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The Summing Up | |||||||
W. Somerset Maugham has suffered the decline in reputation that occurs to most writers after death. Perhaps I'm perverse but I am inclined to rate at least his best novels in the company of those by Graham Greene and Joseph Conrad. He is plainer spoken and less noticeably concerned with the niceties of style that preoccupied many writers of his generation and the following generations. There are underappreciated virtues to this approach. He opens The Summing Up with these words: "This is not an autobiography nor is it a book of recollections. In one way and another I have used in my writings whatever has happened to me in the course of my life. ...Fact and fiction are so intermingled in my work that now, looking back on it, I can hardly distinguish one from the other. It would not interest me to record the facts, even if I could remember them, of which I have already made a better use." He is, in the main, true to his word, however, his reticence is only of an outward kind; of his inner life we are treated to a dispossession of his motives and beliefs that is unusually frank. The Summing Up deals not only with the foment of his creations but also with his interest in philosophy, and if in the end he winds up with a homily rather than a formula for life, he is equally candid in admitting this. For anyone who has written or who desires to write this is an invaluable piece of work. His early chapters on "lucidity, simplicity, and euphony," are studded throughout with good advice and good sense: "It is necessary to know grammar, and it is better to write grammatically than not, but it is well to remember that grammar is common speech formulated. Usage is the only test. I prefer a phrase that is easy and unaffected to a phrase that is grammatical." Likewise his treatment of the writers that influenced him as a youth is straightforward and unsentimental: "Swift's prose is like a French canal, bordered with poplars, that runs through a gracious and undulating country. Its tranquil charm fills you with satisfaction, but it neither excites the emotions nor stimulates the imagination. You go on and on, and presently you are a trifle bored.” Throughout the book Maugham gives his thoughts and musings in an openly epigrammatic formulation that seems neither stentorian nor overwrought. His is a restrained elegance that more often than not sounds perfectly natural, if a bit clipped, even to American ears. I can't stress enough in how straightforward a style even his most fanciful thoughts are expressed. His musings on philosophy and his thoughts about God and religion are no more difficult to understand than his description of some time spent in a tuberculosis sanatorium: "The silence was enchanting. Infinite space seemed to enter it, and my spirit, alone with the stars, seemed capable of any adventure. My imagination was never more nimble; it was like a barque under press of sail scudding before the breeze. The monotonous day, whose only excitement was the books I read and my reflections, passed with inconceivable rapidity. I left my bed with a pang." The style of this literary memoir displays all of the virtues of his best novels and none of their minor defects. It is an impeccable exercise in brevity and the well-turned phrase. The reader would do well to read Of Human Bondage and Cakes and Ale before reading The Summing Up, as they are both highly autobiographical in places. While he does not dwell on his day-to-day life and dismisses even his World War One duty in His Majesty's Secret Service with a few brief paragraphs, he does make free with information that would spoil quite a few passages for the reader of either novel. At the time of his death in 1965 he was the grand old man of the world of British literature. At the time he wrote The Summing Up in 1938, he was already in his sixties and easily one of the most popular writers in the world. I suppose he wrote the Summing up to cap off a fine career. Though he had yet to write The Razor's Edge and several fine short stories, he had already retired from the stage for the second time and was willing to be candid about his place in the critical hierarchy of the day: "In my twenties the critics said I was brutal, in my thirties they said I was flippant, in my forties they said I was cynical, in my fifties they said I was competent and now in my sixties they say I am superficial. I have gone my way, following the course I had mapped out for myself, and trying with my works to fill out the pattern I looked for. I think authors are unwise who do not read criticisms. It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise; for of course it is easy to shrug one's shoulders when one finds oneself described as a genius, but not so easy to be unconcerned when one is treated as a nincompoop." He is perhaps less forthright than he could be when dealing with his place in English letters. In his day he was one of the highest paid of all authors and widely regarded as England's most sophisticated author. I own the Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics edition of The Summing Up, and it is very well designed, as is to be expected from Penguin. The front cover has a portrait of W. Somerset Maugham by Graham Sutherland. It is not a flattering portrait but rather a frank and candid portrait of the author, which is appropriate because that's what lies between the covers as well. Well, almost. He is entirely reticent on the topic of his sexuality. In the Great Britain of his day, open homosexuality was a bar to many careers and Maugham, who once said, “money is like a sixth sense, without which it is impossible to enjoy the other five,” was sensitive to anything that might interfere with his income. He makes only one passing reference to his longtime lover, not even mentioning him by name. And like Proust it is probable when he mentions a youthful love affair in such a way as to imply a young woman, the original was most likely a young man. His nephew’s book, Somerset and all the Maughams, is a slightly more frank portrayal of Maugham’s exterior with many a gossipy, affectionate anecdote, but The Summing Up stands, despite its one major flaw, as the most frank portrait of his interior. |
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