling over himself to shout 'Orientalism!'. From the Painted Veil (the moral degeneracy of the colonials in Hong Kong, the inscrutable sublime city of the Interior), the Moon and Sixpence, The Razor's Edge, all of his 'foreign' short stories, the 'East' is something of a foil and a magical place, if only perhaps by the psychosomatic action of the European protagonists (e.g. the Malay magic spell in P&O) . Synonyms of inscrutable and mysterious definitely crop up a lot. But ultimately, I think they feel very different from a Rider Haggard (King Solomon's Mines) or Eat, Pray, Love type of 'foreign lands' romp. I get that the quasi-Gauguin or Larry from The Razor's Edge are so saintly (in their own ways, the former is hardly virtuous) they may be inaccessible and so performative they lack an interior; in the same way Superman sucks as a superhero because his weaknesses feel contrived. Even so I find them very affective, they are exciting because they make me feel the numinous and the human are somehow contiguous. Though I loved Heart of Darkness, Marlowe 'a Buddha preaching in European' felt far more insufferable.

Although we now might call Maugham something of a fogey, I think his attitude in this area is more self-aware and attuned to parody - he made me think of Coetzee (Dusklands), who would hardly be called formalistic or dated (yet - Cakes and Ale has something to say on that) more than Conrad or Kipling.

If anybody is interested in pursuing the 'Oriental', I highly recommend Anthony Burgess' Malayan Trilogy (which is nominally banned in Malaysia; that's a kind of recommendation in itself), or Burmese Days by Orwell. As for other saintly figures and the difficulties of Saintliness, A Meeting by the River by Christopher Isherwood (more famous for A Single Man or Berlin Stories) is an interesting comparison. An interesting anecdote is that some contemporaries speculated the protagonist of The Razor's Edge was based on Isherwood and Isherwood translated for Maugham the section of the Upanishads from which the title 'The Razor's Edge' is derived.

Also, an anecdote: In Penang, Malaysia, a former British crown colony mentioned in some of Maugham's short stories, there's a Victorian hotel very vaguely in the Raj style (it feels like a gigantic multi-storey bungalow) called the E&O (eastern & oriental) hotel. In the lobby there are photos of various notable guests, including Kipling, Conrad and Maugham (and Chaplin and Coward). It was a hotel both for people of means doing a Grand Tour of 'The Orient' and for officials in the Colonial Service on their way to further and farther postings. You can still order a gin stengah, kick back next to a artillery piece (cast in Glasgow, stamped 'ALDERSHOT ARMOURY') and the management have dressed up the staff in khaki gear (no pith hat); it's a bit weird but I couldn't help but feeling the force of Maugham's writing in this equally wishful and fantastic world - however mundane each constituent part.

If you've made it this far, I am actually sorry for writing so much; I got carried away. I'm new to this forum and I'm not sure how to conduct myself.

[ennison]

Here's a Maugham tale you probably know but it bears repeating. He had been invited to address a group of upper school blones in a posh English public school on the subject of his art. A radical Headmistress no doubt. Anyway he had spoken for some time when one of the hothoused precocious bints asked if he could sum up the qualities that made a successful short story. He enumerated these as: royalty or the upper classes(The English do so lurv their Royals!) Religion (which he claimed everyone had thoughts about) Sex (everyone has thoughts on that) colloquial speech (to ground one with the common reader) an element of shock and an atmosphere of mystery. He ended his talk was thanked and left. "Now girls," said the teacher. "You heard what Mr Maugham said. I would like you all to spend the remainder of the afternoon creating a short story using Mr Maugham's advice" Then she settled to her knitting. Some ten minutes la ter she was taken aback to realize that Jenny was indicating that she was ready. "Already Jenny? Well let's hear it"

Jenny read it out: "My God!" Cried the Duchess. "I'm pregnant! I wonder who dunnit?"

[Emil Miller]

I think it's important to remember that Maugham was writing for a very different audience than present day readers but ironically that makes his writing more interesting rather than less because his stories can be seen within their historical context. The great majority of his contemporaries seldom travelled abroad unless they were in government service as sailors, soldiers or officials. The countries that he visited as a writer seemed exotic and unreal to most people so that Maugham, like the Loti, Conrad and Kipling before him, was able to profit from his personal experience of foreign locations. It's interesting to note that the attitude of colonialists to the indigenous peoples of the East that is seen in Maugham's short stories is mirrored by those in Orwell's Burmese Days but whereas Maugham is non judgemental, Orwell is markedly critical of colonisation. Ironically, Maugham was one of Orwell's favourite writers.
I have written elsewhere on this forum about Maugham's novels and and don't wish to make further comment except to say that I think that the suggestion that Christopher Isherwood was the model for Larry Durrell in The Razor's Edge is unlikely. Although Isherwood is mentioned in biographies of Maugham, I do not recall him being considered the progenitor of one of Maugham's major characters.

[Hacienda]

Emil - Yes, I agree; I overstated the likelihood that Isherwood was a model for Larry, if at all. I happened to first read Isherwood, Huxley and Maugham at around the same time, and am aware that Isherwood was acquainted with both and collaborated for a time with Huxley. Though it remained to me unlikely Larry was 'based' on Isherwood, I found their shared acquaintances charming and that led me to sharing that anecdote. As it is, I find the forensic approach some adopt to aggressively link characters with real people mildly interesting at best and onerous and unproductive at worst - though that is for me, of course I would not impose that opinion on anyone else that thought otherwise.

In accessory to the Isherwood-Maugham acquaintance, and regarding Maugham's own interactions with Hindu gurus, perhaps you might find this article interesting:
err I attempted to post the link but was informed I could not; you can find the article by googling 'telegraph maugham guru' - it's in the (British) Telegraph.

With my reservations about the value of biographic-character linkage expressed, I enjoyed the notion that the protagonist in Burgess' 'Earthly Powers' was allegedly modeled on Maugham (of course in literary speculation to make an allegation one must simply write it, as the 'Shakespeare was actually de Vere/a tree stump/a thunderbolt did it' mini-industry testifies). It made the novel all the more amusing even though I thought it unlikely except in the vaguest sense. If anyone hasn't read it, I recommend it; it's a shame the novel is best known for it's first line because it is so much more than what can be inferred from the sentence - but it is a good hook so here it is: 'It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me'.

Ennison - I hadn't heard that anecdote; like the best of their sort, it has the whiff of augmentation and/or invention. Even so, I enjoyed it and had a very good laugh. Thank you for that, I'll definitely share it the next time Maugham comes up in conversation (sadly not very often).

I feel I have missed out on some good anecdotes and character sketches of Maugham; I avoid reading about his personal and professional life for when I did make a concerted effort to do so, I found most of the books in circulation were only concerned with lurid details and post-mortem gossip. Of course he had a fascinating personal life and psychology, but I await a more magisterial biography to be published (or recommended, if it's already out there).

[Emil Miller]

I don't personally object to fictional characters being linked to actual people if there is a genuine likelihood of it being true. After all, although he denied it, Maugham parodied Hugh Walpole in Cakes and Ale in the person of Alroy Kear, and Maugham was very probably the model for the protagonist in Noel Coward's play A Song at Twilight.
It's also likely that Burgess was thinking of Maugham as the character in the well known quotation you have given.

It is true that the most recent biography of Maugham by Salina Hastings does include much detail of his sexual exploits but he was a promiscuous homosexual as were a many of his acquaintances. In speaking to a couple of his neighbours when I visited his villa on Cap Ferrat some years after his death, they were clearly embarrassed when I asked if they'd had personal contact with him.

[Hacienda]

Regarding Maugham's neighbors, that's a wonderful anecdote; thanks for sharing it. Also, thank you for indirectly recommending A Song at Twilight - I am already an admirer of Coward but have not read/seen that play and will pursue it vigorously. I am very glad I joined this forum.

[ennison]

Maugham? Boring thin bstad

[Emil Miller]

On account of this thread, I took down a volume of Maugham's short stories that I hadn't read for some time.
They are French translations although I had previously read them in English and, although they are by different translators, there is only one man who could have written them. They are written with great facility without being in the least superficial and the style is unmistakable. If anyone fancies themselves as a short story writer, they should read Maugham if only to see what they are up against. In addition to those already mentioned I would add as must reads:

Flotsam and Jetsam
The Alien Corn
The Outstation
Mr Know All
The Force of Circumstance
The Four Dutchmen