Somerset maugham short stories appointment in samarra

Somerset Maugham resembled, at first, the Society dramatists of the eighteen-nineties, combining the technical methods of Pinero with the verbal mannerisms of Oscar Wilde. The cynicism with which it became a lazy clichГ© to charge him was in truth and in the main a humorous appreciation of human oddity and incalculability, though he was never unaware of nor unresponsive to the pathos and pain which human relationships may generate. If he then wrote nothing that increased his reputation, he nevertheless indulged certain wider personal interests by taking up semi-historical themes in Then and Now (1946) and Catalina (1948), and a quasi-mystical one in The Razor's Edge (1944), without sacrificing his ironical scepticism and incisive humour. Maugham's output of novels and short stories during the nineteen-forties showed little diminution of his sharp-focused curiosity concerning the behaviour and motives of men and women. It led, in the novel, A Christmas Holiday (1939), to his one major failure. Tragedy is, indeed, a will-o'-the-wisp to Somerset Maugham. The tragic note is not outside his range (see Red), but his celebrated story, Rain вЂ“ of a prostitute, Sadie Thompson, converted by a missionary who then succumbs to lust, solicits her, and commits suicide вЂ“ misses tragedy and achieves only a painful sordidness. The impish audacity of his wit and his disrespect for self-righteousness are breathtaking in The Vessel of Wrath, the perfect story of its kind. The short stories are often dazzling, though occasionally only glittering. In the illuminating preface to a single-volume collection short stories, Altogether (1934), Somerset Maugham acknowledged a debt to Maupassant, though he himself contributed far more than he borrowed from the Frenchman. The author laughs and feels with her he is not aloof or contemptuously amused, and she is safe from the cracking and cutting lash of his wit. Rosie is warm and abundant, the generous-breasted ministrant. In Cakes and Ale the main characteristic of the mature Maugham вЂ“ absence of romantic illusion вЂ“ is less productive of what often seems in his short stories to be a cynically sterile view of life. The character of Rosie, the barmaid who becomes Driffield's first wife, is Somerset Maugham's masterpiece and one of the great creations in English fiction. Novels about novelists are usually meat chiefly for the literary, but this story of Driffield вЂ“ whose attraction to common things and common people in bar parlours and the like makes him faintly derisive of his own fame as an author вЂ“ has a much wider appeal. It is his best novel, for, here, sardonic wit and satire do not drive out human sympathy and understanding. Cakes and Ale (1930) has incisiveness, brilliance, genuine pathos, and beauty. This is a fine achievement, but work of a more distinctively personal kind was to come. In 1916, however, he published an excellent long novel, Of Human Bondage, some part of which is recollective of phases of his own life. For some years after, narrative fiction was of only minor interest to him, while he was becoming a celebrity in the theatre. His early novel Liza of Lambeth (1897) belongs to the period when tales of Cockney life were in fashion, and Maugham's obstetrical experiences among the poor of south London brought him into close touch with the human material he treated understandingly in that book. Somerset Maugham told of his transition from medicine to literature in The Summing-Up (1938), which is less an autobiography than a statement of his purposes as a writer, and a recital of his mental and moral attitude.

In his case, popular favour preceded critical acclaim, and his satirical mind must have found a wry satisfaction in the spectacle of the experts belatedly hastening to catch up with independent public approval. This must have been a very popular book, probably a textbook, first published in 1928 and later revised when it reached the fourteenth edition in 1964.Д«y the nineteenth-thirties, after having for many years been either despised or ignored by intellectuals, Somerset Maugham had moved unobtrusively to a high place both as a dramatist and as a writer of fiction.

Twentieth Century English Literature by A. Frome: The English Language Book Society, 1965. I suspect that most likely as in the case of yesteryear's newspaper advertisements old criticism offers but a glimpse into past fashion (except perhaps for those interested in reception theory, but then, again, probably book reviews would have been more telling), however, it is amusing to have a look. As a matter of fact, I confess that I do not remember if I read them at all. Recovered from storage (finally all boxes folded!) are two long forgotten books.

Somerset maugham short stories appointment in samarra