On W. Somerset Maugham

Lately I haven’t been able to get enough of British author W. Somerset Maugham. A year or so ago I read what is considered to be one of his greatest works, “Of Human Bondage,” and was disappointed. I was also consciously disappointed by other works of his that I picked up and read, “Cakes and Ale,” and “Ah King.” I say “consciously,” because unconsciously, I believe that something in his writing attracted me. If it hadn’t, I don’t believe I would have kept reading any more of his works. I would have dropped “Of Human Bondage” more quickly than I dropped Plutarch’s “Lives” when I found myself nodding off after a couple of pages. But I didn’t… as if against my own will, I kept coming back to Maugham, reading volumes of his short stories and various random works of his that happened to be lying around the house. I told myself it was just because I was bored, and his pieces are lightly entertaining.
         Generally I am grateful when people take it upon themselves to recommend books to me. “You’ll love this,” they say, or “That book was amazing,” or “This one’s a classic, a must-read.” What they really mean is, at that point in time, that book had something to say that spoke directly to their frame of mind or current experience, that the author articulated a message so personally powerful, it captivated their mind and their energy and their concentration, and they came away from the encounter somehow changed.  What they mean is, “that book expressed ideas that coincided directly with my own, or gave voice to ideas I didn’t even know I had.” Alternatively, or additionally, “this book expressed ideas that blindsided or contradicted some of my deep-set convictions, forcing me to re-evaluate and alter them.” It’s hard to know, though, when to give up on a book or an author altogether, or to keep coming back and trying, because you know it just simply isn’t the right time. There is a season to read certain works, and there is a season to refrain from reading them. (For example, when struggling with depression, or an emotionally trying set of circumstances, I make it a personal rule to stay away from Dostoevsky.)  
         A year ago, I wasn’t ready to appreciate W. Somerset Maugham the way I have come to appreciate him now. And a year, or even a month from now, perhaps I will have ceased to appreciate him. Usually if someone whose opinion I value, and whose fundamental convictions resemble mine, keeps telling me I ought to try and read so-and-so, I will keep trying. It was this way with Herman Melville. Over and over I picked up and gave up on Moby Dick. It was never the right moment. His metaphors meant nothing to me, his analogies seemed preachy, I found his descriptions of whaling tedious and his imageries empty and dull. Then suddenly my sophomore year of high school I picked it up again, devoured it, and loved it. I found it exciting, moving, dramatic, relevant. I was glad I had persisted.

And suddenly, at this point in my life, I feel as though I can relate to Maugham's writings. It wasn't this way several years ago. I wish I could remember exactly why I didn’t like Maugham then nearly as much as I seem to now... I think the endings of his works left me feeling dissatisfied. I strongly disliked his conclusions. An author – especially an author of short stories – can do so much with his conclusions... They are the solution to the conflict. They are the grand finale. They are the apex, the answer, the elucidation of everything you've been anticipating… And Maugham’s endings always left me going, “Wait…what??” Here is an example from “The Trembling of a Leaf;”

“He wondered why he had ever loved her so madly. He had laid at her feet all the treasures of his soul, and she had cared nothing for them. Waste, what waste! And now, when he looked at her, he felt only contempt. His patience was at last exhausted. He answered her question.
         “He’s the captain of a schooner. He’s come from Apia.”
         “Yes.”
         “He brought me news from home. My eldest brother is very ill and I must go back.”
         “Will you be gone long?”
         He shrugged his shoulders.”


And?

And nothing. That was it. As in life, no dramatic conclusion, no solution, no resolution. Not a happy ending, although certainly not a tragic one… Just an ordinary one. Maugham’s writings are always that – delightfully ordinary, and incredibly readable. I have struggled through too many philosophical treatises and dense historical expositions not to appreciate readability when I see it. And the more widely I read, the more important a quality I believe readability is for an author to have. It’s all very well to say deep things in an abstruse, subtle manner, to leave readers guessing at the true meaning, and scholars arguing about your purpose in your wake for decades... But if I were an author, I think I’d much rather leave my readers perfectly clear as to my intentions. If my message is important enough to write a novel about, it should be important enough to express lucidly. And Maugham’s writing is nothing if not lucid. Someone once told me how much they hate naïve, blunt writing, writing that attempt clumsily to wrap itself in opaque metaphor, but instead results in a maladroit statement of personal ideology. There is a fine line, certainly, between trying too hard to be subtle and failing… and trying too hard to be subtle and succeeding. Either way, though, I think that you’re simply trying too hard. I think the point is not to try at all. I am no author, and I would not dare to attempt walking the fine line between subtle expression of ideas and blatant proclamation of dogma, but as a reader, it’s nice to enjoy the happy medium Maugham provides. His books have been described as “pleasure reading” – so what? Reading should be pleasurable, shouldn’t it?

And so, a year later, I come back to Maugham. Although there are lists of other books I should be reading, multitudes of authors to try, whole genres I have not explored, horizons to be expanded… I keep coming back to Maugham. Especially since his novels and short stories revolve around subjects that truly interest me at this point in my life – love and friendship and betrayal and fidelity and heartbreak and relationships between people. Ever and always, they are honest, and deal honestly with the corruption and the joy and the hypocrisy and the pleasure of being alive.  And they end at absurdly abrupt junctions, leaving you wondering at the point, the meaning of it all... as do the stories in our own lives.

No better analysis of Maugham’s writing exists than his own. In the Preface to his first novel of complete short stories, East and West, Maugham meditates on his own writing, and on the two greatest influences behind it, Maupassant and Chekov. He both criticizes and praises them, and talks about how he discovered them as a young man and how they’ve impacted his style ever since. When talking about Maupassant, you almost think that Maugham is discussing himself… “It may be that [Maupassant’s novels] have no great spiritual significance. Maupassant did not aim at that. He looked upon himself as a plain man; no good writer was ever less a man of letters. He did not pretend to be a philosopher, and here he was well-advised, for when he indulges in a reflection, he is commonplace. But within his limits he is admirable. He has an astonishing capacity for creating living people. He can afford little space, but in a few pages can set before you half a dozen person so sharply seen and vividly described that you know all about them that you need” (Maugham, East and West, 1921).

Again, when he lectures on Chekov and Maupassant both… (“lectures”? Is that the right word? Maugham never lectures. He muses.) he might be speaking of his own writing: “Chekov is extremely readable. That is a writer’s supreme virtue and one upon which sufficient stress is often not laid. He shared it with Maupassant. Both of them were professional writers who turned out stories at more or less regular intervals to earn their living… it was part of the day’s work. They had to please their writers. They were not always inspired, it was only now and then that they produced a masterpiece, but it is very seldom that they wrote anything that did not hold the reader’s attention to the last line… Sometimes a critic will describe a book of short stories as magazine stories and thus in his own mind damn them. That is foolish. No form of art is produced unless there is a demand for it and if newspapers and magazines did not publish short stories they would not be written…”

Right now, perhaps I’m weary of subtlety. I appreciate the effort it takes, as an author, to say what he wants to say using fables, metaphors, and elusive language. I appreciate the epic proportions of a novel like Brothers Karamazov, and the importance of themes such as Hugo's and Tolstoy's. But coming down to earth from novels like theirs leaves one with a depressing sense of anti-climax, the sneaking suspicion that life, real life, is not like that, at all... Human beings are not like that. The majority of them, unlike Levin and Alyosha and Jean Valjean, do not possess the capacity to rise above their past and become such passionate, self-sacrificing idealists. One in a hundred years, perhaps… and about these men, certainly, such novels deserve to be written. But what about the rest of us? Maybe we don’t deserve to have novels written about us, and our petty struggles and base desires and failings and small victories… and there are people like Somerset Maugham who have written about us just the same.

         “I like a story,” concluded Maugham in his introduction, “that fits...You feel that life does not dovetail into its various parts with such neatness. In life, stories straggle, they begin nowhere and tail off without a point. That is probably what Chekov meant when he said that stories should have neither a beginning nor an end. It is certain that sometimes it gives you a sensation of airlessness when you see persons who behave so exactly according to character, and incidents that fall into places with such perfect convenience. The story-teller of this kind aims not only at giving his own feelings about life, but at a formal decoration. He arranges life to suit his purposes. He follows a design in his mind, leaving out this and changing that; he distorts facts to his advantage, according to his plan; and when he attains his object produces a work of art. It may be that life slips through this fingers; then he has failed; it may be that he seems sometimes so artificial that you cannot believe him, and when you do not believe a story-teller he is done. When he succeeds he has forced you for a time to accept his view of the universe and has given you the pleasure of following out the pattern he has drawn on the surface of chaos. But he seeks to prove nothing. He paints a picture and sets it before you. You can take it or leave it.” 
             

Knowingly or unknowingly, Maugham was describing his own purpose and style as an author. Like his hypothetical writer, Maugham also does not seek to prove anything - he paints a picture - in some cases, a masterpiece - and sets it before you - and you, the reader - today, tomorrow, or years in the future - are perfectly free to either take it or leave it.